I used to think of a PM as someone that simply “bridged the gap” between the UXR, design, and engineering teams, while also ensuring that the product would achieve the business and financial goals. The image was always hazy in my mind—maybe a person that follows the product throughout its lifecycle, working with a different team at each step, deciding and overseeing what’s being implemented and prioritized, etc. Although I didn’t think that the PM makes the product, I always assumed that they had a lot of control over it.
After the reading, however, it’s clear to me that a PM’s job can’t be so easily defined. At a small startup, a PM might put together product mock-ups, schedule check-ins with developers, conduct informal interviews with prospective users. At a medium sized tech company, a PM might run planning meetings with designers and devs, negotiate product roadmaps with senior execs, work with sales and customer service to understand/prioritize user needs, etc.
Although Lemay emphasizes that a PM’s role can entail anything depending on what the business needs, there are universal truths to product management, which include: 1. not making the product, but being accountable for it, 2. working with research and analytics to develop a vision, 3. socializing that vision with *everyone*, and getting buy-in from executives and the product team, 4. working across the company with all levels of the organization. He goes on to say that in practice, a PM “pushes relentless to get any kind of clarity about what the business’s ‘goals’ actually are.”
I now understand a PM to be the person that’s responsible for “doing whatever needs to get done.” There’s a lot of responsibility but little authority at the same time. The PM is held responsible if any deadline is missed and if the product didn’t meet its quarterly goals, regardless of how the rest of the organization was supporting the product. Product management means translating between business needs and user goals, mediating any conflicts between different teams, connecting high-level company strategy with day-to-day product decisions, etc. A PM has to learn/know how to navigate different communication styles and understand the differences between what someone says and what they actually mean. As Lemay says, “Making connections between messy, real-world people is your work.”
A question I have for Lemay includes:
APM roles now exist for college students (interns) and new grads, but there are still significantly less spots for APM than there are SWE roles. If one doesn’t land an APM role, but is still in tech/product-adjacent, what’s the best trajectory to become a PM?
