So you want to be a Product Manager?
Product Management seems to be the new buzzword. Though it has been in existence for slightly more than a decade now; it has suddenly begun to garner a lot of noise.
I receive half a dozen messages on LinkedIn every month from young rhapsodic undergrads who desperately want to break into a product role. As my love for these budding PMs is unending; I always try my best to get connected with them.
Over the time, I have realized that most of their queries are repetitive and hence I thought to write a blog answering the usual recurrent questions. These queries are not just limited to undergrads but to anyone who wants to break into a product role!
I customarily ask young PM aspirants — Why do you want to be a product manager?
More often than not, I have discovered that they talk about that classic Venn diagram where a PM sits at the intersection of technology, customer and business and recklessly envisage that PMs are superman (oh! mini CEO) who have absolute control over vision, strategy, marketing, design, and overall execution of the product and most of their days they are managing and directing people and building revolutionary products.
This image of a product manager can sound strikingly marvellous and astonishing for anyone and even more alluring for an undergrad seeking a meaningful career but I wished it really happened so!
- PMs don’t owe and nor do they have absolute control over mission, strategy, design etc rather PMs drive vision, strategy, design and execution. I always remind these aspiring PMs that as APMs early on in their career; they will be responsible for meticulous execution while driving the vision and strategy set up by the leadership (CXOs, boards etc) team.
- PMs don’t build revolutionary brand new products from scratch every day and if this excites you, trust me, be an entrepreneur. I have observed that most startups achieve product-market fit (i.e. their product is somewhat stable & a lot of people are using the product) when they hire their first PM. Founders are the first product manager of a startup. As a PM, most of the time you will be working on incremental improvement of a small feature, a set of feature or building a new feature from scratch.
- Historically, I find we are obsessed with the bliss of managing people and young undergrads are no different. Alas! No one reports to PMs until you are a senior product manager or a product lead. This explicitly breaks the heart of many budding PMs.
Enough realisations!
I am listing the top five queries of an aspiring PM.
Should I know to code to be a PM?
I find this question tricky. Kunal Shah, the founder of CRED, states only one criteria he looks to hire PMs — ‘Anyone who knows to capture the applause of an audience is a great PM’. And so Cred has hired numerous PMs who have a background in performance art.
Sadly, the buck does not stop with Kunal Shah’s hypothesis. Organisations have varied preferences while hiring a PM. An organisation product culture can be either design, data or tech dominant. It’s imperative to identify your strength and figure out a company’s product culture while applying for a role.
I personally have a strong belief that a PM should have an understanding of how code and technology works. I repeat — an understanding of how code and technology works and not the arduous ability to code.
A PM should have an understanding of system like —
- What is an API? How does API works?
- What is cloud? How servers work?
- How large scale system that caters to millions of users works? (System design)? What is load balancing? What is horizontal & vertical scaling?
- HTML, CSS & Javascript
- Familiarity with tools like Google analytics, Postman & Google developer tools.
- RDBMS & No SQL databases
Analytical rigour is an important prerequisite of a PM. Data is PMs all-weather friend hence a sound knowledge of SQL (and concepts like cross queries & nested queries) and spreadsheet tools like Google sheet or MS Excel is a must.
I strongly recommend budding PMs to practice SQL on https://sqlzoo.net/ and rely less on the belief of triumphing SQL by scanning https://www.w3schools.com/
What does a product manager do?
A product manager role varies depending on the organisation in which a PM is, the structure of the organization or the phase in which the product currently is.
There are different types of product managers like Growth PM (responsible for growth), Technical PM (similar to Engineering Manager), AI product manager etc. The roles & responsibilities of a product manager also varies from B2B to B2C companies.
To sum up,
- A PM understands customer needs and identifies pain points and works to solve them.
- A PM decides which customer needs/pain points needs to be solved now and which need to be solved later. (Prioritisation)
- A PM decides how to solve a particular customer needs/pain-points and makes a copy (detailed documentation) on what & how different stakeholders will work.
- A PM aligns different stakeholders (like sales, operation, design, tech etc.) together and works to ship a feature/product successfully.
A great PM is obsessed to solve customer pain points and delight them with a product that is easy to use, and makes a considerable impact in their lives.
How should I start preparing for PM interviews?
I believe preparing for an interview is a usual process of awareness, drills and guidance. Though there isn’t a defined path; start is important. Most people would discover their own style and path once they get started!
- Awareness : The best you can do for a start is to purchase this amazing book: Decode & Conquer. Read this book not just once but twice to understand what a typical PM role & interview looks like!
- Drill : As one wise man said, “Every practice is a learning experience.” Product Management exercise is a pretty good website to practice PM interview questions and develop the right product mindset.
Remember! Nothing is as relevant as a real product building experience. Do an internship or build a project that solves real-life customer problem. You can find cool product internships on Internshala.
- Guidance : Connect with product managers, attend product meetups, follow product leaders like Sachin Rekhi, Madhur Chadha, Diwakar Kaushik, Tom Conard on Twitter. (Once you follow a few; you will quickly figure out others.)
What skill-set should I possess to be a PM? Can you suggest me some resources/books?
There are four core skills that a product manager should possess:-
- Sense of design (UI/UX)
- Technical & analytical skills
- Soft skills
- Ability to understand customer need
I have already discussed the technical & analytical skills above. PMs should have design sense and though this mostly comes through designing products; I recommend them UI/UX design free course on Coursera to get started with UI/UX principles, information architecture and wire-framing.
Ability to understand customer needs and soft skills are specific and can only be developed while building products in real-time scenario. I believe that these skills should be left to be developed over time.
I strongly recommend budding PMs to read and write a lot as a product manager should be a thought leader. Since I am old-schooled; I love reading books but I normally recommend bare minimum. (If you can’t read books; see their summary on YouTube and make notes. Note!)
Design
Analytics
Process
Psychology
Is MBA mandatory to be a PM? Can I be a PM if I am not from a premier college?
Do you mean something like this?
Many companies do have preferences like an MBA or a degree from a premier institution but again there are many more companies having no specific preferences. Don’t be worried about things which are beyond your control.
Product industry is full of marvellous examples where people from operations, technology, marketing, psychology have transitioned into product role and achieved stunning feet.
Remember: Product Managers are also a product. As an aspiring PM, make your digital presence. Read, write & talk a lot. And yeah: do ask questions, no matter how silly they are.
