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Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?

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31–40 of 52 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?

#31
Depending on the culture of the company, the product management function will come with a range of expectations from the powers that be — figure those out asap. Figure out the big personalities, the values of the company, and obviously start talking to their customers on week 1 and every week (day?) thereafter.

As a senior PM, you probably need to pay a lot more attention to your executive stakeholders than a junior PM who might focus instead on lower level cross functional needs, developer focus, design, etc. I would also suggest that after you’re comfortable with your onboarding that you embrace high visibility and even fight for it if anyone discourages you or devalues your communication efforts. Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?

#32
This is not just first day advice, but more general advice for new PMs:

Talk to your users relentlessly, find out how they use and don't use your product. Get a deep understanding of their workflows and user journeys in the product.

Trim the fat (shift focus) and solve problems they have that the product doesn't solve yet or solve well.

Reduce the steps in their critical user journeys. For example, if it's something they do every day, going from 5 clicks to 3 clicks adds up over time and improves satisfaction.

Dive into metrics and implement quantitative metrics where they don't exist. Survey users for qualitative metrics.

Bring data (metrics, market research, customer quotes etc) to executive meetings to back up your ideas, data speaks louder than your words.

Basically, if your product is in the market you don't need to always guess what to build, your users will guide you. That's not to say you can't innovate too, but a large part of being a PM is bringing the user experience and their frustrations to your team to action.

Re: Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?

#33
It's okay to go slow at first. You have to walk before you can run.

Even though you have experience in the domain, don't rush in and start trying to change everything, first understand why it is the way it is.

Gain your engineers' trust through active listening, kindness, empathy, and engagement on critical topics. Don't be afraid to say "let me do that for you" in the early days. It's both a learning opportunity and a trust building technique.

Meet every stakeholder and peer you can. Ask them about themselves, the company, and their perspective on the opportunities for your product. Set up regular 1:1s with key stakeholders.

Understand what your teams and your mgmt wants from you. They may conflict. If they do, see if you can figure out a way to address both needs. If you can't, you'll need to figure out a way to manage one group's needs while meeting the other's.

Ask for feedback from the engineers you work with and your peers, especially on your first couple of initiatives but I find it's worth doing all the time. If you don't get any meaningful feedback just assume you've done a good job and keep going.

When you use a product for the first time, write down your feedback as you go through it. Identify what you think is confusing or frustrating, but also what you think it working well. Take screenshots or videos as necessary to further illustrate your perspective. Most of the people who work on the product already have probably internalized these faults and no longer see them the way you will with fresh eyes. Discuss your findings with the team.

You'll want to speak with as many customers/users as possible, but unless you're already an expert in the product, not right away. Gain basic competency in the product, develop a hypothesis about what you think needs to be done, and then go speak to users. You'll quickly find out if you're on the right or wrong path.

One thing I've learned is that many founders actually suck at talking to users in a way that gives them actionable information. If that's you, and perhaps why you're not a founder any more (not saying this is you), then quickly learn how to do interviews well. There are plenty of books and videos on this topic.

Celebrate your team's wins and understand that you are there to help your teams win, not the other way around.

Understand that PMs are judged on outcomes not inputs. No body cares if you worked really hard on something or if you cruised into it. The results will speak for you.

Be prepared to say "no" a lot. That's one of the primary jobs of a PM, but be wary of saying it a lot right away. If you're unsure of something in the early days get council from your team or mgmt.

Your teams want you in the problem space, not the solution space. Unless you have some keen insight on a solution or are part of a solution brainstorming session, don't tread into the engineer's domain. Conversely though, embrace engineers that want to get a deeper understanding of the problem space.

Look for leverage points. That is, look for opportunities with low effort and high impact. I've been able to make seemingly big strides in a product early on just by identifying the right leverage points.

I can keep going but I'll stop for now. I hope this helps you on your journey. Best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?

#34
I came from the technical side and did the PMI PMP and PMP ACP. I know people are rightfully critical of certifications here, and certifications alone never teach you the thing they certify, but for me it was worth it.

I learned a lot of lingo I was unfamiliar with and the broad and comprehensive treatment of the field gave much more confidence. Being forced to deal with all the topics in PM, at least to some degree, was very eye opening for someone like me, whose experience was restricted to only certain aspects of it.

And not the least, it gives you access to people in similar positions in other organizations and industries for exchange and to learn from.

EDIT: If you meant PM as product manager this is probably not for you. I was curious how common PM for product manager is and searched HN for the abbreviation. Most commonly on HN it stands for - surprise, surprise - prime minister.

Re: Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?

#35
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is for Project Management, but I think OP is a Product Manager...

whats the difference?

Product Managers decide what they want the Project Managers to manage.

eg: "New Feature X" or "New Product Y" or...

Project Managers are about estimates and critical paths and resolving bottlenecks and competition for resources.

Product Managers are about features and sales and product roadmaps and marketing campaigns etc.

Re: Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?

#36

Since you may not have seen it in your previous career: be aware of politics in companies (that size). Especially when you are interacting with other departments, PMs and positions generally above yours. I'm not saying its the most important thing or specific to the first days. But getting the dynamics early on will benefit you, your project and the people involved. Also more specific to day one: have fun and be exci…

Good advice. First step is to identify your enemies. I also would call it “understand dynamics”. Because somebody wanted promotion into your senior position. Somebody just does not like you or someone wants to do things differently. It’s fine. Just know the obstacles before planing the journey.

Re: Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?

#37
Interesting (but perhaps not surprising) none of the top comments mention meeting or learning how to work with the people who build, operate, and maintain the software product that they're managing.

Understanding the dynamic (ie. inherent tension) between engineering and product/business is a really important part of a software job no matter what your role is.

Re: Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?

#40
post #36

Since you may not have seen it in your previous career: be aware of politics in companies (that size). Especially when you are interacting with other departments, PMs and positions generally above yours. I'm not saying its the most important thing or specific to the first days. But getting the dynamics early on will benefit you, your project and the people involved. Also more specific to day one: have fun and be exci…

Good advice. First step is to identify your enemies. I also would call it “understand dynamics”. Because somebody wanted promotion into your senior position. Somebody just does not like you or someone wants to do things differently. It’s fine. Just know the obstacles before planing the journey.

What I’m saying is not criticism, I think the word enemies is quite isolating and too negative. It’s definitely true that every place with more than one human has inter-personal motivations and constraints, but I think they often can be fluid and non personal, someone contested the position you got but after the position was granted they realized they’re very much ok with not spending extra work time in the new job for example, or the employee that contested you to the promotion just wanted the raise or the ability to influence more in the company and you didn’t take their dream job. In some of those cases I found I can plaster my coworker name in large font on any work we did together or delegate to them tasks that they really wanted to, and I could win their trust and cooperation even though I got the promotion or something of that sort. It’s super subjective and my own personal experience
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