What is product management?! Part 1

1. When did you decide you wanted to be a PM, and what specific things led you to that decision? Tell us your story. :)

I never really “decided” I wanted to be a PM. I dropped out of engineering school to work on a startup with some of my friends. I realized that there was something we hadn’t figured out about making a good product. Before I went back to school, I did an internship at Microsoft in PM. During the internship I got to figure out how we should do closed captioning for videos in PowerPoint. I loved it. It also turned out the role I tended to play in group projects was actually very similar to PM.

2. What does your day-to-day look like?

It varies a little bit day to day, but overall, it’s about 50–50 between people and working. I’m most productive in the morning so I try to leave that time open to work, and put meetings in the afternoon. During that time I do “product” work — the biggest chunk is figuring out the next set of priorities, but I also spec features and do a little project management. With people, I prefer to meet 1–1 or in a small group. I need to meet with most of the company on a regular basis — my reports, my boss, my peers, and others throughout the company.

3. What’s a specific challenge you’ve had in PM and how did you overcome it?

I think one of the hardest things about PM is that you aren’t the one creating an artifact. Plus, when you do your job well it means it looks easy to everyone around you. Those two things together can make you get in your own head — “what value am I really adding?” “do I need to be here?” “am I just a bad engineer/designer/marketer?” — and you need to learn to accept that not all important work has a tangible piece of output.

4. What is consistent in PM with every company you have worked for? What’s different?

I think more is consistent than different about the PM job. At the end of the day you’re focusing on (1) what to build and (2) getting it shipped. That means that a big part of the job is listening to the team, and then helping the team understand and believe in what you’re doing.

The differences tend to be smaller. You won’t use the same tools everywhere. You also won’t present ideas in in the same way — some teams like to hear a story leading to an answer — and some teams work better hearing the answer and then justification.

5. What does a senior PM do that a junior one might not?

It’s nearly always about scope.

When you first start out, you’ll have a more confined product area. As you become more senior, you’ll have a larger space and take on more complicated initiatives. Sometimes that’s a core product area and sometimes it’s an initiative — internationalization, payments, etc.

6. What things have you done in your career as a PM that has really helped you level up?

Writing. Being able to clearly express an idea is key for a PM, and writing can help build that muscle.

Writing also helps trigger reflection to figure out “why did that work?” “why did that fail?” which is a great way to learn.

7. How might a PM role at a startup be different from a PM role at a large company?

At a smaller company, PM is often a bucket of “some of everything” — any role the company hasn’t hired for yet can end up falling to Product.

In a large company, PM is a specific role. There’s a list of what the PM does and doesn’t do, and there are tightly defined boundaries between design, research, product, engineering, and business functions.

8. Who do you collaborate with most on a daily basis? What usually brings about successful collaboration?

Depends on the day! I think the most successful collaboration always comes from mutual respect and understanding the strengths and perspective each person brings to the table. The obvious one is design and engineering. Sometimes I’m working in tandem with either/both of those groups to get something out the door quickly. Same thing with marketing/sales — the product should make it easier for both of those groups to do their jobs. That said, I’ve collaborated with every role in our company at some point.

9. What words of wisdom might you give yourself 5 years ago? And what advice would you give to people just starting out in PM?

To people starting out, remember that it’s about shipping something good — not just shipping something. You don’t want to hurry through the details. It’s worth taking an extra few minutes to re-read the email before hitting send, or to make sure everything is covered in the spec.

Another good one to do is keep a folder in your email called “praise” — there are going to be good days, and there are going to be bad days. When something good happens (and especially when someone compliments your work) dump it in the praise folder. On the bad days, read through the emails in the folder.

10. How did you find your current job, and what was the job-hunting process like for you?

That’s a long story. The short version is that I started out at what was then Blade, a consumer tech incubator, as an EIR intern (after my first year at Harvard Business School). The project I had turned into Lola, which is the company I’m at now. As the team and company have grown, my role evolved into what it is now (VP Product).

11. What major were you in college; how has that helped or not helped?

I majored in Electrical & Computer Engineering. I think that it really helped me to be in a project based engineering school. I think it also helped me to understand how hard it can be to get things to work, and that results matter a lot. Sure, the process matters — but if your perfect process doesn’t yield results, it’s not perfect. That said, I don’t use too much of my background in circuits or signal processing on a day to day basis.

12. What skillsets do you think you are gaining and in what other positions or industries might they apply?

I don’t think of tech as an “industry” — I think of tech as a competency and layer that will end up being part of every industry. That’s part of why I love New York — you get tech + art, tech + food, tech + craft, tech + health, etc.

In terms of other positions, I don’t know many people who leave product. If they do, it’s often to be a CEO or a founder. Sometimes people do go back to engineering or design, but that happens more often when they realize they don’t like product. If you’re torn between product and something like engineering, I’d suggest doing engineering first.

13. Anything else you would like people to know about PM?

Getting into PM is just step one. There’s a whole lot after that.

Other Resources:

Blog — read more by Ellen!

Ellen’s Skillshare class — great way to learn how to get into product with side projects! (first 5 people get free access)

Interviewing tips — Ellen talks about “Interviewing for the Job” in the podcast “This is Product Management”