Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?

In the 1990s, she graduated with a MA in Chinese Pedagogy to go with her BA in Art/Chinese Civ, and taught college for a couple of years. Terrible job, terrible pay. Eventually, there was a state budget hiccup and both of her jobs at two different schools disappeared the same day. So we moved to a bigger city (Minneapolis). Back then, anyone who could figure out which end of the mouse pointed up could get an IT job, so she got on as a tech writer for an airline.

9/11 killed her airline job, so she moved on to an e-commerce dotcom that happened to survive and thrive, moving through many different roles there. She went from tech writing to business analyst to project management etc, and eventually wound up in product ownership. After 13 years there, the company was bought out, and she (along with most of the other old-timers) were laid off.

When that happened, what she had going was deep domain expertise in a very narrow field - international e-commerce, mostly payments processing. Around here, there are just a handful of employers who need that, but those who need it really need it. After some months of searching, she was picked up by another local company, and she's happy as a clam now handling internal payment products for a company in another line of business (online testing) that has diverse payment requirements and an international presence.

Lessons learned... first, she describes her job as a translator who speaks various forms of geek. She's not a programmer, and not an accountant, but she understands both well enough to translate between them, so the programmers understand what the accountants actually need, and the accountants understand what the programmers can actually deliver. That master's degree in language pedagogy was actually useful!

Next, she has specific domain knowledge. She knows her field at a shocking level of detail. If you need someone who can explain how refunds for online payments work in Germany, she can! (German law is unusual and troublesome to code around.) She understands the industry, understands the market, and understands the customer. This isn't something that can be learned in college! It's the result of over 15 years in a specific field, in diverse roles.

She has worked her way up through jobs of increasing responsibility, and she worked in a business that grew rapidly for a long time. It gave her a lot of opportunities that might not happen in a more static company, or job-hopping across companies (which tends to make your skills generic).

And finally, she's learned to do budgeting and project planning in a macro rather than micro sense. She plans things in terms of months or years, as opposed to the day-to-day focus of a project manager.

But yeah... domain expertise. There is no substitute for that. Learn intimate details of a specific thing that is valuable.

TL;DR - In my experience it's a combination of both. You need to come up with a vision, convince others (non-direct reports and higher ups) that it's worth spending company $ on, and then be responsible for its success (however that's measured).

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In some companies a Product Manager is more of a Project Manager and working on a product someone higher up has chartered. My comments do not apply to those roles because the company is probably less concerned about product vision and strategy from the candidate. And to be honest, many companies don't need Product Managers as much as they need Project Managers who help keep the engine of incremental progress running.

Other companies rely heavily on their Product group to come up with new and innovative products. I know this is the case with companies like Google, Facebook and many startups. It's easily visible by seeing if the company has recently launched anything truly different into the market.

Your level will also determine how much strategy and vision you'll be doing. Entry level Product Managers won't be asked to cast a vision for an ambitious product and release it. But as you get more experience you'll be doing more of that.

1) If it's an existing product and someone is asking for an enhancement. You need to ask - is this enhancement unique to this person/client or does this apply to a generality of users/customers?

2) Sometimes you have to 'remove' yourself from the picture (i.e. as a user) and imagine how easy it would be for someone who is not technically savvy or conversant with something to easily use a product. An example - I sometimes have fellow PMs/colleagues argue that a design should be done in a particular way and an explanation put in the help (or documentation when it comes to ERP products). I typically counter that people rarely bother to go read up documentation when they suddenly don't understand something on an application screen. I'm not saying don't provide documentation or user guide but we should first exhaust the opportunity of trying to deliver an intuitive to use app.

Google | Facebook | Uber | Yahoo | Twitter | Yelp | LinkedIn | IBM

There may be others that I haven't heard of, so feel free to respond with more. Google and Facebook are the big two; the others only accept single-digit candidates per year. Many of these programs are extremely new. (In fact, Twitter's is so new that it has no graduates yet, as far as I know).

Source: I'm a college senior with an engineering degree. I have applied to many of these positions.