PM as Product Manager

Xuan Jin
Xuan Jin
Nov 5 · 10 min read

When I was talking to people about Product Manager type of roles, some of them have misconceptions about what a product manger is. I often heard people are discussing about Product Manager, the words they used were something along the lines as “We heard of people with position called ‘Product Manager’, but we never meet one of those, no one knows who they are, or what do they do exactly”. Well, the following are what I learned about Product Manager by far on my own.

What is PM?

PM is short for a lot of things, Project Management, Product Manger, even Post Meridiem. However, I am going to talk about Product Manager here. I am still in the early stage of my career. I have done Salesforce development for a while, but I want to try as a product manager. I am still working on learning different parts in order to be a product manager, such as designing a product. The kind of mindset that’s required as a product manager is really different compare to software engineering, it is another form of art.

As a starting point for product managers, especially in their early career, there are a lot of programs out there such as APM, which stands for Associated Product Manager. A good PM requires to have a clear vision of a product, good at teamwork; be able to step up and take responsibilities; also could find the right balance when necessary. A lot of companies in the Silicon Valley has APM programs to train young starters to be a good product manager for their company. APM for any type of company is essential, this is the person who come up with new ideas, possibly even lead the company into a new stage. I did some research on what the requirements are for APM.

First, let’s take a look at what are the requirements for Product Manager. The best way to find that out is to look at the job description.

Google’s APM program say about their APM.

What is Google APM?

Google’s Associate Product Manager (APM) program is an amazing opportunity for new grads and early-career professionals to build exciting, global-scale products. As an APM, you will:
• Develop feature ideas that address user needs.
• Work cross-functionally (with engineers, UX designers, marketing, etc) to launch your features.
• Determine metrics to evaluate the success of your features and make improvements.

Apparently, Google is looking for someone that’s really well-rounded, how about other companies? Like Uber?

What kind of background do I need to be an APM?

We look for recent university grads with a technical background (Computer Science degree or equivalent) graduating in 2019 or within 1 year of graduation. Aside from that, we look for candidates with the following qualities:

A “do-er” personality — biased toward action, and constantly pushing toward clarity and delivery

Bold innovation coupled with principled thinking and well-honed product judgement

Mentality of starting with the users and working backwards

Excellent communication and partnership skills

A true passion for Uber’s mission, products, and users

A never-ending desire to grow and learn

One specs that Uber mentioned is “Mentality of starting with the users and working backwards”, while I am learning how to be a product manager, this is actually the hardest part to wrap my head around. I am still working on this part.

Here is what Facebook is saying about their program:

Q: WHO JOINS THE RPM PROGRAM?

RPMs come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some are recent college grads, from a variety of majors including computer science, business, psychology and mechanical engineering. Others have spent a few years working in a range of fields such as consulting, engineering, entrepreneurship and teaching.

LinkedIn has such program as well, where they indicated the following:

The LinkedIn Associate Product Manager program is a small, selective program that develops entry-level talent into world-class product managers. From Day 1, LinkedIn APMs take ownership of large and impactful projects, while still receiving mentorship and guidance from some of the best product leaders and entrepreneurs in the industry.

As an APM at LinkedIn, you’ll define the product roadmap, and you’ll partner with a team of engineers, designers, product marketers, and others to launch it. APMs interact frequently with company leadershippresenting product reviews to the executive team, gathering advice in weekly learning sessions, and more. In addition, APMs expand their professional and cultural horizons through organized events with renowned entrepreneurs and leaders in Silicon Valley, and through the annual APM international trip.

From all above, we can see that, the role of PM is really important since PMs will be the leaders of their own companies as well in the future.

Now after we understand how important PMs are, the next step is to figure out what we need to do to meet that requirements. After I read through a lot of requirements for PM, it appear to me that, mainly, a company is looking for candidates who have a good sense for product; who have a really good analytical skills; if the company is technology related product, they are also looking for someone who has a really strong background technically; the last thing they are looking for is the communication skills, PMs have to be able to communicate clearly about their ideas and thoughts on what they want to do with a product, what their visions are. Not only that, often, PMs need to talk to people from different departments and teams to understand how their product will be interact with other teams, and even how to ask for help from other departments and teams when needed. All in all, a product manager is a super-human, isn’t it?

Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology

I think most of the people who want to be a product manager have heard of this book before. This book actually divided the product manager position into different components. For someone who only has little idea on what PM is, this is a great book to start off with. This book not only talked about what is product manager, it also talked about how to answer some of the product manager related questions. However, personally thinking, I don’t think this book covered all of the corners; it is not necessarily mean you can be a good product manager if you mastered all of the questions or technics that they talked about in that book; that is just a start. I still believe that the best way to learn how to be a good product manager is through doing and practice. A product manager is someone who is determined, who knows how to make hard decisions when it comes, who knows how to lead, and all of those experience you cannot get by just reading a book.

That’s also part of the reason why I start writing on Medium.com, it is just a way to record my thoughts, and even writing down how I am analyzing a product or have a thought on what to do if I am designing a new product. Of course, I understand that there is going to need a lot of improvement along the way, however, this is my way of getting those experiences. I applied to most of the APM jobs and I got turned down, but that’s OK. I can learn by myself, it may take longer, but I believe that I will eventually get to where I want to be.

My Experience By Far

It is sure not easy to learn what it takes to be a great product manager. I want to go with this route, even though I know that I still have a long way to go.

During my internship this summer, I was lucky to get my feet wet in the product manager region. It was tough to try to keep all things together, dealing with the pressure from all sources is another one. The hardest part during the whole process for me is the UI/UX design part, I am so use to think of things as an object and thinking of everything in a way from the backend that I didn’t consider design, especially how a good design can benefit users on so many different levels. That experience taught me to look at products from a different perspective, from a user’s perspective. Each of us are users as well for different products, however, the differences are you cannot think as yourself as the only user, you have to consider all different kinds of users. Product managers are the ones who are like UX designers, they are in a way helping closing the usability gap between different user groups and the product you are designing. That’s also why when you are designing a product, you need to divide your user group into different categories in order to make sure that our product is designed specifically for those users. This also means that your user persona has to be good, you need to study your target user well. Sounds familiar? It definitely sounds like a marketing strategy, and yes, as a product manager, you also need to think about how to market your product. Product manager is not only the person who helps come up with the ideas on a product, but also this is the person who form a team to make an idea to come true.

You may ask, since you talked so much about product, product is the only thing we need to care about? Well, then you are wrong. Especially if you want to work as a PM in tech, you better know how to do programming! That’s still the basic part for people who wants to work in tech, I think. When you need to validate if your idea about a feature or a tech product is feasible or not, you will need to do a quick prototype before you release your ideas to the other people. That’s definitely the time when you will need your programming skills.

Now, did I mention PMs are super-human?

Why I Want to be a Product Manager?

You may ask why I want to be a product manager, well, that’s a good question. In my personal opinion, picking a career is something that’s really serious, since you will be doing this job for almost the rest of your life, or at least for a very long time. It is really miserable if you are doing something you absolutely hate. You need to try out in different areas to find out what you like, that’s what college is for, the way a college is set up is for you to find out what you like, what you don’t like. If you have the chance to try out different careers, that’s the best to be honest. I was lucky enough to have the chance to have a test during my internship this summer as a product owner for a feature. I loved it. That’s why I want to be a product manager.

They already developed a product called “Campus” which is dedicated to help internal employees to find conference rooms. There was a need to add another feature on top of the existing one so that employees can not only find conference rooms through this Web App, but also they can locate their fellow coworkers. The main reason for this function is so that this web application can help increase employees’ efficiency. As that company is growing rapidly, old buildings got demolished and new ones get back up, and because of that employees got moved constantly, it is hard to track who is sitting at where all the time. This feature is allowing users to crowdsourcing their own sitting locations and allowing others to find them. I changed the database structure to fit for this feature. After I went through the whole process. I really loved being an owner of something. That’s why I want to be a product manager.

In Closing

Special thanks to Timothy, I was really fortunate to have the chance to speak to Tim, who is a Tech Lead works for Google. Tim went from a software developer engineer to product management, and now he is a tech lead at Google. He gave me couple really good tips on careers and in general what all companies are looking for. First thing he mentioned was about willing to take responsibilities, and the capability to get things done and deliver; Secondly, to take ownership; Lastly, we discussed on all different types of designs are out there. I want to point out that the first two points that’s mentioned are extremely important. Taking responsibilities and take ownerships are easier say than done, there are times you need to step up and even think ahead of time, or take initiative on tasks in order to finish something; this also means that you should be self-driven when trying to finish a product.

I want to end this article with the following quote, you have to be strong to be a product manager. From time to time, people around you will have doubts on your methods, or on your design, even how you are running your team; at those times, you have to have faith in yourself and your team, stand strong regardless what others say.

“What you think, you become.
What you feel, you attract.
What you imagine, you create.” ― Buddha

In the end, product managers are story tellers, they are giving souls to the products they are making. I also believe that each product has a beautiful story behind it, that’s what makes each product special and appealing to people.

Learning to be a product manager is a life long journey, you don’t just learn one thing and stop there, it is a continuous process. Happy learning!

Resources:

Shirley_Jin

Xuan Jin

Written by

Xuan Jin

Born and raised in China. Salesforce enthusiastic. Photos are my thing. Curious. Loving. Adventurous.

Shirley_Jin

Shirley’s publication on topics I am interested in, like Salesforce, how to be a PM, Developer, and self-improvement.

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