It's abstraction, but for things you don't care about. I was an engineer early in my career and I felt exactly as you. All that stuff was in one ear and out the other and I couldn't for the life of me make sense of it.
I moved to product and finally got it. A PM can't explain the same concepts/ideas/initiatives/etc every meeting because the whole meeting will be spent doing that. They give it a name.
Take the strategy example. In the early stages of forming this strategy, part of the PMs job is to communicate it lots of groups of people. They have the same meeting 1-10 times depending on the size of the company. Then everyone who needs to know about this strategy has an understanding of what it is. Then the PM gives it a name. The next meeting, rather than having to explain it from scratch, they call it by its name.
You're either not paying attention when it is first explained (I don't blame you, a lot doesn't matter to an engineer), or you weren't invited to the meeting it was explained.
I moved to product and finally got it. A PM can't explain the same concepts/ideas/initiatives/etc every meeting because the whole meeting will be spent doing that. They give it a name.
Take the strategy example. In the early stages of forming this strategy, part of the PMs job is to communicate it lots of groups of people. They have the same meeting 1-10 times depending on the size of the company. Then everyone who needs to know about this strategy has an understanding of what it is. Then the PM gives it a name. The next meeting, rather than having to explain it from scratch, they call it by its name.
You're either not paying attention when it is first explained (I don't blame you, a lot doesn't matter to an engineer), or you weren't invited to the meeting it was explained.