I hate PM interviews, especially at big companies. I feel like what is asked in these interviews is rarely a good measure of how well you will perform on the job.
I’ve founded and sold two successful boot strapped startups which were generating low seven figure annual profits so I get interviews but then get asked the most abstract interview questions and don’t get offers.
As I’m looking to start a family with my partner though, I’m looking for a more stable career path and think product management at a established company would be a good path.
I’ve read decode and conquer and cracking the pm interview but don’t think they helped all that much. Does anyone have recommendations of resources for getting better at pm interviews at FAANG companies?
#product #productmanager #pm #productmanager
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The hype cycle around investment banking collapsed in 2008, followed by management consulting losing luster and now they all want to become FAANG PMs. 10 years ago no MBA graduate wanted to be a PM unless they came from an engineering background. Now every MBA grad wants to get into FAANG.
And with this pointless randomness FAANG companies overrun by failed/ex management consultants have created the new case study inspired interview format with the BS emphasis on frameworks and ‘structure’ for product design, estimation, issue analysis and behavioral questions. It’s all become like an MBA admission where you need to write heroic BS essays just to get in rather than talk about what matters or your track record. Domain expertise or years of experience is irrelevant for the most part now.
Get ready to get interviewed by a confident 23 year old with no experience and learn how to ‘ace’ interviews from gimmicky tryexponent or product school or stellarpeers - the cottage industry that has mushroomed around PM interview training. It doesn’t matter how many successful products you brought to market or analytical capabilities or how much domain knowledge you have or how problem solving actually works in the real world. What matters is confidence, confidence, and more confidence in the interview regardless of capability. Project confidence and put your ideas in CIRCLES and you are in. As though in the real world people use CIRCLES for product design!
MBAs with not STEM background or work experience usually go for non-technical PM roles these days. A few go technical if they took enough STEM eligible courses in their STEM-designated MBA program (all that means is they added enough electives to meet the minimum standard for STEM)
Reality of interviewing is that it’s a crap shoot who you get in your interview loop. Rarely are different candidates evaluated by the same yardstick because rarely are they interviewed by the exact same people. Every. Single. Interview. Loop. Is different from every other and standardization of outcomes is a myth. Your odds always come down to luck of the draw that depends on the mindset and character of the interviewers.
Having said that — yes there is standardization of the questions and preparation does pay off. The product manager interview by Lewis Lin is honestly the best resource I’ve found, it’s literally the questions that places like Facebook, Amazon, etc will ask you, and the answers in the book are *good*, they give you exactly the type of answer that people are trained to look for. I haven’t read his decode and conquer book so dunno about that one.
One thing to keep in mind is that the interview process at large tech co’s isn’t built to be fair to candidates. It’s built to make sure only the people with a mindset that is most likely to fit into the environment pass it, and they’re totally OK with saying “no” to smart, talented people who would be wildly successful but who don’t fit a certain mold and thus are “unknown elements” aka risky — in other words, accept only the candidates that you know how to evaluate as people that will be productive in your environment, and deny everyone else.
So when you put all that together, my recommendation is this:
1) Don’t just read the book, practice actually doing the test. You need practical ability to get at the answers they’re trained to look for, so you can adapt it to the exact question you’ll be asked.
2) Try to reverse engineer what the interviewer’s state of mind will be — in addition to generally applying the framework they were taught in a one-hour course on how to interview at their company, they’re overworked and stressed, somewhat annoyed at having to do interviews probably for someone who isn’t even on their team, pissed off at the idiots they’ve had to work with on other teams who they wonder how they made it through the process, and just want to make sure the candidate isn’t an idiot: in practice that means they want to hire someone who thinks, talks, and acts like them (yes that’s unconscious bias at work. Use it to your advantage). You *need* to come off like “one of the pack,” if you’re flying your unique personality flag through the whole thing it’s almost guaranteed at least one of the people on the panel will reject that regardless of your skillset or intelligence, and you’ll wash out.
3) play the numbers game. Recruiters also know all of the above. Unless you totally botched the interview, they’re more than happy to bring you in again six months later — if your resume is good and you’re a match for the people they look for, they know that often second, third, or fourth time is the charm. So realistically you may need to turn your goal into a 18-24 month goal across a few big co’s, and play the odds until you land a panel who’s friendly to your particular idiosyncrasies, and are well prepared with the right mindset and answers. This is what many PMs who are *in* big tech co’s do as well to achieve good job mobility — they interview everywhere at least once a year so if/when they decide to move they have better odds.
Good luck.
The only thing I would add is that OP should be aiming to do practice interviews with experienced PM interviewers. There’s absolutely no point practicing with people who lack the background to give you very specific feedback about what you’re doing well and where you need to improve.
I can’t talk more without doxxing myself, but the bar raiser in particular knew VERY intricate details about my product— and absolutely would have left for me dead had I not been ready. The only additional advice I can offer is our industry is very small, if you work on a product for a FAANG, no matter how niche, there’s a good chance Amazon has a team working on something similar, will match you with someone in that team, and they’re going to grill you on specifics that you don’t bring up but better know.