Why You Shouldn't Be a Product Manager

in this video we're going to talk about why you should not be a product manager [Music] my name is kevin way i'm a pm myself and i'm here to help you learn more about product management be sure to like subscribe and hit the notification bell for new tech interview prep videos every single week product management is one of the trendiest jobs in tech right now some folks try to transition internally from engineering or data to product while others go to business school in order to make the switch a product management career can be incredibly fulfilling as you use technology to build products to solve problems that impact users across the entire world however being a pm might not be for everyone in this video we'll go over four reasons why you should not be a product manager as a disclaimer the contents of this video was a collaborative effort and does not reflect the views or opinions of any company i've worked with past or present first strategic decision is not yours to own a lot of people like to think that pms are the ceos of the product but don't kid yourself the job's not that sexy what's most likely to happen is that leadership and upper management will set the direction of the company and the products and as the pm you'll just be entrusted to follow through on the company's objectives and vision companies usually rely on product directors to understand the business landscape and make product decisions based on information that they see and sometimes due to private information they may not be able to share certain things with you your job as the pm will then be to execute on the game plan next the day-to-day roles is not predictable your day-to-day work will not be as predictable as other nine-to-five jobs you might be pulled into fires to help unblock engineering or you might need to quickly put together some design because your team just doesn't have design resources you might have to hop on a call early in the morning or late into the night to collaborate with other teams in other time zones if you're the kind of person who needs consistency every single day then you're probably not ready to be a product manager pms don't have a fixed to-do list instead they're facilitators of building good products next you're responsible for a lot the third reason why you might not want to be a pm is that being a pm is much like being the captain of a sports team you don't have people power over any of your teammates when you're on the field and if things go well you get to celebrate with the team but if things go poorly like if a launch fails or if a feature breaks a lot of the blame will be directed to the pm if something breaks you'll hear like hey pm why didn't we have alerts or some guardrail metrics or when can we fix it or is there a faster way forward and if a feature doesn't go as planned it's on your shoulders to own that mistake it's on you to be a good planner listener and communicator you'll likely be in back-to-back meetings and many people from different teams will be asking you to make a decision good pms also need to work well under pressure and course correct gracefully if you prefer to work in a calmer environment the pm career might not be it for you slower career growth in some roles in tech like software engineering you might find yourself managing junior team members after spending three to four years in your career but for better or worse pms don't get that until much later it can take many many years to grow into a group product manager role or a more senior role that has you managing direct reports and if you're looking to grow into a management or leadership position shortly after transitioning in a project where you'll be managing people you'll be disappointed after you move through the ranks of apm pm pm2 you'll likely have more years to come until you get to become a people manager so yeah pms don't manage direct reports if building a team is something you like to do in the shorter term you might not want to be a product manager while product management is a super hot job right now it isn't for everyone but at its core the pm role is strategic and empathetic if you do enjoy listening to people digesting data and working with teams of all shapes and sizes a pm career might be right for you being a pm means you get to wear many different hats and you get to help your team build great products thanks for watching i hope this video helped you learn more about a career in product management and for more tech interview prep videos subscribe to this channel and visit try exponent dot com also comment below if there's anything else you'd like to see and good luck with your upcoming interviews [Music]

Channel: Exponent

Views: 55,176

Keywords: yt:cc=on

Id: lpNl6mne78o

Length: 4min 46sec (286 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 25 2022