The 4 Types of Product Manager
— How to hire the right one for your startup
This post originally appeared on Axioms.io.
Picture a product manager: who do you see? A fast-talking MBA-type, embroiled in processes, post-its, and task boards?
For too long, we’ve expected product management candidates to be cross-functional unicorns — straddling development, marketing, and design priorities with ease. But this perception is flawed, and it may be hurting our startups.
We would never evaluate a design candidate on his or her industrial, UX, UI, visual, and fashion design experience in the same interview. Instead, we seek deep expertise in couple areas, and shift resources accordingly as our needs evolve. So why don’t we view PMs the same way?
In a recent fireside chat, product expert Rose Yao spoke up against our one-size-fits-all mindset. In her decade of experience at Facebook and Google, she built products that changed the way we interact — like Gmail and Facebook Photos. Over years of candidate interviews and team building, she distilled product managers into four basic types.
Understanding product manager archetypes not only empowers us to hire smarter; it can also help us predict organizational gaps. Each shines during specific phases in a product’s lifecycle, while suffering in others.
In this article (based on Rose’s keynote speech) we will explore and summarize the four product manager types. We’ll also provide sample interview questions to help us better understand our current — or future — PMs.
Hire the wrong one, and your startup may pay the price.
This is someone you’ll hire for his potential. Likely a recent graduate, he has no idea how to actually do the job — yet. But he’ll learn fast, try hard, and mess up…a few times. His hunger for advancement makes him great at juggling tasks: he’ll take on anything for you.
Hire if
You’re a small startup whose founder is still deeply involved with the product. The SYG will block and tackle, while the founders act as the product’s keepers.
In larger organizations, the SYG is a great fit to own low-priority projects that keep being placed on the back burner. While the more senior product managers tackle urgent matters, the SYG will rapidly knock out mid-term projects.
Pass if
You’re looking for someone to spearhead mission-critical projects. Before he’ll be ready, he craves (and needs) mentorship from senior colleagues.
Ask this
“We want to figure out if it’s feasible for us to go into [xyz vertical] in six months. How would you figure out if we should build something?”
An SYG’s talents don’t lend themselves to solo ideation. He simply lacks the confidence in his own instincts — and the industry experience — to succeed with so few guardrails.
If the Business PM seems seems familiar to you, it’s because you’ve probably worked with her before. The fast-talking MBA type: that’s her.
She’s data-driven with experience in sales and partnerships. With her inside-out knowledge of business, she’s able to make strategic product decisions, winning over enterprise-level leads.
Hire if
You’re entering the B2B market or your company deals with sales and partnerships. The Business PM will inject a sense of maturity to land those enterprise deals.
Her experience enables her to empathize with the needs of business strategists and sales managers, which she then translates to your product and technical team — which will pay dividends.
Pass if
Your product is consumer-facing, requiring substantial user feedback, or if your B2B product is in a blue-sky ideation phase. The Business PM suffers when requirements are difficult to quantify. She thinks in metrics and numbers, not instinct.
A warning: Her business background can make communication rocky between super-technical teams who need someone to “speak geek”.
Ask this
“We’re not getting enough traction with millennials. How would you figure out what they need?”
The Business PM thrives with well-formed requirements; challenges requiring unstructured user feedback can hold her back.
Here’s the guy you love to work with. The Designer built his reputation producing stunning work. His bar for quality is high; his taste, exquisite. He builds things consumers adore.
Hire if
Your project has lost its way. Perhaps your team has strong technical chops, but the polish has slipped. With many small bugs and sloppy design, your engineers have gotten acclimatized to a quality bar that’s unsustainable. The Designer’s eye for detail could turn it around.
Pass if
Your near-term projects need someone scrappy and quick. If you’re in a validation phase requiring rough prototypes, The Designer will resist. His insistence on pixel perfection makes quick iterations difficult. He doesn’t move fast and break things; he moves carefully and makes things beautiful.
He doesn’t move fast and break things; he moves carefully and makes things beautiful.
Ask this
The Designer can have trouble seeing the forest for the trees. As a case study, show him an early prototype.
If he suggests improvements more consumer-facing than deep and product-level, you’re probably dealing with The Designer.
Ready to launch? Here’s your woman. The Executor expertly drives a team, sets schedules, and gets stuff done quickly. Her skill set is broad because she can and must wear several hats a day.
Her communication skills enable her to take some load off designers and developers, and so she shines in launch phases when the team needs to focus on shipping. She makes decisions quickly, liaises with outside stakeholders, and manages multi-disciplinary teams simultaneously.
Hire if
Your product has validated product-market fit, the project is defined, and you need to move faster than the competition to market.
Pass if
The Executor’s skills won’t shine in a blue-sky project: she wants to build quickly, not get bogged down in user research, beta testing, or go-to-market strategies.
Ask this
Describe a product prototype and ask for a quick back-of-napkin checklist for a public beta. The Executor will answer this question so quickly and thoroughly, you’d think she could do it in her sleep.
This post is based on Rose Yao’s product management keynote. Presented at Declassified, a speaker series where industry insiders come together to discuss the future of technology. Watch the full event, or check out the slides!
Tickets are now available for Declassified 2 on October 8th! Space is limited.
