Microsoft PM Work
Do Program Managers at Microsoft get to work on the business side of things - strategy etc? Or can someone give me a high level look at the kinds of work they do? I'm most interested in doing market sizing, strategy, user research, feature requirements, rather than technical program management like helping devs choose APIs, etc. Thinking about joining Azure as a new grad. Also is it easy to transition to a Product Manager role from this? (either inside or outside the company)
Yes, in certain teams, like mine in Azure, PMs do work on short- and long-term strategies, pricing, competitive analysis and other businessy things, even early in the career. However, there's more to the job. One of the main responsibilities are defining features and setting prioritization, based on user research and customer feedback. There's not really any Product Manager role at Microsoft. You'll see some people with this title but they are essentially same as Program Managers in other teams. Also, the PM role varies across organizations and Azure is probably the closest to true product management.
How would you rate Business Applications Group (Dynamics 365 or Power Platform) or Cognition for closeness to Product Management.
Program managers at Microsoft are a combo of product and technical program managers rolled into one. Because of this the PM-dev ratio is lower than PM in other companies and you become super close to the 3-5 devs working on your features. Also scope is narrower because of the same reason but you have more control over it.
This role that you are describing is more in line with what business planning does in conjunction with PMs and PMMs
It depends on which product you are working on- if it’s a consumer product like outlook.com, Xbox etc, work is different vs working on services like Azure vs enterprise product as CRM. Even though which product you work on at a junior PM 1 level, you wouldn’t have much influence on product strategy, your focus will be on product/service delivery and feature definition like how this feature should be and how you can make it best. You will need to work with User researchers, designers & most importantly with engineers. This experience is definitely valued in industry and other tech companies including FANG, however if you really want to work on strategy the best place to work will be in Management consulting like McKinsey, BCG etc. There also you will not be defining strategy from Day 1 but you will be closer to strategy development than at Microsoft. My recommendation for new hires has always been to start career in management consulting and then get into product management because in the end PM makes more money than Management consultants in long run(because you get stocks which management consulting don’t they get heavy bonuses) & you have better work life balance(important in long run) but your consulting experience is much more valued in tech companies for e.g. skills like cost optimization, go to market, external partnership which most of PMs lack, so your growth as a GM or GPM will be faster.
Unless it's management consulting in bay area and Seattle would not recommend it since you would be doing strategy for other industries. hours and pressure are excruciating at consulting. After 3 years I was completely burnt out. Also PM make twice as much right after college, so better off becoming a consultant after an MBA.