I'm a new grad going to be starting as an APM at a bay company (non FAANG). Do you guys have any advice? I'm worried I'm under qualified and am nervous in general.
Congratulations! You aren’t under-qualified if you got the job. Impostor Syndrome is common when starting out. You are worthy or will become worthy.
Thank you for the kind words :) I'm beyond excited, just seeing others that are doing newgrad PM who seem way more qualified than me and it can be a bit intimidating. Doing it best to learn we much as I can before I start work
No one's going to expect you to come out swinging and building strategy like a boss. Go in and learn the product - personas, cujs, tech stack, dev/testing/release process, business model, etc, learn the team, learn the politics, learn your competitors and how they differentiate. Try to talk to customers if you can, where they are having pain, what motivates them. Read other pms artifacts. Also https://github.com/ProductHired/open-product-management/blob/master/README.md
Yeah I've got this bookmarked! Used it a lot when preparing for interviews. Do you know what I should do to prepare for getting ready to work with engineers? While I had a technical round with an EM, I don't have a technical background and am worried that will hurt a bit internally. Any advice?
Well you won't become a cs major overnight/ever so no need to pretend. I've worked with non tech pms as a swe in the past and it was all good as long as they don't take the "just figure it out and build this thing I asked for" outlook on technical challenges. You don't need to know how a binary tree gets balanced to have empathy with your users and spot market trends. Find an engineer who seems amiable and ask questions about the stack and be candish about your tech background. Focus your time on the technologies used, but don't get bogged down with shit like java vs kotlin, look at the broader picture, what systems or services does a request flow through (like load balancer to service a to service b to datastore a and then to service c before returning some thing to the user before logging some analytics to datastore b) In my experience engineers like it when product tries to understand the technical trade offs that went into the architecture. Not to overstate, but learn the dev, testing and release process. How does user story get from your brain to users computer.
I am in the same boat,..following this thread to get more advice
Good luck!
@sharp123 which company you joining as PM? You moving from Qa?
Most every new grad is under qualified. We hire them based on potential. Advice is to not wait or expect any training. Learn to self-learn. You will need it. That alone will make a difference and ensure you stay afloat and succeed.
Thank you! I will for sure be doing as much research as I can. Anything specifically technical I should look into? I don't have a technical background and am a little worried about that.
Start building a webpage at least. Then write a hello world in several languages: assembly, c++, some scripting, some procedural and some object oriented languages. Get the basics down. If you don’t develop at least the basic technical competencies your engineers will not respect you and you won’t be able to influence them/lead them. Remember as a PM you have to lead without power, so its up to your influence, relationships, reputation and outcomes. Learn! Practice! Ask questions to everyone you interact with about their role. You need to understand what engineering does, what design does and what QA does, etc, if you want to lead all disciplines to a common goal. Also, understand that as a PM you will be blamed for any failure and you will not get credit for any success. Think of yourself as a facilitator, a mother, a slave at the service of everyone working on your project, a psychotherapist, etc. Be humble but assertive. Quiet but smart. Learn how to communicate with engineers (they are a special breed but if you can get through them you will find in them the best allies). Become friends with a developer. He will likely give you the best advice to become a strong PM, after all PM is engineering’s cheerleader/administrative assistant whether we like it or not.
Also. Awareness. Awareness about anything and everything is key, specially for a PM/biz but really for any role. The more you see, the more you know, the better your aim and predictions and the more successful and straight-forward your execution.
Good PMs don’t love PMing. Bad ones love it because they aren’t stressed continuously. PM is a thankless painful job. Do something else more fulfilling and train for hard skills.
This is true. But a few years PMing gives you a good intro to the industry and business side of things. If you are a good business person stay, if you hate the business/influencing/herding cats part, become a technical writer, a tester, a designer, an evangelist, etc, and if you actually love code, a developer. I don’t think there is a better job than that of a developer. They are Gods and run the show from their basement wearing pajamas. They don’t even realize that but their TC’s speak for themselves. If I knew what I know now I would have chosen development and not any of the other core disciplines in tech.
I think the idea that pm is thankless and painful is a meme. Good PMs make buco bucks and have god like stature in many places.
Congrats. DM if you need any help. I was lucky enough to have mentors when I started and it helped a lot.
Everything you’ve written on this thread, OP, suggests that you are going to be a great PM.
Thank you!
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