4 Big Questions from my first Product Management journey

Tan Hui Min Grace
Nov 3 · 5 min read
From the desk of a (new-to) PM intern

This past summer, I spent an amazing 16 weeks interning in the Product team at Ninja Van. It being my first encounter with product management, I was always buzzing with thoughts which I shared with my mentor during our bi-weekly O3s.

Upon hearing my musings on the life of a product manager for the umpteenth time, she remarked, “You should really write all these questions down — you could even write an article about them!”

Not a bad idea,” I thought. And so four months on, this is that article.


How does such a wonderful job exist?

I remember first stumbling onto the term “Product Manager” in an article way back in January this year, and being convinced that I’d found the best job in the world.

There were a ton of articles describing the glamorous side of Product Management — waxing lyrical about how it was an up and rising field, how Product Managers were mini CEOs, and more. As someone with diverse interests (ranging from marketing to user research to prototyping), the idea of such a field was highly appealing.

I get to be involved in many business functions? Have no two of my work days be the same? Even try my hand at “management”? Sign me up!

That was pretty much my mentality at the start of my internship. During my very first week of work though, my mentor quickly dropped the bomb on me.

“You know how you have all these different gears in a mechanical system? Yeah, those are the different departments in Ninja. We’re the oil that runs between the gears to make sure everything runs smoothly.”

I was shocked at how insignificant the role sounded. Was it possible I had been mistaken about product management?

True to form, it wasn’t long after that I received a reality check.


How does all this work — why do I feel like I’m doing so much but so little?

Diving right into my first few weeks of work, I constantly found myself going back to this same question. Every day was a flurry of activity, with fires to put out, old tasks to follow up on, and new tasks that invariably required urgent attention.

How I attempted to preserve some semblance of order at the start of my hectic intern life

That was when I started to grasp the meaning of my mentor’s remark.

I experienced how product managers are heavily involved in every stage of product development, and how that meant putting a collection of hats to perform various tasks — from gathering requirements to scoping problems to even writing regular release notes.

Most of the time though, my time was spent attending meetings upon meetings, and chasing multiple people for answers and decisions. This meant that despite doing anything and everything, I often knocked off work feeling as though I hadn’t accomplished much.

It was decidedly a rather perplexing, and “uniquely PM” experience — driving progress relentlessly with no direct fruit of my labor to show for it at the end of the day. Perhaps, it was also this sentiment which exacerbated my apprehension in the following weeks.


How do I work with all these experts?

In time, the focus of my work at Ninja gradually shifted away from project management tasks and towards higher-level strategic work. I was put in charge, for instance, of defining user flows for an upcoming new product launch.

On such projects, I got to collaborate directly with brilliant engineers and product designers, and found it humbling. Being skilled in their respective domains, my co-workers would often pinpoint issues regarding my proposed flows from their perspective — considerations that I hadn’t even thought to contemplate previously!

This made me wonder, how could I bring anything to the table, when their domain expertise so clearly surpassed mine?

As I eventually discovered however, that was part of the nuance of a product manager’s work. With the role being a fundamentally generalist one, product managers are not required to possess as specific a skill-set as, say, a developer’s experience with various frameworks and coding languages. Yet, product managers are still uniquely positioned to bring value due to their knowledge and understanding of the big picture.

Product Managers are in a prime position to understand the big picture by piecing together multiple perspectives, and consequently make informed decisions.

Being more certain of my role in the team, I was no longer daunted by criticisms of my work; instead, I began to see them as fascinating opportunities to understand my co-workers’ perspectives and considerations.

From there, I sought to incorporate my learning into the way I approached discussions with my co-workers and external stakeholders — and it worked. Case in point: I learnt how conscientiously ironing out the specific technical requirements of a product feature request (and the rationale behind them) did wonders for making discussions with my team’s developers more productive!

Of course, I count it among my blessings to have a truly wonderful team of co-workers, who were always receptive to my ideas while also continually challenging me to be better.

Shout-out to the Dash team! ❤

Wait.. why does this suddenly feel fun?

Without realizing it, I soon neared the end of my internship. But as the days passed, I found that I was looking forward to work more and more.

It wasn’t necessarily that my work had become easier, but rather, that I had settled into a comfortable rhythm. Becoming more familiar with how best to prepare for meetings and communicate to achieve alignment with my stakeholders, for instance, helped me to get things done more effectively.

I even got to work on my own “pet projects”, like creating a dashboard for key product metrics, designing user research materials, and improving the way user stories were written to foster a better shared understanding of business and technical requirements in my team!


I suppose that was when I finally began learning to enjoy the constant struggle of being a product manager. Truly, inasmuch as the work was tough, it was meaningful knowing that I had played a part in so many aspects of each product build.

As I look back on my 16 weeks at Ninja, many fond experiences come immediately to mind — poring over user interview transcriptions alongside my team’s product designer, animatedly debating the best UI for a signup page with my team, and having illuminating conversations with my colleagues about their work whilst exploring the office in search of the occasional snack.

Not to mention, gatherings with the lovely Product team who made me feel at home since Day 1

All in all, I’m thankful to have buckled up for this wild roller-coaster internship ride. And I’m glad to have reached the close of my journey just as optimistic as when I first started, but also 4 big questions wiser.

Tan Hui Min Grace

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Avid lover of linguistics, music, product and life.

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