To me, the image that Lemay paints of a product manager seems to be someone who can “do it all”, and is flexible and adaptable in many situations. This comes through in multiple ways, from the way he discusses the way product managers have lots of responsibility to the fact that “if it needs to get done, it’s part of your job” to the idea that many product related roles are ambiguous and defined differently from company to company. Product management also seems to be described as rather interdisciplinary, combining technical skills, design skills, and sales and business skills. There also seems to be a heavy focus on people, and how PMs have to deal with people’s on all levels, both internal to the company (talking with developers, designers, etc.) as well as external, in the form of users and potential customers.
I would like to ask the author more about how you deal with being caught “in the middle”, without a lot of authority to back you up, and how to improve your own flexibility and adaptability in this scenario, as well as some of the more concrete positives to what seems to be a pretty difficult, thankless job. I also wonder what he would recommend for different types of people when thinking about choosing between a more technical software engineering role and one that is product management focused.
