Toastie

Imposter syndrome as a PM with non traditional background

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.

But I worry about progressing in my product career without those external signals. Product feels like a boys club full of people from the same universities and backgrounds, with the same extreme quant-driven approach.

Is there room for diverse educational backgrounds in product management, realistically? Which companies have you see hiring these types of PMs? Would love to hear from others in the same boat.

16mo ago

Magnus

Stealth15mo

If you are from arts and design background than you might be having an advantage. All the core skills required for a great product person heavily revolves around users. Basically product is at the junction of users, business and tech. Here tech is technology related to build that solution. If your solution is to accept the order on WhatsApp, WhatsApp is the tech here.
Most difficult part is to understand the users. Design people who have good understanding of doing research and understanding users are better at this. Understanding their problems/needs.
Business is to get something out of the solution that you provide to the users. This again requires understanding of users.

Don’t compare yourself with other PMs, most of them don’t really know what is the job of PM. Some of them are either project managers or program managers or sometimes technical program managers but every one are being called product managers.

ColdCitron45

Stealth16mo

I think, diversity is great for product management. It's a breadth role and you need to also keep adding skills - technology, finance, etc. Finally if you have built products, be very confident about it. No degree matches real experience

BeanCounter

Haldiram16mo

The world could use fewer MBA product manager. If anything you are uniquely placed, just need to get rid of the imposter syndrome.

TepidFanny11

Freelancer16mo

Focus on other important aspects of PMgmt like customers, job to be done, insights, design, strategy, differentiators, competitors, be passionate about the problem and you should be fine. These things can be done without any tech knowledge. Tech is not even the most important aspects of a PM.

Barbaadeshwar

Stealth16mo

Those quant boys severely lack qual (which I'm hoping you already have). Work on your quant skills, know the coding side of things from a working knowledge perspective. And you'll be closer than you think.

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