Reddit product manager. It’s tough being a good product manager! No.

Reddit product manager 5 years total experience If forced for the suggestion, pragmatic marketing is a good start, but it is limited to just the product strategy level and not the other things that are required to survive as a PM. 20% of the week = meeting with the Product team—including my weekly 1:1 with my manager, a touchpoint across the broader product team (inclusive of product managers, designers and researchers), and a smaller-group huddle just with other PMs to do a round table / solicit feedback on ongoing or planned work. Collections of most practical and helpful discussions in r/productmanagement. Maybe a course on Reforge or other program about Strategy can help you. At a basic level, Product management starts and ends with understanding business objectives and day-to-day mapping efforts into those business outcomes. I’ve been at Microsoft for a few years and while here have worked on a few products including Windows, Azure and Microsoft teams. Remember you are there to ensure they deliver a valuable product. Got in to product via internships so I'm all for them. Product managers set the product roadmap according to the vision and identify customer pain points to build a better product. caveat: product managers are not project managers. Also got laid off in under 18 months when they did a massive re-org and eliminated my 1,200 person division. Who defines the why and what of the product. Web Project Manager > Project Manager > Business Analyst > Product Manager > Sr. Here’s what we’ll cover: How to break into product: general advice; Reddit product management interview advice Product management advice: What not to do; How to figure out if a company is product-led Jan 2, 2025 · Reddit Product Management — For discussions and insights on product management r/ProductManagement Community ( Source ) The r/ProductManagement subreddit is a top community on Reddit for new and experienced product managers to get answers, share knowledge, and access valuable resources. Not every project manager does product management. When I first thought about going into product management I had a very skewed idea of what the job actually was (and it is different at every company). I got hired at $165k + $22k annual bonus + $15k sign on bonus at the senior manager level. Lots of good advice here. Lots of companies just have a "Product Manager" role, without having a PMO or different levels. By contrast "Product Manager" emerged from the startup world and technology driven orgs like Netscape and later Google. Began advocating to be the company's first product manager (there were only developers + VP of dev reporting into the founder, no 'user advocate' to speak of or person vetting requirements, needs, etc. 1. AI courses are being pumped out at a dizzying pace. You'll see that resume looks quite simple with its one-page, one-column layout. Also lots of Microsoft. I understand product manager as someone who is market, customer and business focused. Good luck my friend. I had 2-3 years of product and 5 years of technical program/project management experience. But decided I didn't want to start another new role in corporate America. S: Web3 product management is quite different than normal product management. In a well functioning team, the developers, QA, project management, and product management work in concert to deliver products with commercial value. Actually, I remember the Corning recruiters pitching the fact that when you account how little they work and how cheap Corning, NY is compared to NYC, their equivalent hourly pay was like 2-3x Hi, I'm relatively new to product management so I apologize if my question is going to come off as incredibly naive. Product Management is "hard graft" as I have experienced in my prior role. I do all the product management, accounting, marketing, etc for her. I’m a product designer with 7 years of experience and pivoted to product management 1 week ago and maybe it’s too soon to say much but I really like to be involved in the business and user side of things too. They try to use the software and they say, "I need to be able to reticulate these splines!" and then the tech team sorts out the details and comes back to the Product person who says, "It takes too many clicks to reticulate splines. Need Advice! PM to learn UX? Jan 15, 2024 · We’ve attempted to create a curated collection of some of the best product management advice to be found on Reddit. How to do this: Product manager is responsible for the success and failure of a 'product' which is either a feature of a service or a stand alone product. The closest courseware is general management, as one has to be good dealing with all of the 3 P’s: product, process, and people. I wanted to know the difference between this role and product manager role. If they have extensive contacts throughout that industry - it's even better. It was helpful to walk through the fundamentals of being a product manager and required us to do a group project. g. I'm comfortable with general product management, but really need to beef up my AI skills. I've checked out various courses but still need something practical. Ask lots of questions. , we had a few DISASTER launches because the devs were just building what the client told them, tale as old as time, etc. We're bought into the Microsoft suite so Teams, Outlook, Office of course. Specifically, I'm interested in: - Interview Experience: What should I expect during the interview stages? Any Understand operator pain points and define product requirements to address them; Ensure end-to-end delivery of high-quality datasets that meet project objectives ; Work closely with developers, product managers, and labeling team members to understand problems, capture new ideas and manage a prioritized backlog of requirements r/ProductManagement is a Subreddit for Product Managers with roughly 40K members. In these companies, developers are often called engineers and sit under a CTO. Prior to this I did my undergrad in Computer engineering, where I luckily Product management is about talking to customers and identifying problems, then playing politics across the entire organisation to get everyone to actually build something that solves that problem, managing all the inter team bullshit dynamics and director level nonesense. In the schedule, the white boxes refer to steps required to prepare for behavioural questions, and the blue boxes refer to preparation for product questions. As a Product Manager, it's up to you to "do whatever it takes" to get the right outcome for your customer or business. Some companies treat PMs more like product owners, and others treat PMs like marketing managers. They have a mixture of responsibilities including creating a road map for development, ensuring the voice of the customer is understood and considered, how to position the product in the market, and ensure the sales engineering and marketing teams Masters in Information Management (graduated in 2023) Summary of my work experience - Market Research Analyst - 2 years Startup founder - 10 months (could not scale it up) Business Analyst/Account Manager - SaaS based startup - 1 year Product Manager Intern - 3 months Current Business Associate at SAP (internship for 6 months) Project Managers tell Product how the work is coming along, and then maybe Product will feed that info up to management in status updates. I've been a Product Manager for a few years at a mid-sized tech company, handling a couple of products lines. To expand a bit more, there’s a point where an MBA will be required or you’ll hit a ceiling. A project manager plans and drive through a pre defined project. Ps, the Udemy course for the PMP test in taking has a huge section on agile and the test itself spends more time on that than on traditional waterfall. I’ll take my down d00ts accordingly. It will accelerate picking up product management terminology, understanding the processes, and walking out with a bunch of templates (business model canvas, roadmap now/next/later, PRD/MRD) will give you a nudge forward and boost your confidence. A good product manager who really understands the domain and all it's intricacies is absolutely invaluable. Hi , I was offered Technical product manager (TPM) role at a company. It encompasses understanding what to build, why to build it, and how to position it. Severance was great, though. Two weeks ago, I signed an offer for my very first Product Manager role at a unicorn startup! 🦄 Here are some tips that helped my resume stand out: Keep the Design Simple. Within a mid-large sized org, joining teams that work intimately with product management make the transition to a product role relatively easier. It’s not as simple as experience>education, since experience+education>experience. Every resource recommended here is vetted and peer-reviewed by members of the community (please check out the accompanied links for full discussions). A lot less talking to users in my experience. PM courses are great in theory, but don't hold water in the vast majority of orgs. I'm probably off here and there. I agree with what you said wholeheartedly. Period! When I started as Product Owner and next position as Product Manager, the program helped so much. My job is to do whatever needs to be done to make the product successful. While this often results in lots of time spent with engineers to ensure we have the right product, it can also mean getting in the weeds on reported issues with a high profile customer, speaking at industry events, training internal teams on how to use the product, or I’m looking for product management, strategy, and business development/analyst positions, but am open to anything that will allow me to gain experience in the business and entrepreneurial landscape! Qualifications: Product management intern at local startup (interviewed customers and presented feedback to developers and UX/UI teams) The way it's handled can be very different from company to company. Have also planned out and run an internship. Topics include your daily work life, goals, challenges, market research, regulatory hurdles, implementing AI, decision-making, and more. r/ProductManagement: Product Management. Whether you "do anything" will depend on if the outcome is the result, e. Join a medium to large sized product company, and then internally move to a PM role. Director of Product Management > CEO Product Management is a vast ocean that is supposed to fill every crevice not already filled in by specialists. So you really need to understand the product and backlog work items. PO is effectively a PM (PM = product manager, never project) that owns a specific product. Lots of Atlassian - Confluence, Jira, and Jira Product Discovery are probably the tools I use the most. Product management is a type of activity that won't necessarily produce better outcomes if you will be simply throwing more time on it. I was about to take an internal transfer to a product management role solely to gain some more commercial experience. P. Location: Remote MCOL, USA Type of company (Public / Private / Startup stage): Series A Years of experience breakdown (Total, PM experience, years at current company): 3 YOE in my industry -> Started a company in my industry and ran it for 4 years -> Company failed and transitioned to current company where I've worked in product for 2 years (pre-transition post in this sub; post-transition You're welcome. I think by definition Product Managers are the single point-of-contact and most knowledgeable about a product. Most tech leaders still don't really give enough "respect" to product management and design, they don't fear it either the way they fear "quality, security complaince groups", so in companies where product is heavily driven by engineering you are there along with design because " higher management wanted to follow an agile framework ". I'd look at trying to cut down the bullet points a bit in the PM role to avoid looking like a job description. It uses a forum format for communication. I was just wondering what people do after becoming a Product Manager besides working your way up the ladder in the product field (eg. Principal PM (basically PM4), which is the upper end of the IC track, and GPM (Group Product Manager), which is the first level of PM people management. Usually, you kind of know what you need to build. Look Coursera, the program from University of Virginia about Product Management, it's a good course and good university. Some of the teams that fit this criterion are product analytics, growth, and project management. I have worked with project managers in a particular feature/set of features of a product, but ultimately the product manager is the person managing the product lifecycle (ultimately making sure you build the right thing) . clear learning objectives and exposure to diff aspects of the role) with checkpoints to review progress with the intern. Product Management Certification from Upgrad > Paid course, although checking out free courses on udemy and coursera are good enough to get you to transitioning I’ll expand the question to product owner and product manager In my experience (as an engineering manager) the product owner (or, the position that primarily sits between the business and the dev teams) seems to be the most stressful position. Yo I've done both You miss a huge amount of the essential PM tech company experience in a consulting digital practice, from hard skills (scaling from an MVP to a fully featured, metric'd, CI/CD'd operational product or service pillar, as you're never on long enough engagements to actually own something and are almost always just making prototypes) to soft skills (making, defending and owning I am excited to share my knowledge in the Product space that I have gained over the course of 10 years with the product school reddit community Feel free to ask me anything from interviewing to vision led product management and everything in between. Now for me it is: Amsterdam, the Netherlands High CoL Private pre-IPO scale up in software Group Product Manager 4 years as a PM, 4. But every product manager does project management. A couple that come to mind: What is the vision/value proposition of our product? What value is this work item providing to our customers/integration partners? I always felt that CPG Brand Management and Tech Product Marketing were the two sweetest spots outside of some strategy LDP for a company like Corning. I think this is true for PMs in non-tech companies where strategy, vision, product-market fit are determined by the business and tech is considered a cost center (eg banking). This is also comparable to my reports, no difference between men and women. becoming senior product managers, Director of Product, CPO, etc. When a less technical Product person works best is when they are basically the customer for the tech team. Business folks help analyze the business environment and fund the work, like a Producer on a film vs the Product Manager who is more the Director. After the 2 years, i was in CSM for a year, and then hired as the product manager, as I had gotten more knowledge from both the technical side and business side of our company and product. Honestly, it's a very good resume, whole lot better than 95% on here. Product Management is the art and science of building the right product for the right people. It wouldn’t really be product management - at best I could see people freelance one aspect of Product Management: Design consulting, Business strategy consulting, Go-to market consulting, Project management, etc. Best of luck product managin'! Remember, just keep things moving. Hey all, I’m product manager at Microsoft, working on the Microsoft Teams application Platform. I'd say the number 1 most important thing is that you have a structured plan (incl. 4-time tech PM here. Prioritise, optimise, delegate. It's mainly selling through word of mouth. However for tech and startups the role is much needed, the product is the profit center and will need the mix of strategy and tech skills that PMs there are required hl have. It has been our biggest Achilles heel. It’s tough being a good product manager! No. So my takeaway is, gain knowledge of the product and what is moving in the markets, be curious and seek information. Tell me about a recent feature you delivered and how you went about communicating the plan and enablement for success. Most product managers would benefit from reviewing I was in support for several years before moving to a Product Owner role within the company (for the product I did support for). Getting there but still at my full-time job as an engineering manager. More people who you’re competing with for senior director and VP positions will have them than not and with equivalent experience (on paper), Some companies (usually big corporations specially in fintech industry) divide PM role into "Inbound product manager" who is mostly responsible for R&D related process, and "outbound product manager" who mostly responsible for the business and client facing aspects a product management, and let's not forget the execution manger that accompanies My wife invented a niche hair products line. It was about $750 at the time. Some PMs own products that span multiple teams. . In addition to this find a product manager you can bounce ideas off. successfully solving a problem or pain point. Product Ownership is a part of what a product manager does but by far not everything. This is b/c 80% of a PM's success & failure depends on adopting the norms of the people in adjacent silos. I know some (maybe all) of the FAANGs have Product Management Office, and levels of Product Managers starting with Associate and going up. That's what I think. But that’s not a bad thing! Testing communication skills (I put this into your format above :) ) Q: A key part of being an effective product manager is high quality communication across multiple stakeholders, up, down and across. Work-life balance is in your head (and working environment maybe, I'm in Europe). Hey Product managers, What has been your top learning on the topic of product management in 2022? Please include specific links where possible (links to tweets/threads, podcast episodes, YT videos, books, newsletter edition, articles) And yes I can confirm that if you ever told any product manager thst you make decisions based of instinct or gut feels at medium - large organizations that they won’t appreciate it very much; it’s basically say they what you think is right but you’re not going to validate your theory because you know your right; which is not a mindset a I took a product management course through the Stanford Extension and found it valuable. Austin TX, public but not faang , Product Manager, BBA ‘18, 3 YOE $125k base, 10-20% bonus, $40k annual RSUs that will increase to 70k annually when promoted (hopefully this year) Got into an APM program right out of college, very lucky to start my career in product management This is how I approach Product Management as well. Mar 18, 2025 · Hi everyone, I'm preparing for a senior Product Manager interview at Reddit and would appreciate any insights into the interview process. Product Owner is a function (originally coming out of SCRUM) where you organize the work and "own" the product backlog and prioritize work. Product Manager > PMO Manager > Director of Product Management > Sr. In these companies, the Product Manager was responsible for the strategy and roadmap for the product including its backlog. The product case category consists of the following types of questions: Guesstimate Product improvement Product design Metrics Execution How to use the four-week schedule. But, that's not universal. This is a good time to calibrate on Bookstore clerk > Parking Attendant > Data Entry Analyst > Customer Service Rep > Jr. Principals lead entire product verticals, GPMs manage teams and usually own an entire product or a fairly large portfolio of problem spaces. Product Management/ownership is a lot of keeping stakeholders happy so try to relate that to how you worked with clients in support. Just try to align your experience with the role. Dec 10, 2024 · Part marketer, part engineer, part sales, and part project manager, the product manager needs to understand the business, marketplace and customer to make sure they come together to form an amazing product. I've started a company but not quite ready for full-time yet. Share your experience and help us understand the product management landscape in healthcare. My biggest challenge to date has been making her write content. ) and about 2 years As a product manager I had a similar wage but I did soon after made the jump to senior PM. ) Product manager manages the vision of the product direction and prioritizes work to be done on the product (but not how the work will be done or how the engineers operate, they have no authority there). But not always the case. Product marketers are supposed to get these products off the shelves and to the customers. Yeah, this is the answer. The technical aspect is handled by the tech team. Simply put, product managers are responsible for putting products on the shelves. fwcx ong vbqmc vwcvag bgdr nwh cxgnyl bfujt fty uheix