but I like working with PMs who went into it through channels other than the official ones, and are motivated out of their passion for building things and solving problems. Not because they feel it’s something they’re supposed to do, or because they think it’s prestigious, or because it is the default path from whatever elite school they went to.

That is an excellent and very opinionated list of criteria of how to gauge a product organization. I’m not sure whether I’ve seen any that hit all or even many of these. If you know of one, let me know.

http://dangrover.com/blog/2020/01/20/a-sanity-test-for-large-groups-of-pms.html