We aren't all the same product managers.
We share the same title, but that doesn't translate into the same experiences, roles, and responsibilities. How to solicit one piece of advice when talking to other product managers?
This past week, I gave a talk to graduate students at Cornell University considering a career as a product manager. While some had prior work experience as PMs or SWEs, others knew very little. Like many such talks, during Q&A, I’m asked to give advice. What advice would you give to aspiring or new product managers?
This is actually an incredibly hard question to answer. It’s not that I don’t have an answer, but I never feel an answer is appropriate.
I would bet if you asked two PMs with the same years of working experience, in the same industry, working on similar products, you’ll receive very different answers to this question. Why is that and how should PMs make sense of all the advice and content out there?
“What’s a backlog?”
Once, during an interview, a product manager ask me what I meant when I said “backlog”. Instantly, I was stunned. This interviewer was an experienced PM. Was it a trick question? No. She had never worked on prioritizing a backlog.
My point in telling this story is to illustrate that most product managers learn product management like I did: on the job. In her role as a product manager, she wasn’t responsible for prioritizing the backlog. Furthermore, at her company, that’s not what product managers did. Thus, why would she know about it?
Formal Education
I did a quick search of the University of Texas (UT) @ Dallas’ course catalog. UT is one of the largest public university systems. If you search for product management, for undergraduates, you’ll find the following course, part of marketing.
You’ll have to look in the graduate course catalog for more applicable coursework.
And this isn’t unique to UT. This educational gap is why there are many certificate programs (e.g., Berkeley, Cornell, Stanford, and MIT) and online programs (e.g., Product School, General Assembly, Product Gym, Reforge), and associations programs (e.g., Mind the Product, Scrum Alliance). It’s partly why I started this Substack.
But more importantly, this means for most new PMs, what you learn about product management is highly dependent upon your first product management job. The processes, techniques, tooling, and thinking you learn are your foundation. Whether your foundation is shaky or solid, you don’t always know.
How to seek advice from another PM to improve your foundation?
As you start the journey of your product management career, there are a lot of areas you’ll want to develop. You’re probably overwhelmed with what you need to learn. You could just dive right in. But for people who want a little sneak peek, I’d offer you a sudo-PM course catalog created by Ravi Mehta.
Ravi categorizes the learning areas into manageable chunks, framing learning areas. Now, you can go read what Ravi writes about each area and that’s valuable knowledge. But it’s probably still too much information, partly incomprehensible and not actionable. It’s like asking you to read the description of all the courses you’re required to take to obtain a degree. Sure, you can read it, but it doesn’t mean you’ll know exactly what the more advice course topics will cover or mean.
Instead, I recommend picking three problem areas you’re facing today on the job. Try to put them into the above category that Ravi created. See if you’re overly indexing in one area/color. Spend your time finding content and expertise in that area to solve your problem. This means seeking out PMs with expertise or experience in your learning category. Now, instead of asking for general advice, you can dig further, and seek specific guidance on the problem you are working to solve. Best still, seek advice from three different PMs who have some expertise or working experience in your learning area. Not only will you receive some different information, but it’ll help you triangulate the best answer when you also compare it with public content.
Are you a PM working on metrics? I’m seeking to talk to product managers who are working on defining actional metrics and guard metrics. If you’re working in this area, drop a comment or send me a note.
Additional Reading