Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 120 posts

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

#71

Post by futhey »

cryptozeus wrote: post #58

For people who transferred from dev to pm, was the salary comparable in the beginning? Did you have to take huge hit in order to break into another industry with no formal experience in managing product?

Most companies have created a Technical PM role, partially because of the requirement for technical skills, but partially to justify paying 1.5x salary to match what you could be making as a developer, so talented PMs are not encouraged financially to go back into development. If you're considering this, most companies should be able to match salary requirements.

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

#72

Post by zzalpha »

gcb0 wrote: post #43
zzalpha wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, that line is fuzzier than it looks from a distance. Product managers are responsible for dealing with roadmaps and timelines. Managing expectations is necessarily part of that job. Add in agile practices where the PM may also be a PO directly managing a backlog and the line gets fuzzier still. It's part of what makes that job so challenging, as you have to wear so many hats. It also makes the job very difficult t…

all fortune 500 companies I worked on that had only PM doing both jobs it went like: PM promises some project worked out with a designer that only knows the how to wireframe generic screens, both lack understanding of the product and tech. usually because the PM just moved from another place 3 months ago. PM show up every day at standup and fail to understand the current priorities, push the new project, the enginner…

Well, on the bright side, all you aspiring PMs out there, take note: see how low the bar is??

Speaking as a PM/PO that, I hope, doesn't suck, if you simply take the time to:

1. Understand the market.

2. Understand the product.

3. Understand the user.

4. Actively engage with and converse with developers and negotiate requirements rather than acting as a lofty dictator, and listen when the engineers raise concerns.

5. Be engaged in the process so the product can truly evolve as market and technical requirements are uncovered.

6. Own failures.

7. Share successes.

I'm sure I've left lots off the list, but it's pretty basic stuff (which, I suppose, all starts from the same basic place: humility)...

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

#75

Post by pmcgrathm »

PM @ a well funded AI startup. Previously PM at Netflix. Management consultant prior.

Undergraduate degree in Psychology. Background in marketing/business and customer acquisition. I learned enough programming to automate my marketing activities, and found that I liked driving a roadmap more than I liked acquiring customers.

-Communication and conflict resolution skills are key. You are in a role where you must drive influence without having any direct reports. This means effective, articulate communication skills are required. Know how your voice needs to change between communication to engineering versus communication to an executive or board member.

-At Netflix, I was often told my job was to add clarity. Add clarity to a technical specifications document. Add clarity to the marketing teams understanding of a product feature. The best PMs are able to consolidate their understanding of a 35 page technical document into two sentences.

-Market sizing and back of the envelope calculations. Know how large the market is for your product. How much more can you charge for your product if you add X feature? How long is X feature going to take in engineering cycles? Is this the best way to spend your engineering resources? In my daily routine, I probably make 10 calculations like this and have a response ready for either our product director, CEO, board member, or customer.

-Financial modeling. I've found that modeling skills are absolutely key - know how to model out customer lifetime value, churn rates, and cash flow. You should be prepared to be a 'mini CFO,' because at the end of the day, you are asking for more resources from your executive suite, and are best off making those requests in CFO format.

-Know your technology. Know what is possible and know how to articulate requirements that speak to your technology. This is why there is often a technical barrier for PMs - you have to know how things work, and what is physically possible versus cost prohibitively impossible. This doesn't mean you need to know how to code - but that is helpful. Know source control and developer operations processes. Know how to plan for scale. Know how to recognize elegant solutions for difficult problems, and reward your engineering team for failing spectacularly.

-Finally - be humble and be accountable. It is always your fault, because you are accountable for the success of your product. Don't throw your engineering team into the middle of a sh*tstorm of management politics - be their umbrella. Don't blame customers, politics, or resources. It's always your fault. Find a way to fix it.

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

#76

Post by secondfret »

I previously worked in print design, web design, content management, and photography. I’d been paid to write, design, take photos, develop, teach, edit, manage projects and people, launch publications, improve content quality, and grow audiences. I was a user of the website I now work for before I was an employee. I was hired to run content but I was interested in every part of the organization and found myself speaking up about design and product while being a fierce defender of the user’s perspective. Product management is my dream job that I never even knew existed. It allows me to leverage my seemingly total mess of random skills in a focused and productive way. It presses all the right buttons in my brain and I love the challenges it brings me every day.

Product managers should have the following skills: 1. A strong grasp of the industry they operate in on a macro and micro level. What has been done? What hasn’t? Where is the industry going? What do we need to do to keep up with the competition? What can we do that blows past what anyone else is doing? 2. The ability to speak as a user or potential user. Do you actually use the product? Can you put yourself in a place to experience the same struggles and frustrations and your users? Can you see the perspectives of those who are currently unwilling to adopt your product? Can you wrangle all of this into a product roadmap optimized for maximum impact? 3. The ability to speak the language and gain the respect of everyone on the project team. Can you speak from a place of authority to a group of designers and developers looking for leadership? Can you spot holes in the user flows presented by your designers, understand the technical hurdles that your developers are telling you stand in the way of success, and call out product copy that feels off brand all at once as requests and problems come at you from every angle? 4. Above all: the ability to make decisions when no one else can or will. Product management is about decision making. When everyone has opposing ideas, when the data is inconclusive and doesn’t give you the magical clear path forward you hoped for, when everyone looks to you for what to do next, can you lead the way? When there’s no clear answer, can you set up the framework and tests necessary to get to one? When your organization can’t make decisions, it can’t build a coherent strategy, it can’t make bets on the future, and it can’t solve big problems. Can you take on that responsibility?

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

#77

Post by halite »

pmcgrathm wrote: post #75

PM @ a well funded AI startup. Previously PM at Netflix. Management consultant prior. Undergraduate degree in Psychology. Background in marketing/business and customer acquisition. I learned enough programming to automate my marketing activities, and found that I liked driving a roadmap more than I liked acquiring customers. -Communication and conflict resolution skills are key. You are in a role where you must drive…

Were you at any organisations where they did 360° feedback? What kind of feedback did you receive from developers or designers from your team? What I'm trying to understand is how are organisations ensuring that PMs and team are not in disconnect from how things really are. I know that's a different realm but just trying to understand how did you find what to improve or learn to be a better PM?

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

#78

Post by AbenezerMamo »

PM @ Zoosk Labs (Zoosk's in-house incubator).

I am a 20 year old Product Manager. I started a software company at the age of 15 and went on to do more startups afterwards. I got pretty involved in software engineering. I never went to college and I don't have any formal experience. I enjoy Product Management because it's leadership without control. You're more of a diplomat than you are a dictator. Which is really humbling and rewarding!

I enjoy what I do but I still code and design :)

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

#80

Post by guelo »

PM is a really awful position, these slick guys come in and take all the credit for the work of the engineering and design teams. It's demoralizing. A better setup I've seen is having no PMs, engineering and design team members stay on top of analytics, user feedback, market trends, business concerns, etc. Everybody provides product and process feedback at monthly meetings. It's way more empowering and agile. We don't need PMs!
Post reply on HN