Why I went to Product School?

I moved from the Bay area to Manhattan after having worked for almost ten years in Software and Hardware industry in varied roles and industry verticals: Engineering, Product Management, Project Management, Test automation, Customer Support and as an Entrepreneur. Yes, I also co-founded my company, Saffron Gully. Our mission was to provide fresh, home-style Indian lunch to companies in the bay area. We were a food tech company and were competing with big fish in the pond, EatClub. Unfortunately, we had to shut it down (that is a story for another post).

After I settled in Manhattan, I got the time to think about what I want from my career moving forward. Should I continue as a Software engineer? Should I hone my programming skills in the time that I have? Where will this career lead me? Can I ever lead an engineering team in a company? As soon as I asked myself the last question, I knew the response was a big no. I knew my interest in coding was limited. In my previous company, after my second maternity leave, my manager and I started working towards moving me in the management stack. I knew my interests lied there. But I had to give direction to this vision. I started networking. I spoke to a dozen of Product managers on how I should pivot into Product Management. The common buzzword that came out of the discussion was a PM certification. That is when I looked at Product school and General Assembly. I was clear, the instructor portfolio will decide the course of action.

And that is how I joined Chris Maliwat at Product School. Chris comes with years of experience in Product Management, coupled with the structure that Product school gives to the course, I learned a lot from it. My cohort was a good mix of engineers, Project managers, product managers and people from marketing and customer support. It was a very interactive class and we learned a lot from each other and each other’s assignments.

Product school (www.productschool.com) has a curriculum. The course touched upon many topics right from user persona, interviews, design, A/B testing, metrics, marketing, and the entire product development life cycle. You have to choose a product that you like and work on providing an opportunity hypothesis and launch that idea to market. All of this is done in 8 weeks with the help of the instructor and the lesson notes. Everyone chooses different products (mostly). Some are B2B, some are B2C, some are SaaS and some were PaaS products. At the end of the seventh week, we all presented our product-> idea-> Go-to-market strategy.

I liked every bit of the class and the assignments. But the question mostly asked that did it help you find jobs? I would say it helps you build your network and learn a few product management fundamentals. I am in the process of looking out for jobs now.

I will list out the pros and cons of the course now.

Pros:

• A good outline of the 8-week course.
• Great instructors.
• Extremely active slack community.
• Free networking events and webinars by reputed and established Product Managers.
• Cheaper compared to General Assembly.
• ProductCon is a great conference to meet and network.

Cons:

• Less focus on product management interview preparation. I wish they had a couple more weeks to cover more on this.

Overall a great learning experience. I recommend to someone pivoting from another industry into product management and looking to network.