đź’ˇ How to move into Product Management at your company (and more)
How to move into Product Management at your company
I am currently in the process of hiring a product manager for my team at Cloudflare. One of the neat things about Cloudflare is that internal candidates are encouraged to reach out to hiring managers to chat with them about the role. That means that I’ve had several really great conversations with colleagues over the past couple of weeks, many of them with folks who are in other parts of the org like BI, customer support, finance, engineering, etc. The question they have is, “how do I move into product management?”
It’s a great question, and after I’ve given the same answer a few times, I decided to just go ahead and write it down in our internal wiki as well. Below is a lightly edited version of the advice I shared, in case that’s helpful to anyone else who is trying to move into the PM role at their company:
- If you’re brand new to the job I have a couple of book recommendations to get a general sense of what good product management looks like. I recommend starting with Inspired by Marty Cagan, and Escaping the Build Trap by Melissa Perri. You’ll hear these two books mentioned a lot in our field, and they are classics for good reasons. After that, read everything you can get your hands on (but stay away from LinkedIn Influencers, that’s mostly ChatGPT content these days). For more book/newsletter recommendations, I have a running list here.
- Then—and this is the most important advice I have—do the job before you have the title. Every role can be expanded into some area of product management. Think deeply about the product(s) you support, what customers need, how it contributes to the business, what could be better, what you think the long-term strategy should be. Start exercising the PM muscle so that when the right role comes along internally, you’re ready for it.
- Publish your thinking. Every company has an internal wiki, many with personal spaces. Use it. If you have an idea for a product, or an analysis that’s interesting, or some thoughts on future strategy, write it down, publish it, and share it with the PM who works on that product. This is the best way to practice for the job—clear, succinct communication is a crucial skill, so this exercises that muscle as well.
If you learn the craft, practice the craft, and show publicly that you can do the craft, you’ll be well on your way to moving into product management at your company. When a good job rolls around you’ll be able to point towards the work you’ve done to give hiring managers a sense of your product skills.
And lastly, this is a great job. You will love it!
A few notes about the behavioral interview
I like Mike Hall’s tips for interviewers in his notes about behavioral interviews. The crux of the behavioral interview style is this:
I’d rather know what you’ve done than what you think, and I have adjusted my style a little to help candidates. I try to explain my process up front. “I’m going to ask you about times you did things because I really want to get down to how you work and what your experience is.”
It is, however, very important to realize that adjacent or related experiences are completely valid and should be encouraged:
If you want to build a diverse, vibrant team, or if you’re not one of those disasters of a manager who doesn’t understand that you need people at several levels of experience on a well-rounded team, then you need to think of a behavioral style not as a way to narrowly insist on stories that describe the exact thing you need done. Instead, you need to think in terms of the competencies the thing requires, and think of examples to ask for that reflect those competencies, not an exact task.
This is a good tip for candidates as well—don’t talk in generalities. Be specific about the ways in which you have solved a particular challenge in the past, what worked well, and what you have learned/would do differently next time.
Struggling with a Moral Panic Once Again
I’ve followed danah boyd’s work for a long time so when she says something I listen. Danah has been researching teens and technology her entire career. In Struggling with a Moral Panic Once Again she weighs in on the “is social media causing the teen mental health crisis?” debate:
I wish there was a panacea to the mental health epidemic we are seeing. I wish I could believe that eliminating tech would make everything hunky dory. Sadly, I know that what young people are facing is ecological. As a researcher, I know that young people’s relationship with tech is so much more complicated than pundits wish to suggest. I also know that the hardest part of being a parent is helping a child develop a range of social, emotional, and cognitive capacities so that they can be independent. And I know that excluding them from public life or telling them that they should be blocked from what adults value because their brains aren’t formed yet is a type of coddling that is outright destructive.
That last point is pretty important I think. Maybe one reason all the arguments about teens and social media resonate with so many parents is that we are the ones with the deeply troubled relationships with it… Anyway, there’s some great advice for parents in the essay as well. Also see The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?
Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers.
Thanks for reading Elezea! If you find these resources useful, I’d be grateful if you could share the blog with someone you like.
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PS. You look nice today 👌