There aren't "junior product" positions.
What skills must be demonstrable?
Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
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Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#2I started in communications/marketing and fell into the position. We have associate product managers at my company, although I walked straight into the full role. It was a few years before I felt comfortable.
Key skills? I would say an ability to relate to and communication with others and a solid understanding of the business you are in. Marketing experience helped me a lot in that regard as I spent five years explaining releases and product updates to users.
I'm not a developer by any stretch of the imagination, but I was fortunate to have a pair of patient devs who put up with some ignorance in the early days as I gained a better understanding of how the process and systems work together.
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#3I've done a lot of product management without technically being one by title. I think one important skill is being able to have a good rapport with engineering. When that link is broken, a lot of tension arises.
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#4> What skills must be demonstrable?
Have the balls to stand up to management. You are often under significant pressure to adjust timelines and somehow get "9 women to have a baby in a month."
The PM I have now is excellent and is happy to say things to management like:
"Assuming everything goes well, we estimate you will have your project on dd-mm-yy. Remember that's an ESTIMATE."
"I don't think it's a good idea to try and force our devs to work overtime/weekends. We're more likely to stress our workforce and possibly lose devs eventually if we do that."
"No I'm not changing my estimate."
"No really, I'm not changing my estimate."
You get the idea. Thing is, after a number of projects he actually has the respect of management because they know he will give them the real numbers no matter what the pressure.
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#5The biggest thing to remember is that a manager is a servant of the team. Never the other way around. You enable them to do work. Which means handling information, communicating, helping them communicate, talking to management, protecting them from unreasonableness, setting clear goals, going to pick up the dang pizza yourself so the work doesn't stop, making sure there are long stretches of time to do work,etc. You do more grunt work than anybody and in return leadership happens.
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#6> What skills must be demonstrable? Have the balls to stand up to management. You are often under significant pressure to adjust timelines and somehow get "9 women to have a baby in a month." The PM I have now is excellent and is happy to say things to management like: "Assuming everything goes well, we estimate you will have your project on dd-mm-yy. Remember that's an ESTIMATE." "I don't think it's a good idea to t…
That's project management- not product management
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#7I've spent 3 years as an associate in a VC firm. I graduated in computer engineering. And I was invited by the CEO of a rapid growing company (www.inlocomedia.com) to be a product manager of their new Data products.
I think the tech background is important, but the most important thing is to be able to talk to all stakeholders. As a product manager you will have many interfaces with marketing, management, operations, biz dev, and your team (the engineers). You have to be able to communicate well with everybody and provide context and value.
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#8> What skills must be demonstrable? Have the balls to stand up to management. You are often under significant pressure to adjust timelines and somehow get "9 women to have a baby in a month." The PM I have now is excellent and is happy to say things to management like: "Assuming everything goes well, we estimate you will have your project on dd-mm-yy. Remember that's an ESTIMATE." "I don't think it's a good idea to t…
That's project management- not product management
Oops, sorry!
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#9I've cofunded my own startup, so I don't know if this is a useful answer to you.
During the first days of our company, my co-founder and I used to do everything: coding, preparing content, teaching, marketing, sales. Everything.
As we grew a little bit over the last year, we've had to specialize on different things and stop doing everything both of us.
I've taking the lead on the "product management" part so I started researching about it. I'm a programmer by training, so I kind of went looking for "product management courses". To be honest, if you're a developer, there's nothing you need to learn. I emailed an old product manager that led a project I worked for and asked him for advice (he's a great product manager with a ton of experience).
His answer was kind of: "you don't need to learn anything special: the key is to stick to the basic principles that you already know".
For me, a good product manager is a ruthless, constant person. If you compare it to Football, it's not the guy that shines 1 match and then is hidden for two. It's the guy that constantly delivers.
You have to wake up every morning and analyze what needs to be done, prioritize it, talk to your engineers, talk to C-level, and repeat. Over and over again.
I don't know what everyone else think, but being a programmer is a great background to become a good product manager. I've been coding for over 8 years and now, whenever we're discussing a feature or issue, it takes minutes to understand how much it implies (in time, resources, etc).
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#10Companies are looking for experience managing a product across many projects. If you don't have that (which nobody does when they start out) show that you have determination to solve higher level problems then making software work. Did a product you worked on solve a real problem and how were you a part of solving it? Were you able to grow monthly active users or other metrics that a C-level can turn into profits for the business.