How to transition into Product Management with Phillip, who shared his experiences transitioning from Engineering into Product Management and discuss the following topics: How to transition from an Engineer role to a PM role. How to overcome the challenges that arise while transitioning from Engineering to Product Management What you can do now to get a job in Product Management Takeaways: What is expected of a product manager What tech startups look for on a resume for a product manager candidate How to ace a product management interview How to keep up with the product management discipline

1. Director of Product at Glassdoor Talks:
How to Transition to Product Management

2. Tonight’s Speaker
Phillip Nelson
● linkedin.com/in/jphillipnelson
● jpnelson.com

3. Technical PM
Phillip Nelson
3

4. Engineer to PM Journey
Technica
l
Product
Roles
What
Vs
How
ExperienceSkills

5. About Me
Engineering Background
Product Background
Software Engineer
Founder
Product Leader
CS @ Cornell
Early stage venture-backed start-ups
Shoptap, Kite
Quixey, Glassdoor

6. Technology in a Product
Enabler
Unique
Constraints
Interfac
e
Wouldn’t be able to ship without
the tech.
Key Enabler
Tech is constraining product
goals.
Constraints
Tech is uniquely developed or
deployed.
Unique
Tech is required to use the
product.
Interface
Tech start-up Restaurant
AI start-up’s
model isn’t good
enough.
Commerce
company is
developing
custom web
app.
AI start-up is
creating new
pipelines.
Off the shelf
e-commerce
software
API service
Robot
hamburger
maker

7. Technical Products Require
Expertise
Enabler
Unique
Constraints
Interfac
e
Wouldn’t be able to ship without
the tech.
Key Enabler
Tech is constraining product
goals.
Constraints
Tech is uniquely developed or
deployed.
Unique
Tech is required to use the
product.
Interface

8. Deep understanding of key technologies to support the process of
understanding customer problems.
Technical PM
1
2
3
Understanding of technical considerations to better define and
communicate requirements.
Manage and support execution with development teams. Help to
communicate progress, issues and problems with non-technical
stakeholders.
A PM for a technical product who is a domain expert in
relevant key technologies

10. A TPM is Primarily a PM
Product
drives priority
Voice of the
user
Unwavering
focus on
what, not
how
Owner of
customer
success

11. A PM is not an Engineer
What How
VS

13. Search Service
A music search engine for mobile phone manufacturers
1. A mobile phone user looking for music to listen to can
search by musician or album to find a song to play
because users want to easily listen to music.
Customer Model
1. Tag musician and album entity types from user
queries.
2. ….
Technical Architecture
Search coverage
1. Mobile phone manufacturer customer requires
coverage of all songs on iTunes because they are
contractually obliged..
2. End-users require coverage of all top songs on
YouTube because that is where they listen to the most
music.
1. Crawl XML feed A; merge with B; expire C from index.
2. ...
Acquisition
What How

14. Search Service
A music search engine for mobile phone manufacturers
? Customer B requires a RESTful HTTP interface with JSON
responses structured as follows.
Customer
Interface
Fuzzy

15. Technical PM Interview
Product design
User Focus
Build and ship
Executi
on
Understand key
technologies
Expertis
e
Translate complex
subjects
Communicatio
n
Culture and team fit
Personality

16. Technical PM Interview
Product design
User
Focus
“You’ve been tasked to build a drone for Snapchat. How
would you design it?”
Do you think user first?

17. Technical PM Interview
Product intuition
User
Focus
“How do you prioritize new features?”
How do you get stuff done?
Build and ship
Executi
on

18. Product intuition
User
Focus
“What are all of the steps that occur between a URL entered
into a browser and the web page rendered to the user?”
Are you a domain expert?
Build and ship
Executi
on
Understand key
technologies
Expertis
e
Technical PM Interview

19. Product intuition
User
Focus “Explain how the web works to a 10 year old.”
Can you communicate to all
stakeholders? To any audience?
Build and ship
Executi
on
Understand key
technologies
Expertis
e
Translate complex
subjects
Communicatio
n
Technical PM Interview

20. Product intuition
User
Focus
“What is your proudest personal achievement in the last
year?”
Team Fit
Build and ship
Executi
on
Understand key
technologies
Expertis
e
Translate complex
subjects
Communicatio
n
Culture and team fit
Personality
Technical PM Interview

21. Technical PMs are often engineers - we can prototype!
Experience: Build something!
1
2
3
List out customers and their problems. Brainstorm and evaluate
solutions. Think user first! Technology last!
Ship the side project and learn from at least several customers.
What did you learn?
A PM is running a small start-up inside of a larger company.

22. Engineer to PM Journey
Technica
l
Product
Roles
What
Vs
How
ExperienceSkills

23. Questions?
Contact Information -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jphillipnelson/

24. Q&A

25. What does a PO do?
- Product Owner breaks down
technical requirements with Eng
team
- TPM works with customer to
ensure customer success
- Product Manager is Product
Owner in most companies

26. R+D team creates product with traction,
where do they go from here? How to build a
product from that?
- What makes this product viable suddenly?
- Introduce product development process, asking “Who
are the people using my product?’
- Starting process as early as possible, finding product-
specific technical owner to see if insights from these
learnings would impact future product development
- Building a roadmap from new discoveries that is user-
centric

27. If you were hired by CEO of Garmin, what
would you do?
- Strategy interview questions
- Understanding of business marketplace
- Market Opportunities
- Strengths and Weaknesses
- Competitive Analysis
- Business modeling
- Frameworks: 5 forces
- Model for assessing corporate strategy
- Case In Point (book)

28. How would you say ‘No’ to other business
units?
- Complex organizational stuff
- Prioritization exercise
- Selling ROI or Strategic aspects of argument

29. From engineer to entrepreneur, how much
does technical and product background
balance out?
- First startup: raised seed funding, Head of Product able
to hire engineers
- Customers of Pivotal Labs
- Learning how to initiate projects
- Breaking down stories into tasks
- Becoming a founder put pressure on Phillip to focus on
user and customer

30. Are there minimum requirements for PM
role? Specific items on a resume Phillip is
looking for?
- Not a big resume person
- Big fan of referrals, networking
- Academic backgrounds - Google, FB, LinkedIn
- Credentials pretty low - schools, companies
- Extra points for Product School ;)
- Side projects are really good
- Getting noticed on HackerNews, GitHub, etc
- Turns into introductions

31. You’re technical enough to know your
engineering team isn’t doing a great job,
what do you do?
- Respect the role
- ‘Are there other managers or leaders in the company I
can explain this to, and can help me effectively turn it
around?’
- E.g. Phillip meeting with VP, Product and Engineering
Manager to resolve conflict
- If you’re in a company where the truth doesn’t prevail,
then that’s wrong

32. Interview question:
“Solve design question using Circles Method”
“If you were to design a drone for Snapchat, how would you do
it?”
Phillip’s answer
- Context: Snap overview & bus model -
- Goal: continue to get great content, so users continue to engage with platform
- Design team is phenomenal - high standards
- Identify Personas - who will use the drone?
- User 1: 20-something guy from Santa Monica who surfs*
- User 2: Manhattanite 20-something women who goes out to the bars
- User 3: 18-year old woman who uses Snap with her friends
- Focus on User 1
- Prioritizing problems
- Which problem has most value?
- Camera not getting wet
- Hands free
- High quality videos/photos
- Best 15 sec videos while I’m surfing
- Population of surfers in US: 6 million

33. Phillip’s answer
- Focus on User 1
- Prioritizing problems
- Content is vertically aligned - how to get users to product content/use all
devices with drone?
Solution: Snap Drone can automatically take video of me while broadcasting to my friends live.
...But why not introduce Snapchat to other drone manufacturers?
- Works specifically on their platform, control vertical alignment and integration of devices and
content
- Probably won’t want 3rd party drones to create content on their platform based on company
mission and vision
Interview question:
“Solve design question using Circles Method”
“If you were to design a drone for Snapchat, how would you do
it?”