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

Director, Product at 500 person profitable non-startup company.

I got my BS in Cognitive Science and HCI. I initially worked at Cisco setting up a beta testing program for Linksys consumer products. I transitioned from there into UX design and moved to DIRECTV to do it full time. I quickly realized there that design was an idea factory to see what sticked with upper management, not necessarily users. Product management would be the happy medium where I could design a nice experience while also satisfying business & technical needs. I pursued my MBA and created my own PM internship at a Series A startup during the summer between my 2 years. I got more into entrepreneurship and declined some seed funding to go with a Head of Product position following B School. It was a flop within a couple months due to relationship issues with a hot headed boss. I then took an Associate Product Manager position and pushed back into doing my own startup. That failed so I got back into PM, promoted to Director within a year and hear I am.

A PM needs many skills but certain ones will get you in the door: 1. Analytics: Since you haven't developed a gut yet for the industry, you need to understand data & numbers. Metrics, visualizations, statistics, etc. This is especially important if you want to own P&L, get in front of management, etc.

2. Design intuition: What can be honed prior to getting into PM is knowing good design from bad design. Learn how to make critiques but also know what would work better than the current iteration.

3. Productivity & Organization: Project management is just a small piece of what's necessary. You need to have everything figured out, organized, and be able to answer questions of what's a priority, what's done, etc.

4. Hold your own: You need conviction and backbone to push new ideas and initiatives into an organization. You'll need to be armed with justification but also have confidence that it is in the user's best interest.

Best of luck!

What makes a good product is a great question for Product Managers to be obsessed about.

>-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.

Man, I would love to work for someone that actually strives to do this. Awesome.

I actually did find a place with junior product manager positions. I was working in QA and impressed some of the product managers, so they asked if I wanted to transfer to their department as an assistant product manager. I made the transfer and over the next 2 years I helped out on basically all the different parts of a product lifecycle, but was never the actual PM of any particular thing.

Last year they started giving me smaller, low profile products of my own to manage, and at this point I'm full into it.

I'm not the only one, either. One girl started at age 23 as an administrative assistant and after proving herself capable they kept giving her more stuff until now she's a full blown product manager at age 29. We actually do this pretty often because our current management takes the stance that it's easier to train smart people into the job over the course of a couple years than it is to find good people with relevant experience who are willing to relocate here (I'm in Shenzhen).

What is the pretty surprising article have that will surprise all of us?