In July 2002, Google did something crazy:
They hired a 22 year old computer science student and made him the product manager for Gmail.
Gmail engineers were shocked.
Gmail was the most important new project at Google. Its target was 10M users.
And this guy, who was just out of college, would be the PM?
But they were overruled, because Google had a bigger problem:
Product managers.
Google couldn’t find good PMs.
Co-founder Larry Page rejected all the super-experienced PMs from Microsoft, McKinsey, etc.
They talked about management and strategy and business. Larry Page hated this.
He wanted Google PMs to be technical.
Otherwise how would they work with the engineers?
That’s when a Google VP, Marissa Mayer, had an idea:
If we want PMs with technical skills and don’t care about their experience, why don’t we hire computer science students from college?
Thus, the Associate Product Manager (APM) program was born.
Brian Rakowski, a 22-year-old CS grad from Stanford, became the first APM. He was put on the Gmail team.
Brian was scared.
How could he work with super experienced, super senior engineers on a super important project if they didn’t respect him?
Marissa gave him the answer: Data
She explained to Brian that a PM didn’t give orders to engineers. His job was to be helpful to engineers.
If he had an idea, first he should do a small test on 1% of users. If it worked, he should show the test data to the engineers to work on it.
Thus, data became the centre of decisions, not seniority or politics.
The rest is history.
Gmail was a huge success.
APM program was a huge success.
The first APM, Brian, was a huge success. He’s currently the Vice President of Product Management at Google!
Reference : https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shreyans512_in-july-2002-google-did-something-crazy-activity-7192496184895115264-nKXF?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
