Life as a Product Manager
Meetups for product managers, the myth of glamorous travel, and the frustration of answering basic questions take center stage.
Over a decade of exposing some of the seamier sides of the profession of Product Management. An irreverent traipse through the thickets, some past wisdom, packaged with wit, profanity, and references to intoxicating substances.
Strap in, it's gonna get bumpy!
Product managers spend a significant amount of time answering basic questions instead of focusing on higher-value tasks
No long post today, but some observations that the Dude is making while in the thick of it. Once in a while, the Dude will put on his formal bathrobe and attend a meetup with a White Russian in hand and mingle with other product managers.
Invariably, these events are flooded with product managers who are between gigs, and looking for a job, but there are a healthy number of people who see the role and profession of "Product Management" as something to aspire to.
The Dude never aspired to it; he fell into it. But that was how it was in the last millennium. Today, people want to become product managers.
Strange, but whatever.
A question that is heard over and over (and over) is what does a typical day as a product manager entail. There is this mythos that we fly all over the world, to talk to customers/potential customers, to ferret out their unmet needs and then write brilliant case studies that lead to awesome development efforts, with riches and accolades being lauded on the product manager for their instrumental insight that led to solving world hunger. (n.b.: if you want to get rich, go into sales)
But, as I sit here, I realize that what seems like the majority of my time is spent answering questions from sales/Biz Dev/customers/internal stakeholders/etc that they should be able to answer by looking at the build plan, the internal issue tracker (Jira), the published roadmap (on our internal document servers they all have read access to), or the FUCKING PUBLISHED PRICE SHEETS.
But no, they ask the product manager, and the product manager spits out the nugget of data they need. Because the product manager just knows it all. And, should the product manager even hint to these group's leader that they really ought to be able to figure this shit out from all the information at their fingertips, well, then the Dude's manager has a chat with the Dude about "attitude" and "team spirit" and some other cockamamie bullshit.
Yes, the Dude is overstating how much of his time is spent on this menial shit, but there are at least two requests per day that the requestor should have been able to find it on their own.
Here, let me Google that shit for you...
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