On working in product — Part II
When working in product may not work for you
If you’re a “product person” — being a PM is one of the best things you can do with your time. When it’s fun — there’s nothing better. But it’s also tough. You’ll work long hours. You’ll be juggling lots of balls in the air. Sometimes you’ll disappoint people.
Reasons why product may not work for you:
You don’t like making decisions
As a product manager, you’re making decisions all the time. Often (read: always), you’re making decisions without the full amount of information. You’re making assumptions, you’re testing out hypotheses. You’re prioritizing things. Being a good decision-maker comes with the territory.
You don’t like talking to people
You spend a lot of time talking to people. And depending who you talk to, you need to be able to convey the right amount of context, information and detail. From working closely with your users to gain information on the problem space, to internal company stakeholders, to designers and developers who are implementing your product & features — there’s a lot of constant communication.
You don’t like to debate
Things are hardly ever black and white. There are often multiple ways to go from A to B. There will always be someone with a different opinion to you. Healthy tension is even what makes great products so good — it forces you to make sure that your reasoning is sound and to take a range of different possibilities and outlooks into account.
You need structure
Product is many things, but structured it is not. In fact — part of your job is to create the structure amongst the chaos of information, competing values and priorities. Successfully creating stability (and enjoying it!) in situations that are lacking is an important aspect of the role.
