Prior to this reading, I was somewhat worried that I did not have a concrete understanding of what being a product manager entails. After completing the reading, I still do not have this single, concrete definition that I desired, but it seems that nobody else truly does either. While the author frequently mentions that the actual tasks that come with the job will differ by company, I see a product manager’s job as doing whatever needs to be done to make sure the company is functional. Although there are many career paths that require problem solving, product managers take this to the next level. Every problem imaginable is your responsibility, even problems that have not yet been discovered. Product managers should be involved in every task that needs to be completed, yet avoid micromanaging.
There are a vast number of things that product managers should do, but I found it equally as valuable to learn about what they should not do. Prior to this reading, I had pictured the majority of product managers as the “Overachiever” archetype, pushing their team past reasonable limits (and reasonable working hours). I can also see how product managers, especially those early in their careers, can find themselves becoming the “Product Martyr”, performatively taking the blame for everything that goes wrong. Knowing which traits to avoid in a professional environment is extremely valuable, especially when these traits appear to be so easy to develop for product managers.
In terms of a question for the author, I was wondering how product management internships work. While we have established that there can be several ADPRs, do interns typically take on a subset of the product manager’s tasks, or do they usually have their own separate collection of responsibilities?
