If you work for an organization that has a technology offering, there is no excuse for not knowing or understanding the underpinnings of what you are selling / supporting. 
  
 If you are in customer conversations which are around integrations, deployments, etc it becomes an acute necessity. 
  
 For your specific example, you likely won't be able to estimate effort (thats a delivery skill, not a technology skill).  Your orgs process needs to be optimised to ensure that customer comms on resolution are peer reviewed / manager reviewed before they are committed to the customer.

Sales Manager

Hi,  Curious to understand how many of you from the Sales or Customer Success teams understand tech  Currently as a Csm, I feel that I have a lot of knowledge gap in understanding tech, i feel it w...

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

Hi,

Curious to understand how many of you from the Sales or Customer Success teams understand tech

Currently as a Csm, I feel that I have a lot of knowledge gap in understanding tech, i feel it would be benficial for me to deep dive and be more knowledgeable in this aspect as it might help me  in interacting with clients in a more technical manner and also liason with the product and engineering teams in solving my clients problems.


For example if my PM tells me that this issue will take 3 days to resolve i have no option but to agree to his terms as i dont have the technical knowledge to challenge his ETA.

It would also help me to explain to the client the root cause in a more technical manner and also why certain issues will take the time they are taking to resolve.

Technical Knowledge in Csm and Sales?

Customer Success

Technical Knowledge in Csm and Sales?- Grapevine

Am i wrong if i check with Support or Customer success team if there are any defects due to which i see a decline in user activity in my SAAS tool since last 3 months.

I was asked this question in an interview that what would be your first step if you need to figure out why there is a decline in user activity since last 3 months.

Question

Software Engineer

Hi all!

I'm a pm with marketing background, what should i do to become technically literate?

I'm getting hang of backend and frontend, but need help in understanding complex design choices/frameworks that engineers have made in the past.

Suggest some books/blogs that I can read

Need to become more techinally literate

Product Owner

Hi all, I am a mechanical engineering graduate with no experience. Looking to transition to product management. Completed Nptel certificate courses in product management. Please mentor /advise me about the mandatory requirements to get my first job in PM.

Mentor me

Hello grapeviners,
I am from non-tech background but have experiential tech knowledge while I have worked as a PM.
I want to know what technical knowledge is required to become good at AI product mgmt and how to gain it?

TIA :)

Technical knowledge for AI product mgmt roles

Product Manager

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

Do you think pure product managers with no technical background add value to your company? Aren't experienced project managers with penchant for business more suitable for this role?

Do you think product managers with barely 2 years of experience required in your company?

Analyst

Welcome to Business Roles's Private Community

Hey!
Is here anyone who is currently working in tech sales job remotely for a U.S. based firm, and earning in $$

Anyone working in Tech Sales?

Generalist

1. High pressure on timelines- business and top management shits on you if you don’t deliver on time
2. No power to control the outcome- engineers don’t listen to you neither does the design or analytics team, you end up begging for resources
3. Too much politics- business or a senior PM can steal your bandwidth anytime
4. Lack of recognition- if it succeeds business did it, if it fails it is product teams fault (engg never gets blamed for shit)

I believe Product Management is a really toxic role

I've recently had more conflicts with the Engineering Manager in my team. This EM tends to want to influence the specifications of the product, even its design style. While I think having opinions is good, it's often hard to convince him.

An important principle I believe in is "do not step outside one's role." I do not interfere with the details of their implementation, such as the database schema, API design, or even choices of system databases and infrastructure design.

I use my technical skills to help drive the product forward.

This kind of EM, or rather, this kind of engineer is quite common. They feel that having learned computer science, they assume designing or product management is relatively simple and want to get involved. This is a very unqualified situation.

It also creates a challenge for PMs who don't have technical skills to counter such behavior.

"Do not step outside one's role." Do not be a PM who interferes with technical decisions, nor an EM who interferes with product design.

What EM/PM Should do and should not do

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!

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

Most of the CSM roles are offered by B2B SaaS companies. I believe there are two paths that can be taken post- 

1) You go to the client side 
2) You rise up the ladder of Sr CSM and so on.

People who have worked and are in a similar role and chosen diff paths, how is it going?

Any commentary/ Thoughts/ perspective on career growth as a CSM?

Career Trajectory as a Customer Success Manager

"How do you look after any program from start to end that comes to you? How do you prioritize? What was the product process you followed?"

I explained the exact thing that i have followed in my previous company as a PM intern but the interviewer did not like the answer (maybe my structuring was wrong or maybe my way of communication). 

I want to understand from the experienced folks - how would they approach this question if they were asked this in an interview?

If this question is asked to you in a product management interview. What do you answer?

I am an engineer, what I enjoy is solving technically challenging problems. I don't really want to spend my time bothering with non-code solutions to your business problem, and I don't care how much money my code makes you. Just have a tech lead give me a challenging tech problem to solve or build for(WITH the necessary requirements) and I'll get it done. Simple. 


Personally I'm saddened to see how chasing impact has taken over all good tech companies, and how you basically HAVE to create value and take ownership in other ways if you want to be SDE-3 or higher. I would rather be a more technically competent, deliverer SDE (think someone who's extremely good at being an SDE-1). Climbing the SDE ladder is boring.

Any other engineers find it boring and frustrating to chase impact?

To be fair, companies are paying you to earn money, not solve tech 
  
 You have to find things to simplify and innovate in that impact only

Software Developer

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?

Resources for Non-Tech PMs

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

Consultant, Investment Banking went from sought after careers to fads post 2008 crisis when the world realized that these folks are crooks due to their role in propogating the Great Financial Crisis.

Given the backlash tech companies has been getting and global layoffs, will Product Manager also become a passing fad?

Seeing lot of anti Product Manager sentiment on this app off late. Was Product Management also a fad?

Someone here said engineers can become PM but PM can't become engineers. It can't be more correct than this. But reality is, it sounds goods only in theory.  
  
  I asked this same question to my director, why have you hired us when engineers clearly know more about products than us and are capable?  His answered that before the organisation formally created a team of product managers, it was only engineers that were handling product for decades. But that resulted into substandard products being developed, chaotic product release and consistent drop in revenue. The reason being engineers became backlog managers and engineers beging engineers, never focused on business value. Instead, they focused on technical aspect heavily. Engineers never bothered to check if what they were developing will actually sell in the market or not.  
  
 And mind you, this was a product that all of us use in daily lives. The numbers of users in India alone would be millions. So to summarise, yes, engineers can become PMs but generally they stay loyal to their pedigree of BE/B.Tech and become very shitty PMs. They like to have more technical conversations than strategic discussions and hate things that are not quantifiable, subjective. And business facing people here in forum would know, things are always not quantifiable in business planning, market outlook. It is based on assumptions.  
  
 An excellent PM would be someone who is an engineer but knows how to focus on business value of the product, make it customer oriented etc. I had the pleasure of working of one such PM in my last stint and he was truly outstanding. CEO knew him personally and this is in an organization with thousands of employees

Program Manager

Hey folks, 

I'm a fresher to sales and about to start my job in a couple of months. I want to be prepared and I want to know which books can help me with a better understanding of Sales and Negotiation. 

To all the veterans out there, please help me with some suggestions and any other advice that will be helpful

Thank you!!

Best books for learning sales and negotiation

What questions are asked for a product mgmt interview? How can one become a PM without tech background? 
I have product strategy background.
In interviews i am able to ace product sense / product strategy questions but when it comes to tech, unable to show the required tech acumen (due to lack of actual exposure to it).

Should I just stay put in product / business strategy roles or move into product mgmt?

Reasons for moving into PM - want career and monetary growth, build tech stuff and not just strategise stuff. Have 6 yrs experience (2 yrs pre MBA data analytics+ 2 yrs business strategy + 2 yrs product strategy).

Cracking PM interviews?

Have a interview scheduled for tomorrow.

have already had 2 rounds of interview - one with Chief Product Officer and Principal Product Manager.

Now they have scheduled an interview with Director of Engineering.

Company is US based MNC.

How should I go about preparation?

any tips, suggestions welcome.

Technical Knowledge in Csm and Sales?

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