Why Product management is a great Millennial career in the Internet age!
Product management is a ‘premium career’ today. Literally everyone worth their salt in the technology space works with a Product person and/or aspires to be a Product person. In the current internet age it does throws up the questions-
“Why is Product management such a popular /much wanted career with the millennials ?”
“What does Product management offer that is such a winning career in today’s technology era?”
“What’s the potential of Product management in the years to come and is it here to stay ?”
Below are some top reasons why a career in Product management is today a desired profession, why it is having a well drawn out career path , the pay-offs can be not so bad either and its a career to stay into the new decade.
A. Product management is closely aligned with Tech:
Technology is the ubiquitous driver which is driving the world and enabling everything. Right from Space Exploration (nee SpaceX), Autonomous/self driving cars , Augmented reality /Virtual reality to revolutionize gaming and movies- Technology is helping make rapid advancements for the humanity.
And guess what Product management is the bright twin sister of technology! Product managers define the end product, application or experience and the technology helps to build and realize it. So as long as there are technology innovations , Product management will continue to rule and be a game changer orchestrating the define, strategize and roll out of these pathbreaking technology innovations.
B. Product management is not heavily invested in Programming/Coding skills
Given Product management is such an in-demand area closely aligning with technology, surprisingly it does not mandate knowledge of coding or programming skills.
It is the functional side of Product definition and is closely positioning with User design /User experience. Therefore a aspiring Product manager need not be on top of programming in order to master Product management.
C. Product management leverages the left and right brain skills
Product management is one of the few areas that leverages both the right and left brain skills. It needs both qualitative and quantitative aptitude to flourish in Product management.
A Product manager would need ‘critical thinking’ in order to envision the product behavior, user personas and perform release planning, deployment and also a ‘creative thinking’ mindset to define the functionality, feature set, user experience and product design.
D. Product management is heavily cross functional — It blends beautifully with the other technology areas such a engineering, user experience, user design , agile /process coaches and last (but most importantly) the Sales & Marketing
Product management and Product managers form a versatile lot. They blend and are required to work with many different teams across the IT Product /Services organization each day.
They work with the Technology architecture , Engineering /Development teams helping make important decisions on the technology platform to use , the technical designs or blueprint for the application or service and the technology roadmap to make the product /service stay viable for the end customer in the long term.
They consult the User experience & design teams on how the application is going to look like in the real world , how the user is going to interact with it and the look &feel and user experience.
They then work alongside the Process champions/coaches to influence the best ways of working/process to adopt to deliver the Product/Application or Service be it Kanban, Scrum, Lean or a hybrid model such as Scrumban etc. and what would be most effective process that needs to be adopted.
Lastly PMs work with Sales and marketing to support in Sales demos and Marketing collaterals to end customers to help justify why the Product/Service will address the pain points of the customer. .They help justify why it is better than competition, what are the compelling features of the Product, what is the Release Roadmap for the Product et al.
E. One does not need to having a traditional /stereotypical background to break into Product management
Contrary to popular belief (Yes! ) , Product management does not require a traditional degree to break into. You can be from as diverse an area such as pure science, arts, math or the traditional engineering domain /computer engineer to be eligible .
But from there on it is a level playing field. What is critical is your appreciation of the nuggets of Product management field such as Product sense, the Product design, User experience, Product strategy, Product Vision setting and Roadmap definition. Also it is the ability of the PM to roll out Products from definition to deployment , work with the different cross functional teams , meet the committed timelines , satisfy the end customer needs and be relevant in the marketplace is what will make your skills relevant and sellable.
There are several finishing schools , programs and accelerators today that make it possible for Product aspirants to break into this niche area . They can fortify basic degree of the aspirant with these credentials and help break into the roles at an Product analyst/Product specialist level and move up the hierarchy to manage teams and Suite of Products and thus progress to higher roles such as Associate PM, PM , Sr PM and Product Executive leadership.
F. It can be done from anywhere /virtually across the globe
Whoa! Is that right?!
Yes today and especially so post the Global pandemic it has become increasingly apparent that the PM career can be done from anywhere and is winner in the Virtual Corporate world .
All you need is the access to the tools and the Team(s) that you are going to be working with to have the outcomes delivered .
In terms of the tools one would need access to the :
- Requirements or Backlog repository aka JIRA , Version One, Microsoft TFS etc.
- User experience OR User design tools for Mockups, Wireframes such as Balasmiq, Miro, Axure etc.
- Prototyping tools Figma , Invision, Atomic etc.
- Team management tools such as Trello, Monday.com etc.
- Product road mapping tools such as Product plan, Product board,Monday.com etc.
In terms of the teams:
- On a day to day basis one would need to work closely with the customer , engineering teams and Product leaders/sponsors
- On a as needed basis you need to work with the Product design team (UI/UX), Process coaches, Sales and Marketing
G. (And the icing on the cake!)Product management is high paying
Product management is becoming more relevant as a standalone niche area and hurrah! its a very lucrative career.
Its one of the highest paying careers in the Information technology space alongside Engineering and Development.
At an entry level roles the Product analysts can look to start with salaries of circ. $80k and moving up with 2–3 years experience you are already looking at circ. $90–100K. Experienced Product managers and Sr Product managers can command in the range of $100- 150K and at Product leadership level you are looking at in the range of $150k-$200k+.
So yes to all the PM aspirants out there , it is indeed a wonderful and thriving career that is beckoning and hope to see you on the other side.
