Don’t transition to a Product Manager role without answering these questions
Four questions to determine whether the transition is right for you
During my career as a Product leader, I have had many folks reach out to discuss the role of a Product Manager — most centered around how to make the transition from their current position. Being a product and end-goal minded person, I approach these discussions like any hypothesis exploration session — first eliciting the why before discussing how.
Before I share my perspective on the PM role and this person’s likely transition pathway, I try to understand their why by asking the following four questions:
- Can you share moments that make you feel most fulfilled at work?
- Can you tell me what motivates you to be a Product Manager?
- What do you think are the day-to-day tasks expected of a Head or VP of Product?
- Can you describe how you plan to succeed as a Product Manager?
#1: Can you share moments that make you feel most fulfilled at work?
A lot of work that a Product Manager does comes with delayed gratification. If your sense of fulfillment comes from succeeding through measurable daily progress, then over time, you will feel lost in a PM role and may even start to doubt yourself. In other disciplines, it is relatively simple to end the day with a sense of accomplishment (e.g. wrote new code, fixed some bugs, created the design for a new feature, ran a test plan, etc.). But as a Product Manager, you will have several days where you do no “real” work or make any measurable progress. The entire day could consist of meetings or an unsuccessful attempt to find a new product hypothesis. With time, you will work on larger scoped projects, and hence, no (or slow) progress days will become more frequent. Therefore, it is tough to accomplish your fulfillment metric daily — a serious consideration that is not often obvious to folks thinking of making the transition.
Side note: I have known many people who have regretted making this transition for this exact reason. The daily gratification that you can achieve as an engineer or as a designer is tough to replicate in a PM role. A worst-case scenario would be when the “transitioned PM” decides to build designs or fix code to achieve that personal fulfillment and, in doing so, neglects the core PM tasks.
Remember, fulfillment is the key to happiness. It is essential to living a healthy life that you leave work most days feeling fulfilled. Knowing yourself and the role you hope to fill is what sets you up for success.
#2: Can you tell me what motivates you to be a Product Manager?
Even though this question appears obvious, I learn a lot about how likely a person will succeed in a PM role from how they answer this question. Making decisions is a critical part of this role, and the choice to initiate a career transition can be a great showcase of this skill provided both the logic and reason are strong. Hence, this inquiry is my attempt to fathom how someone thinks and makes strategic decisions. After some discussion, it becomes relatively easy to identify whether you are someone who wants to be a Product Manager because of dissatisfaction in your current role or whether you are a thoughtful individual who has a great strategic framework to support your decision-making.
Here is one (common?) example for a developer who is looking to transition to the PM role -
Unrelated motivation: “I wish to remain part of the Product team, but I don’t feel like coding anymore. Therefore I can contribute as a PM.”
Related motivation: “In the next few years, I aspire to start my own company. Hence, as a PM, I want to run the portfolio like a startup and also simultaneously learn all the relevant broader company context.”
#3: What do you think are the day-to-day tasks expected of a Head or VP of Product?
This one is my favorite question because it gives me an idea of how much time you have spent thinking about the long-term ramifications of this transition. To excel in any discipline at an early stage, you need to display a learning mindset and a willingness to put in the effort — that’s it. Therefore, if you are a fresh graduate or someone new to a job, I believe you can pick up any role within a company and still excel without much experience. However, fresh graduates or those new to the field often focus on the first step of the transition and don’t anticipate how their responsibilities might grow and change as a consequence of selecting this path. I speak from experience when I say that what an early stage Product Manager does is vastly different from what a Head or VP of Product does.
Therefore, it is critical to spend time thinking about what your day-to-day might look like if you were a VP or Head of Product, and whether you would personally like those additional responsibilities. I’ve seen cases where folks have decided not to transition after spending time shadowing product leaders and discovering more about what the role entails. Unfortunately, many people who want to become a Product Manager do not invest time in this area of background research. Some forward-thinking here early in your career can yield immense future job-satisfaction dividends — transitioning disciplines later, as an experienced professional, becomes more challenging. Over time you are seen as a subject matter expert (on a certain discipline?) within the company rather than a fungible resource.
#4: Can you describe how you plan to succeed as a Product Manager?
Finally, it is time to discuss your thought process upon acquiring this role. It is immensely beneficial to spend time understanding what growth might look like once you become a Product Manager. It is not typically your responsibility to know what the transition plan might entail or how to ramp-up once you become a Product Manager. Most managers have an onboarding plan for new hires. If you are curious to see what a Product Manager ramp-up plan might look like, you can look at my post on a Product Manager’s onboarding plan. In summary, it benefits both you and your company if you have spent time thinking about what unique value you bring to the PM team, either from experience or your understanding of PM skills. You may also want to take into account any past bad habits that you would like to avoid as a PM and take steps to address them in advance. All this preparation will set you up to succeed both in a PM interview and when you start working in a PM role.
I believe time spent writing down answers to these questions can help anyone make a final decision about transitioning to a PM career path. Upfront planning is better in these vital career moves. It may take longer, but the payoff will be rewarding once you land the Product Manager job.
To better prepare for a PM interview, I recommend reading my other piece on this topic -
