Maybe a mixed role is the fabled unicorn “project” manager.

PM as in “project” or “product” manager? I’ve never experienced the former that wasn’t an oxygen thief, but I’ve heard unicorns exist. My current product manager is quite good imo: shields engineers from idea ferries from all levels; talks to support and customers; has good track record of picking projects that successfully increases product adoption; etc. I wish our product manager took the time to understand our codebases as the op here does. I think with that knowledge it would be easier to convince the PM of the importance of certain refactors and why certain requests estimates are more difficult and or tedious that the PM expects.

I’ve tried both for about 6 months each - it was a decent way to discover new packages. I lean towards spacemacs (I had less problems) just be sure to use the development branch. In the end I dusted off my old config and started adding the packages I liked. Troubleshooting doom or spacemacs is harder than plain emacs when something is misbehaving (better docs, larger community). I’d als suggest using emacs 29, feels a lot more snappy that 28 and use-package is pretty nice.

Check out system crafters guides on emacs on YouTube when you decide to start rolling your own configs.

GL