Remote product management: challenges and opportunities
Even though more and more companies are getting comfortable with remote work, the field of product management still seems to push back against this trend quite forcefully. There is a general sense that product managers can’t do the things they need to do unless they are physically located with their teams. This has some ironic consequences, such as that Slack — a company that builds a tool “where work happens” — doesn’t hire remote employees.
I confess that at first I was skeptical as well. But as we started to work together and make progress at Postmark, my skepticism fell away. I do believe it’s harder to make the product management role work remotely than some other roles like customer success or development. But it is possible, and I believe that companies need to start being more open to hiring remote product managers.
We often hear about the drawbacks of remote work, but it’s important to remember that there are certain things that remote work is naturally better suited for than on-premise work.
Most importantly, remote work makes it much easier to develop and instill a rhythm of collaboration and focused time for a team.
