101–110 of 133 posts
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Founders of big tech companies deal with politics on a level you can’t imagine.
Asin actual, literal politics. As in, appearing before Congress to convince them why what's good for your company is good for America. And/or sending campaign contributions their way to help with the convincing. But there's a lot of fun to be had between now and then.
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I’ve always understood that one of the most important pieces of the PM role is to act as a sort of negotiator between design/development and all other stakeholders. Customers and everybody else in the business all want their own things, and all have their own priorities. The good PMs that I’ve known have kept those people happy, managed their expectations well, and mostly shielded design/development from their demand…
35 is a good age as it increases the likelihood that the PM will have parenting experience which provides the benefit of improving expectation mgmt, negotiation, and communication skills to a non-technical audience.
Suggest looking at the rpm program at Facebook or APM (I think this is the name at google) which is for people interested in learning product management but without PM experience.
Eng is a common transfer to PM and many of your skills will carry over. I (personally) think age will hurt you but rather help because you have experience and have seen a bunch of failures which you can learn to avoid (this goes well during interviews). Suggest looking at the rpm program at Facebook or APM (I think this is the name at google) which is for people interested in learning product management but without P…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve always understood that one of the most important pieces of the PM role is to act as a sort of negotiator between design/development and all other stakeholders. Customers and everybody else in the business all want their own things, and all have their own priorities. The good PMs that I’ve known have kept those people happy, managed their expectations well, and mostly shielded design/development from their demand…
35 is a good age as it increases the likelihood that the PM will have parenting experience which provides the benefit of improving expectation mgmt, negotiation, and communication skills to a non-technical audience.
There are many different types of PMs. Some companies want a more technical PM. Maybe a company selling a technical product to a technical audience would find your engineering experience extremely valuable.
My default career advice to everyone is to figure out where your experience is rare. If other PMs have 5-10 years of experience as a PM, you’re the rare gal or guy with years of actual coding and experience. That group will have a ton of depth to help on your PM gaps. But you’ll be the only one who can do what you do.
I feel many comments here are confusing "Product" Management with "Project" Management. Many describing being a "people person" which isn't (in my eyes) a needed trait for a product manager, but is for a project manager. There are obviously social aspects of being a product manager, but much of it has to do with relaying what's in your head moreso than trying to manage people day-to-day. To me, what matters for the O…
I do think Product management is more people facing than project management. You can't really build a product without talking with the customer or talking to other departments especially sales/marketing/customer service. They know what the users want, what the bounce rate is, what metrics the company is lagging at.
A friend of mine works at a large enterprise company on a multimillion dollar software project. Their dev team has never spoken to a customer or product manager (there is a PM team, they've just never spoken with the devs). It also takes them a long time to ship software. It's very odd.
It makes me sad to hear people thinking they are too old for something at 35. Unless you make it big financially there is a good chance you will have another 30 years ahead of you. That means you are just at the first third of your career. Do what you think you want to do. I thought about getting an MBA or PhD at that age and thought I was too old. Now I am 51 and thinking how easy and useful it would have been to do…
Surely your age will assist you here (I’m 35 too). Unlike software development which is typically a “young mans game” due to the constant need to learn the latest thing (I know, sweeping generalisation), Product Management requires significant past experience of products. As a developer, I’m sure you’ve worked on many successful and non-successful products, and have a good insight as to what went well and not. I thin…
My $0.02, having been a PM for many years: Read Cracking the PM Interview [1] (for an overview of the job, not the actual interview tips) and The Lean Startup [2] (for general philosophy). 35 is a great age for a PM, especially since PM's often start elsewhere -- maturity is a plus here. I'd say there are 3 main ways into it -- as an engineer, who starts to do PM-type stuff on a team where there's no PM. As a designe…
- Decode & Conquer
- Inspired (Marty Cagan)
- Radical Focus (about OKRs)