AMA 🎙️: Hey all, I am pmsprint, Director of Product Management at a Unicorn in India!

Slowly but surely.

@pmsprint bata de bhai, hum hadap nahi lenge screen se.

Goal setting is about objectively putting the vision into actionable items. At a startup, while the broad vision is clear, your quarter or annual goals change as you experiment and get feedback from customers. So you adapt quickly. At a public company, you need to plan for annual targets and expenses, so your goal setting is at least a year out. There, the job of CXOs and like is to manage the risk of some bets not working out. (Cue - Margin Call scene of "Why I make the big bucks..."). Unicorns are somewhere in the middle. Similar principles, different variances. All said and done, goal setting is important to clearly communicate to the org where we are headed. I'd also recommend personal goal setting for the same reasons. You should have a vision of where you want to be in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years. Better to base it on problems you want to solve rather than the $/title you want. Easier said than done.

Margin Call is underrated ++ Amazing cast. But damn, this answer is pure 🤌🏻✨

Unicorns - not yet. Still hopeful. Public company - sold when I quit. If it is equal to liquid cash, I'd rather treat it as such.

@pmsprint May your ESOPs 100x just like my respect for you. 🫡

Seen both sides of it. Seen PMs who just talk and others who solve. Just focus on the quality of the work, and make sure you have a good boss who can bat for you at the right places. Rest will take care of itself.

No one asked but I just want to say as an SDE that I really appreciate the work done by my past PM and APMs. They were excellent and involved the tech team closely in many product decisions. The PM was very transparent on what they didn't knew. Additionally in any interaction with him, I could always learn something new about the product or industry. Thank you all legit PMs for making our lives easier.

Cross team collaboration is important. As many questions have indicated already, it is amply clear that PMs generally have to prove the worth and demonstrate that the direction they want to take the team in, and the team has to truly believe that the direction is worth going in and investing their time in. So, to foster cross team collaboration, you give visibility into the problems, solve them together, debate on them and have the team's be on the same page. It works better when you are focusing on solving the problem rather than who solves the problem.

Thanks for answering, very helpful My main challenge today is being unable to figure out if the timelines that engineers/designers are coming back with are fair At what point did you become good at figuring this out?

I am trying to move from growth marketing to product growth 🤷

Depends on context. There are some products/companies where PM is responsible for driving growth, and growth marketing does play a big part there. The add on is finding the hooks and hacks and getting them embedded into the product. Overall, I wont agree that PM is Growth Marketing. A top PM might not be a top growth marketers. A top growth marketer might not care about the tech behind it. Make of it what you will.

Following

1. Role of the manager is super important. Especially for an early career PM or a transitioning PM, it is almost like defining the direction of the growth vector, and the magnitude could depend on your work, projects, luck, etc. Your manager should be able to identify your gaps and help you plug those. And should be someone you can look up to for at least some skills. 2. Hard to say. Would definitely recommend a group outside of work where you can bounce ideas and share experiments. On manager not reviewing work - be a pain and follow up. Be a Gandhi. And know when you cut losses.

The dots always connect looking backwards. I think I was fortunate to have two managers at different times in my career who were very patient, sharp and genuinely cared about my growth. They taught me a lot. There were other things too - luck, privilege, hard work, foundational years. But those are not repeatable.

1. Understand the market rate and be in the 80%-120% range. Switch only if you fall out of it. 2. Focus on learnings and problem solving. 3. You can be an industry expect or a generalist. If you choose a generalist path, then you should specialize in problems that span across industries (like retention/engagement, optimization, etc.)

What resources you refer to understand the market rate. I mainly look into levels. fyi

Ah, a lot of jargon incoming. Vision setting, team development, stakeholder management, upwards management and of course making sure that execution is tight. As you go through every level, you have to maintain the bar on the skills you have already mastered and develop new ones. At a Director, the above are what you need to get right.

I wont call it a criticism of the role. These are indeed true. I'd add problem solving to these two. With these three skills mastered, you wont have any challenge till an SPM level at least.

Both are fine. Different mindsets needed, but not that one is better than the other. At SPM, you should be able to formulate the problem statement, assess the multiple touchpoints, propose solutions and debate for and against each of those solutions, and then execute on the chosen path. If these 4 are checked, you are golden. Problem solving is critical. Additionally, pick any of the adjacent areas - engg, design, marketing, ops. Sharpen yourself on any one. You'd see better gains.

Two things - formulate these as tradeoffs and have one person own up a decision. Generally these conflicts arise because the teams are not speaking the same language, and the constraints that each of the team is facing does not come out. As a PM, it is your responsibility to understand these and make sure everyone can at least appreciate the tradeoff.

Companies have tools. I have excels.

That sounds very hardcore for some reason 😂

Following

This is a good one. This is part science, part art. You need to account for immediate revenue, building foundations for 3-6 months in the future, noise from the top, hygiene issues, etc. Mostly you want to assess the visible opportunity vs the hidden cost of not doing something. And of course, balance it with the effort. To expand more on hidden cost of not doing something now - if you build something hacky now rather than investing time in building it right, maybe in parts - you would need to assess how easy or difficult it will be to move away from the hack.

+++

Yes. For core PM, there's no way around understanding systems. If you are a non-coder, I would recommend sharpening on System Thinking and getting the basics right.

The ability to manage ambiguity and grow a team that can scale with you. Focus on learning. Pick a project, kill it. Move on. Less important that these are specific type of projects.

Got it, thanks for taking time!

Start with APM and PM roles. Get referred into companies. Once on that path, you can grow through your work. None of my hires had an MBA. To me, it doesn't matter. It does seem to matter to some though.

Thanks for suggestions. I am on my way now. Any particular things I should show on my resume and any specific things to learn. I have also founded one startup in my college time.

Enough to understand whether whatever you are proposing makes sense or not. You're not expected to have the answers, but if you can understand the tech side and start taking that into account, you'll be fine. As said on some other answer, solve it together.

Your uni already has rhe product bud community, look them up. How did u get into masters in ca with a oil & gas bg?

Thanks, let me check. Did bachelor’s level CS courses prior to enrollment. If you are aware of how to connect with that community ( any slack channel or something), please do share