I am 4 months into my first job as a product manager. I have never coded in my life except for a basic coding course in college. While I am always eager to understand technical concepts and tend to ask a lot of questions around the same I still feel there's a huge gap in communication.
This leads to poorly estimated timelines, and often difficulty in assessing feasibility of ideas.
I wish to learn more about software architecture, data management systems and the development processes in general.
While I know I lack technical expertise, I don't want to discount the possibility of this just being a communication issue within the team. This is a series B startup just entering the growth phase, so no proper processes are set up as of now - again something I will have to streamline.
My question is to all the product managers especially who don't come from a technical background - how did you bridge this gap?
I started as an engineer but even I faced issues in one of my roles which was very tech heavy. Watch some system design videos. I took a web development course in Udemy and watched Gaurav Sen's system design videos. I also like to brainstorm a lot with my engineers so that helps too.
Many engineers are very poor at translating what they do and what they are using in lay language, hence I felt it's very important for me to go into depths of flow, architecture, and design of systems.
Will definitely check out Gaurav Sen's system design videos.
Is going through a web development/full stack developer course a good way to build this understanding even when I won't actually put it into practice?
Sometimes while having discussion with engineers it feels like they are dumbing down things for me (which is fine, as i don't have much knowledge in that anyways) but at the same time this leaves less room for me to have in-depth discussions.
I didn't actually build something myself, only got my hands dirty.
But the course helped me understand the language devs use when they talk to you.
If dumbing down means leaving out details, then you definitely need to ask deeper questions, probably in their language. If dumbing down means explaining deeper things in lay language, then that's great and a good dev needs to be able to do that.
Tried https://pearmock.com?
This seems like a platform for interview prep?
I made this platform with my friend. We are a free game for product managers where there are 5 levels and after each level you unclock incentives like networking, building public profiles, earning side income and interview opportunities for the top level players!
Do you have an engineering counterpart? A very crude way i operated initial days was get input eta from engineering counterpart and add some buffer to it. Post few deliverables you will get better at estimating timelines
I am the only product manager in the company as of now. Before I joined-in, the founder used to do high level program/product management for the team (he still steps in for high level prioritization within the tech team). There's a senior software engineer (5 yoe) to whom everyone in the tech team reports. He is my SPOC for all things tech.
I would suggest you learn some coding. It will help you in the best way possible. It will make you confident from a tech perspective at least and you will also develop empathy for techies while building products. I did the same, and I don't regret learning it.
All the best!
Follow tech blogs of related companies if available, like Netflix , swiggy, razorpay have good engg blogs, can try to read byte byte go newsletter plus as suggested gaurav sen system design and find time to talk to engineer to understand it better, if you are absolute beginners, you can give a try at book Tech Simplofied. I am also handling a core tech product for cloud storage and encoding and come from civil engg background, just keep yourself involved and curious to understand tech and with time you would be getting comfortable.
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:
All the PMs I see have an MBA or are past engineers. I'm from an arts and design background, Tier 1 institute. Worked in tech for 5+years and learned how to build products. Based on feedback so far, I'm doing fine.
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