Which part of your PMing you find most mind daunting

Hey everyone, excited to be doing this AMA! A brief about me, I work currently as a Director of Product at an Indian unicorn startup About my career: - Did my undergrad from IIT and then masters from an Ivy league school - Have been in product for almost 10 years now - across 2 Indian unicorn startups and a publicly listed company Would love to take questions on what it means to be a PM, growing within the role, building your career, and other things :) Will be back here at 4 pm and start replying Shoot away!

So with advancement in technology since decade and then the COVID wave , many startups were having money flowing into them from VCs and there was a boost in Indian startup ecosystem, many startups achieved the status of unicorn too , i am not saying product managers were not existing before , ofcourse they were there buliding some amazing products for the users out there, but do you think that the extra cash that was coming into the system created so many product management roles as a generalist and gave rise to popularity of product management and now we can see every second person wants to be a PM

As the title says ☝️

Hey folks, I'm wondering what kinda role I should pursue next after product management. I'm done with this role, works vary from company to company and team to team. It's tough to make people understand the difference between pre-PMF products & mature products, and how the metrics impact vary across the spectrum. And this completely changes the equation of your appraisal or your promotion as well. I don't see myself working in the same kind of role after 5 years. So I'm wondering what kinda role I should look out for? My general interests are more analytics & strategy centric. What do you guys think??

Hey folks, wanted to understand how to transition to a Product Management role. Context: No PM background with 2 YOE in DevOps.

Sharing some reflections on this: 1. Product is not a function with a large hierarchy / multiple levels in the ladder. Managerial responsibility comes in very late in the product career and the spans are typically small (relative to other functions like engineering, sales, operations). This also means a steeper funnel to the top and only a handful VP Product roles in the industry. 2. Product is centered around technology and digital consumer trends, both of which are fast changing. This requires constant unlearning and relearning. But more critically, this also means that previous knowledge/experience hits a plateau on marginal value beyond a basic threshold (where you have developed some essential product semse and skills). 3. Product managers are also much higher-paid vs other functional peers, at comparable years of experience. This means that a PM gets to a very high salary (say, 1+ crore) by the age of 40 (15-20y into their career). Tech functions in non-tech companies (like FMCG, banking) cannot offer that kind of pay, meaning salary growth beyond a point is limited to tech-first companies / limiting addressable market for lateral moves. All of these considererd, how should PMs think about the longevity of their careers? Unlike traditional roles, this does not seem like a "retire at 60" job. What would be the realistic age one should plan for, at which career growth and salary growth will stagnate? What are ways in which a 80%ile PM can extend their career (eg: also taking up engineering management or P&L responsibility or growth function etc., to increase scope)? PS: this post is not for the top 5-10% PMs. They will always find roles at VP level etc, this is for the 50-90%ile bucket of PM talent.

I see a lot of product managers come from an engineering background. They have worked for a few years as an engineer before making the transition. I want to understand the factors that led to the to make the switch. Also, how has that turned out after moving to product management? Did you find the things that you were looking for? PS: It is also common knowledge that PMs are paid less than engineers.