I’m interviewing at Google for an L7 PM role. I’m 15+ years into my career in software but I never had a CS major or a programming background. Have done fine as a founder and startup VP product as well as large company PM. BUT I’m a bit apprehensive about Google’s “CS required” mentality for PMs. And cognizant that PMs are expected to be more technical than most companies. Curious: — If you’re a senior level PM, what technical skills did you actually use on the job? — for a non CS major what subjects do you recommend they brush up on for actual job performance ? — What skills / domains are worth learning from scratch?
Low level google PM here. I write a lot of complex SQL queries, but don't do any real coding. I need to read and understand a lot of design docs. Occasionally I'll submit a CL for config file changes, whitelists, etc. Had never taken a CS class but had some experience doing basic scripting and stuff as well as data science stuff. I spent a month or so studying the basics of algorithms, data structures, and system design. I thought the tech interview was easier than PM ones. Senior PMs L6 and above are in meetings all day, they need to be able to understand technical trade-offs and and consume complex analysis, but definitely not coding anything.
@shellcrot were you in the Analyst type of job before? I’m not PM but doing a lot of PM jobs, so wondering how to make a transition
Op @Anqrs please share your experience/tips. Was there any phone interviews with programming or system design questions ?
I can help. On my first phone screen, was asked Object Oriented Programming and doubly linked list questions. On On-site, I got system design and algo question (medium leetcode question). I am not a CS grad and I feel like only an Engineer with an interest in program management can clear the interview. If someone who is technical but have been a TPM for a while, I am not sure if they will be technical enough to clear the algo round.
Thank you @EcVa56. Been a pm 10-12 years(technical enuf for system design, but not algo anymore, not MBA, been director/sr director, but hands on PM). Tototal 23 years experience first 10 in software (c,c++, Java, j2ee a lot). On fence if I should go through this or not 🤔 Did two rounds of phone screen in 2010 - was typical pm product / feature design business case questions. In 2016 one phone call, first question itself took the whole call -.it was technical design algo question, I didn't anticipate and wasnt prepared for that type. Since then, I have been believing that LeetCode is needed. My anticipated call is for Cloud PM ( my pm since 2010 has been cloud related).
Thank you, again!
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I am on the same boat. I am a Sr. TPgM at another company and will have an on-site with google next week. In my current role: - I did prototyping in Python for Machine Learning for an AI/ML project before it turned into a project. So my code has a lot of “brute force” and need to be optimized but it proves that a concept is doable. - System design is mostly around Hadoop HDFS, Hive, Pig, Impala,Kafka etc. I have yet to write any MapReduce job as I don’t have to in the past. I plan to practice a bit on it. Also do some back on the envelope calculation on distributed systems. I my current role, the architect did all these but I guess Google expect the TPgM to know the trade offs and challenge certain assumptions. It seems to make sense. - skills and domain: I am sticking to Python at the moment. Domain is in distributed systems and machine learning. It’s hard to stay technical as TPgM. 50-70% of my time spent on meetings, documentation, chasing loose ends; barely have any time to sit down, code, and improve ourselves.