7 ms·

Reflecting on a career in product management

84 points by sgpl 5y ago

polote 5y ago
Even if that kind of article is interesting to read, I like the science vs art part (even if I believe the art part can't be learned). There is not much one care learn about the post. Experience is difficult to learn by another way than experiencing it. I would add the list, that the biggest thing that people never understand in product management. Is that working on a B2B SMB/ B2C product vs a B2B Enterprise product needs a totally different mindset
- somewhereoutth 5y ago
  Indeed. BTC/SMB is about creating a complete product to serve many customers in the marketplace and take advantage of economies of scale. Marketing is key. B2E is about working with perhaps just a few clients to develop bespoke solutions (that may have a product element) targeting their specific business needs. Relationship building is key.
  - realityking 5y ago
    Where do you see solutions like Twillio and Cloudflare in this? They have a complete solution taking advantage of scale but make most of their money in Enterprise deals?
    - polote 5y ago
      Cloudflare and Twillio are special, they are dev tools. Classical business rules dont apply to them
    - dexterous 5y ago
      B2C markets with long-tails.
- doctor_eval 5y ago
  I don’t necessarily disagree with you re B2B vs B2C but I think we should question it. There is nothing fundamentally different between apps for these audiences. So why do they require different mindsets?
  - danjac 5y ago
    B2C - you have to design an app that appeals to people who will buy and use it. B2B - you have to design an app that appeals to people who will buy it and force other people to use it.
    - kbos87 5y ago
      This is still true in pockets but in some spaces it’s falling out of favor. Companies and leaders know that they need to worry about adoption, so there’s slow but increasing focus on end user UX and incorporating these folks into the buying process.
      - doctor_eval 5y ago
        Yes, this has been my experience too. The buyers of enterprise software today have been raised on B2C software and are starting to expect the same level of usability, comprehensibility and friendliness. It is not a case of form over function, so much as it is that form and function are interdependent. I’ve worked as a senior manager for a couple of enterprise app developers, and if I was to do it again, a great UI would be a prerequisite. On the other hand, many large enterprises are still beholden to consulting companies which tend to be checklist driven.
  - siva7 5y ago
    The audiences are fundamentally different and that is your job in product management, aligning those interests
  - polote 5y ago
    I didnt say B2C vs B2B. I said B2C or B2B SMB vs B2B Enterprise In B2C or B2B SMB the goal of the company is to deliver the best product for doing some use case In B2B Enterprise the goal of the company is to deliver a vision to customers, the product doesn't come first and should be more 'complete' than 'good'
- daniealapt 5y ago
  You can learn the art. You can learn and reflect. For learning, read. “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie, or “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek come to mind. They will grow your communication, vision setting and influencing skills. Skills which are part of the “art” of product management. And every day provides an opportunity to reflect and learn from the day’s events.
  - luckydata 5y ago
    Sinek is a fraud. There's nothing useful to be learned from that book that you can't get from common sense.
    - ta988 5y ago
      You would be surprised as to how sparsely distributed what one thinks as "common sense" can be.
n8cpdx 5y ago
It seems like there’s been a rush to the science mindset and the art part has been ignored by many in industry for the last 5-10 years. I remember wanting to be a PM, but experience with the MBA-ification of the field has embittered me. Seeing products (like Xamarin.Forms) systematically destroyed by focus on shallow metrics has been really sad. I remember being excited for that product to get a PM. Then the product just kept getting worse and kept stagnating. Developer interest has dropped precipitously and they haven’t managed to stay competitive with React Native or Flutter, despite having Microsoft’s resources. All the time I give feedback on Visual Studio. I am a loyal customer, but I can only get “We’re closing this issue because we only prioritize problems with a broad customer impact, and you haven’t gotten enough upvotes” so many times. I’m sick of it. I don’t think I’ve met a PM in the last 5 years that hasn’t made my impression of the company they work for far worse. And it comes down to focusing on business metrics and ignoring the two other sides: customer experience and interaction, and interactions with internal developer partners. I don’t know why companies are only hiring and cultivating MBA-style, metrics-oriented, value-blind PMs, but the abandonment of art has made the industry worse for everyone involved.
- thenerdhead 5y ago
  Yep. It's a very logical, data-driven mindset that is only concerned about "pushing the needle closer" rather than providing actual value. Many of the mechanisms of how those teams operate are flawed. You may have filed the same issue that was closed previously because of low upvotes, but now there are multiple reports of it! It's almost an anti-pattern of being data-driven. Most companies know that business metrics follow great products when teams have full autonomy, competence, and relatedness. (i.e. VS Code, JetBrains Suite, etc). Sadly in the process they end up killing those very things that made them successful when reaching certain scale. The PM discipline is getting more definition in the industry, but to your point, hardly anybody practices the art. The art to me is being "data inspired", not driven or informed. It's hard for PMs in big tech to do that nowadays unless it part of the culture from the top-down or taught/mentored from the bottom-up.
  - dexterous 5y ago
    The COO at my last job kept touting the aphorism "Data Trumps Opinion" to the point where he had T-shirts made with that (facepalm!) I'm just glad those just sat on his table and never made it onto anyone's back.
thenerdhead 5y ago
This is really good advice. Technical PM in big tech here. Going to chime in with some thoughts as I made that same transition after 5 years in engineering. And been doing it for the last 5 or so years. Given that PM has two definitions: Product manager - what & why Program manager - when, who, how Some companies simply get these two disciplines mixed up or a single PM handles both(hard job). Some PMs act more like engineering managers & other PMs act more like MBAs. The number one way to grow as a PM? Read and embed yourself with your users & product. Learn from other accomplished individuals, find mentors on what works and try new things for yourself. It's amazing to me of how many complements you may get about some strategy or tactic we used as a product team successfully that just came from a book & applied to our space. Lenny's newsletter is great too, but even books about successful / failed products are just as helpful. > Don’t let gaps form between you and your customers and between you and the builders This is commonly an Ivory Tower problem in which teams don't do any customer research or get out of the building to talk to people they're building for. It's hard to blame them when they've never done it before to be successful nor have a PM who understands the value of embedding themselves in the product they're managing. > People matter most My personal motto for any new product or effort is to "work the people, then the problem". It doesn't matter if there's deadlines if nobody is talking to each other or learning from the very people you're building the product for. Once everyone is rowing in the same direction & agree on a common vision, it's smooth to execute upon it. > Write your resume in ten years. My ten year plan when I first started in software was to become a DBA(wrote it in 2010). And that DBA dream was more close to modern data science today. The data science side of PM work is an absolute joy and fun. It's exactly what I wanted when I wrote that 10 years ago. Oh how things have changed. Now that I'm a more senior PM, that 10 year plan has shifted to be a director and/or running my own successful product with all the skills learned over my career. > The “art” of product management matters more than the “science” over the long term. The art is the right brain(creativity), the science is the left brain(logic). I personally like to see this as emotions vs. facts. How you feel about something is much different than the reality of it. The art of being a good PM is by invoking emotions. How engineering feels about the backlog priority? How do users feel about an upcoming feature/change? How do leadership feel when you present your next year plans? There's a reason why many popular PM books are called "Inspired" or "Empowered". It's because of the emotion being invoked when your team is firing on all cylinders and your users are happy with your product decisions.

84 points by sgpl 5y ago

Even if that kind of article is interesting to read, I like the science vs art part (even if I believe the art part can't be learned). There is not much one care learn about the post. Experience is difficult to learn by another way than experiencing it. I would add the list, that the biggest thing that people never understand in product management. Is that working on a B2B SMB/ B2C product vs a B2B Enterprise product needs a totally different mindset

somewhereoutth 5y ago
Indeed. BTC/SMB is about creating a complete product to serve many customers in the marketplace and take advantage of economies of scale. Marketing is key. B2E is about working with perhaps just a few clients to develop bespoke solutions (that may have a product element) targeting their specific business needs. Relationship building is key.
- realityking 5y ago
  Where do you see solutions like Twillio and Cloudflare in this? They have a complete solution taking advantage of scale but make most of their money in Enterprise deals?
  - polote 5y ago
    Cloudflare and Twillio are special, they are dev tools. Classical business rules dont apply to them
  - dexterous 5y ago
    B2C markets with long-tails.
doctor_eval 5y ago
I don’t necessarily disagree with you re B2B vs B2C but I think we should question it. There is nothing fundamentally different between apps for these audiences. So why do they require different mindsets?
- danjac 5y ago
  B2C - you have to design an app that appeals to people who will buy and use it. B2B - you have to design an app that appeals to people who will buy it and force other people to use it.
  - kbos87 5y ago
    This is still true in pockets but in some spaces it’s falling out of favor. Companies and leaders know that they need to worry about adoption, so there’s slow but increasing focus on end user UX and incorporating these folks into the buying process.
    - doctor_eval 5y ago
      Yes, this has been my experience too. The buyers of enterprise software today have been raised on B2C software and are starting to expect the same level of usability, comprehensibility and friendliness. It is not a case of form over function, so much as it is that form and function are interdependent. I’ve worked as a senior manager for a couple of enterprise app developers, and if I was to do it again, a great UI would be a prerequisite. On the other hand, many large enterprises are still beholden to consulting companies which tend to be checklist driven.
- siva7 5y ago
  The audiences are fundamentally different and that is your job in product management, aligning those interests
- polote 5y ago
  I didnt say B2C vs B2B. I said B2C or B2B SMB vs B2B Enterprise In B2C or B2B SMB the goal of the company is to deliver the best product for doing some use case In B2B Enterprise the goal of the company is to deliver a vision to customers, the product doesn't come first and should be more 'complete' than 'good'
daniealapt 5y ago
You can learn the art. You can learn and reflect. For learning, read. “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie, or “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek come to mind. They will grow your communication, vision setting and influencing skills. Skills which are part of the “art” of product management. And every day provides an opportunity to reflect and learn from the day’s events.
- luckydata 5y ago
  Sinek is a fraud. There's nothing useful to be learned from that book that you can't get from common sense.
  - ta988 5y ago
    You would be surprised as to how sparsely distributed what one thinks as "common sense" can be.

n8cpdx 5y ago

It seems like there’s been a rush to the science mindset and the art part has been ignored by many in industry for the last 5-10 years. I remember wanting to be a PM, but experience with the MBA-ification of the field has embittered me. Seeing products (like Xamarin.Forms) systematically destroyed by focus on shallow metrics has been really sad. I remember being excited for that product to get a PM. Then the product just kept getting worse and kept stagnating. Developer interest has dropped precipitously and they haven’t managed to stay competitive with React Native or Flutter, despite having Microsoft’s resources. All the time I give feedback on Visual Studio. I am a loyal customer, but I can only get “We’re closing this issue because we only prioritize problems with a broad customer impact, and you haven’t gotten enough upvotes” so many times. I’m sick of it. I don’t think I’ve met a PM in the last 5 years that hasn’t made my impression of the company they work for far worse. And it comes down to focusing on business metrics and ignoring the two other sides: customer experience and interaction, and interactions with internal developer partners. I don’t know why companies are only hiring and cultivating MBA-style, metrics-oriented, value-blind PMs, but the abandonment of art has made the industry worse for everyone involved.

thenerdhead 5y ago
Yep. It's a very logical, data-driven mindset that is only concerned about "pushing the needle closer" rather than providing actual value. Many of the mechanisms of how those teams operate are flawed. You may have filed the same issue that was closed previously because of low upvotes, but now there are multiple reports of it! It's almost an anti-pattern of being data-driven. Most companies know that business metrics follow great products when teams have full autonomy, competence, and relatedness. (i.e. VS Code, JetBrains Suite, etc). Sadly in the process they end up killing those very things that made them successful when reaching certain scale. The PM discipline is getting more definition in the industry, but to your point, hardly anybody practices the art. The art to me is being "data inspired", not driven or informed. It's hard for PMs in big tech to do that nowadays unless it part of the culture from the top-down or taught/mentored from the bottom-up.
- dexterous 5y ago
  The COO at my last job kept touting the aphorism "Data Trumps Opinion" to the point where he had T-shirts made with that (facepalm!) I'm just glad those just sat on his table and never made it onto anyone's back.

thenerdhead 5y ago

This is really good advice. Technical PM in big tech here. Going to chime in with some thoughts as I made that same transition after 5 years in engineering. And been doing it for the last 5 or so years. Given that PM has two definitions: Product manager - what & why Program manager - when, who, how Some companies simply get these two disciplines mixed up or a single PM handles both(hard job). Some PMs act more like engineering managers & other PMs act more like MBAs. The number one way to grow as a PM? Read and embed yourself with your users & product. Learn from other accomplished individuals, find mentors on what works and try new things for yourself. It's amazing to me of how many complements you may get about some strategy or tactic we used as a product team successfully that just came from a book & applied to our space. Lenny's newsletter is great too, but even books about successful / failed products are just as helpful. > Don’t let gaps form between you and your customers and between you and the builders This is commonly an Ivory Tower problem in which teams don't do any customer research or get out of the building to talk to people they're building for. It's hard to blame them when they've never done it before to be successful nor have a PM who understands the value of embedding themselves in the product they're managing. > People matter most My personal motto for any new product or effort is to "work the people, then the problem". It doesn't matter if there's deadlines if nobody is talking to each other or learning from the very people you're building the product for. Once everyone is rowing in the same direction & agree on a common vision, it's smooth to execute upon it. > Write your resume in ten years. My ten year plan when I first started in software was to become a DBA(wrote it in 2010). And that DBA dream was more close to modern data science today. The data science side of PM work is an absolute joy and fun. It's exactly what I wanted when I wrote that 10 years ago. Oh how things have changed. Now that I'm a more senior PM, that 10 year plan has shifted to be a director and/or running my own successful product with all the skills learned over my career. > The “art” of product management matters more than the “science” over the long term. The art is the right brain(creativity), the science is the left brain(logic). I personally like to see this as emotions vs. facts. How you feel about something is much different than the reality of it. The art of being a good PM is by invoking emotions. How engineering feels about the backlog priority? How do users feel about an upcoming feature/change? How do leadership feel when you present your next year plans? There's a reason why many popular PM books are called "Inspired" or "Empowered". It's because of the emotion being invoked when your team is firing on all cylinders and your users are happy with your product decisions.