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Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
61–70 of 120 posts
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#62PM @ McKinsey & Company (New Ventures group) -Background in software engineering and human-centered design. The best product managers I've been around have a mix of technical, business, and design talent, with the strong PMs excelling in at least two of the categories. -Understand the difference between good and bad products. Actively examine products you use on a daily basis, both physical and digital. E.g. why is m…
how do I ping you? :p PG did a great job as a PM with HN, but he "forgot" about some features :p
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#63I started out as an engineer. But, I built tons of side projects and studied Product Management to hone my skills. Do lots of user testing and analytics. Show you can understand a user's problems and have empathy for the user. Practice solving those problems with simple, understandable UX. Then, take this ammunition and lobby hard to PM leaders. I put together a compelling presentation to a PM director at my corporate job and they gave me a chance with a PM "rotation." It's not the easiest of transitions, but you'll learn a ton. If you do well, they might put you in a full time entry level position. I took a pay cut. Make sure it's what you are passionate about. I miss engineering but love strategic problem solving and the magic that comes with PM. But overall, you have to be aggressive. Learn the skills and lobby hard. Go get it!
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#64PM @ a mid-size startup (been one for 5 years).
Skills:
- Be able to sympathize with your users (and be able to translate their pain into actionable steps that build toward your company's bigger goal)
- Be a communicator. You need to be able to write help documents, update emails, epics, stories, etc. Verbally, you should be able (and want!) to get up in front of your company and evangelize the work you're doing.
- Be a junior project manager. Even if you have project people in your company, you need to keep the trains running. Sometimes that means you've gotta be a dick to people too.
- Demonstrate deep understanding of your product. You're going to have to make tradeoffs and compromises along the way and knowing the landscape of your product (both from the user's perspective and the technical perspective) helps you make better decisions.
- Be able to prioritize. This one is tough to demonstrate, but good PMs know how to effectively take a long list of requirements or stories and prioritize them based on what will drive the most value
- Be able to think big. It's easy to go for incremental wins, but you've really got to be able to take the long view of your product. Your customers, sales team, and engineers will all want to do things that aren't part of your product's vision and you've got to know that.
Background: I was a history major in college. Almost did a PhD. I've always had an interest in coding -- taught myself Java, PHP, MySQL. When I finally got serious about having a career, I joined a company as a member of their marketing team. My 'programming' background made me the natural lead for talking to our tech team. Eventually, they changed my title to product manager and I was in.
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#65PM @ McKinsey & Company (New Ventures group) -Background in software engineering and human-centered design. The best product managers I've been around have a mix of technical, business, and design talent, with the strong PMs excelling in at least two of the categories. -Understand the difference between good and bad products. Actively examine products you use on a daily basis, both physical and digital. E.g. why is m…
how do I ping you? :p PG did a great job as a PM with HN, but he "forgot" about some features :p
aswin8728@gmail.com
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#66I'm a PM at Snap Inc (formerly Snapchat). Before that, GPM at Twitter. how did you get there / background For me, engineering was the path that led to being a PM. I was a decent developer, but always found myself more interested in what we should be building opposed to how to build it. Background includes BS computer eng, masters in systems eng and an mba. Did software dev for years and gravitated toward roles that i…
> I was a decent developer, but always found myself more interested in what we should be building opposed to how to build it. This. But I want to do both and continue to improve the dev side of my game.
I'm also exactly there. I feel I cannot really excel at dev while I enjoy it, but I believe I can make a difference in PM
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#67PM @ Adobe
I joined as QE over 12 years ago. By taking a lead in online forums and a growing social network system, I put myself in contact with a lot more users than product management at the time was reaching. As my knowledge of the product and market space grew, I began making more product decisions.
When I first took the PM role for the product, PM was more of an evangelist role in our group. As our group became more data-driven, we've had to adapt and grow our typical PM skills of market sizing, prioritization, roadmap, and all the product vision and strategy that accompanies that. It's definitely a good transition and is making our product teams stronger.
When looking at new PM hires, crucial skills are being able to identify market (customer) needs, validate that with strong data, and prioritize requirements. It requires working closely with engineering, UX, marketing, and upper management. Especially when communicating with VP and Director level folks, being able to summarize the vision and course in a few words and justifying it with projects of growth in users or revenue is absolutely crucial.
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#68Head of Product @ Stormpath
It doesn't really matter where you start, as long as you can relate to the product and its customers. I've seen great PM from every beginning. My beginning was a normal comp sci background -> dev -> customer success manager (any support role is a great segway into product management role) -> PM. Having managed many PMs, it boils down to this:
Can you be an advocate for your customer for your product, regardless of intercompany demands?
Can you communicate your vision for what needs to be built effectively across the whole company?
Those are the two main skills that I try to distil for any PM that I hire. There is a 3rd which I call the auxiliary skill (these can be taught easily, hence auxiliary).
How do you validate your assumptions, remove cognitive biases to come to the best decision about the priority on what should be built when?
And a fourth, which comes down to background and personality:
Can you be a swiss army knife and help wherever the team needs you?
The product I currently manage is a developer tool, so taking a look at an example based on the 4 points:
1. Can you relate to developer pain points, market problems with identity, create great developer experience and understand where there are holes in the current product?
2. How can you use the tools at your disposal to communicate what we need to build to the engineering team, marketing, and executives. Technical and non-technical folks alike, even for a technical product that is sold to devs.
3. How can you manage feedback / signals from sales, developer evangelism, customer asks, and visionaries to create a roadmap
4. Demonstrate how you have needed to step out of your comfort zone to get the job done.
When interviewing, having a developer background is a must (but it is only a must because my product is currently catering to the developer persona), but replace a developer product with a dental product that is sold to dentists. That hiring manager is going to want someone that more than likely understands dentists and their pain points that the software is currently solving for. They could come from, office manager, dentist moving to software (it happens), someone from the insurance industry... you see the point.
Hope this helps, I'm always happy to help and advise. Snag my twitter handle from the profile and shoot me a DM.
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#69In my book, The Product Manager's Desk Reference (2e), the Introductory Chapter is titled: The Accidental Profession. Everyone comes to PM from other disciplines... can't get a degree in it.
Plus, the definition of Product Management varies... which it shouldn't. Product Management is the business management of products. Product managers own those businesses across their life cycles. They are responsible for harnessing market insights, formulating strategy, determining where to invest, overseeing development, ensuring products are introduced/released on time, and tracking financial and business contributions.
They need to earn credibility so they can influence others, think strategically, and have sufficient business and financial acumen.
In a nutshell, it's a CEO/GM "MINDSET" that helps product managers be great product managers.
Re: Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
#70PM at a startup.
I guess I could be considered a "junior PM" as I have less than a year of official PM experience. I started off as employee #2 in our US office. My main role was marketing but I worked closely with our designers and engineers throughout the years (giving design feedback, writing copy, etc.). I also led the effort of redesigning of our website, and worked directly with a designer and an engineer throughout that process. So our CEO and VP of Product knew what I was capable of. When the PM opportunity came up internally, I made the switch.