A product manager’s role is dynamic and requires wearing many hats. As the author puts it – a PM lives in the “middle” and it is hard to strictly define the role from one company to another. Although product managers can come from various backgrounds (non-technical / technical), they all seem to find a way to understand stakeholder interests – across engineering, design, C-suite, etc.-, build collaboration within the team, set and manage expectations, delegate but also fill in the holes as necessary. No job is beneath a product manager and the job is to do jobs that others don’t do. Although it is difficult to quantify results compared to a software engineer or designer for example, product managers have to learn to be comfortable under pressure and uncertainty and must remain proactive without explicit instructions. They are the “mini-CEO” of the product at the end of the day with the responsibility that comes with it but without the authority and must learn to successfully operate under that dynamic.
Questions for the author:
- How do you think about delegating tasks that need to be completed without micromanaging and getting in the way of your engineering and design teams?
- How do you decide what customer feedback is useful versus what feedback does not align with the product vision?
- How would you respond to the common sentiment in the tech industry right now that multiple product managers slow down a company? A commonly cited example is the success of Telegram as the founder is the sole product manager in the entire company,
