How to Break into Product Management by Fitbit Product Manager
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Breaking into product management can be tough, especially when you don't have an official title to back up your chops. Jessica shared her introduction to the field, and her tips for others to get there.
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How to Break into Product Management by Fitbit Product Manager
- 1. How to Break into Product Management by Fitbit Product Manager www.productschool.com
- 2. FREE INVITE Join 23,000+ Product Managers on
- 3. COURSES Product Management Learn the skills you need to land a product manager job
- 4. COURSES Coding for Managers Build a website and gain the technical knowledge to lead software engineers
- 5. COURSES Data Analytics for Managers Learn the skills to understand web analytics, SQL and machine learning concepts
- 6. COURSES Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies Learn how to trade cryptocurrencies and build products using the blockchain
- 8. Tumbling into Product Jessica Uelmen Product School // April 2018
- 9. A bit about me... BS Electrical Engineering Spent 5 years at a small microcontroller & robotics company in Sacramento ME Engineering Management Officially transitioned to Product Management at Udacity Currently a Product Manager at Fitbit
- 10. Getting started in product is tough. (duh.)
- 11. Step 1 / Have no idea what you’re doing.
- 12. Step 2 / Build an understanding of the field. Go down the Google rabbit hole. Read books. Subscribe to publications. Talk to product managers at your company. Observe product managers at your company.
- 13. Step 3 / Be terribly confused.
- 14. Step 4 / Dive in. Identify a problem to solve in your organization. Pitch a solution to members of your product team. Shadow them as they work to implement.
- 15. Step 5 / Identify your strengths and weaknesses.
- 16. Step 6 / Practice product. Product managers need the following four things: the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, the tongue of a diplomat and the herding skills of an Australian Shepherd. -- Noah Askin
- 17. Step 7 / Develop your pitch, start interviewing. Just because you’ve never held a “product manager” title doesn’t mean you haven’t done the job. I did some of my best product work at a small company in Sacramento, years before I’d heard of product management.
- 18. Step 8 / Fail, and try again.
- 19. Step 8 / Land the job, fight imposter syndrome.
- 20. Tying it all together. Product Management is hard. You already have the skills to do the job. Be a sponge -- learn as much as you can about the role. Get comfortable with failure; learn from it. Stay curious and keep learning.
- 21. Thank you.
- 22. Part-time Product Management Courses in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, New York, Austin, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Denver, London, Toronto www.productschool.com
Editor's Notes
- You might find “tumbling” might be an interesting word choice here. However, I think it’s appropriate. Product is a difficult field to not only get started in, but also to feel like you have solid footing. I’m here today to share my experiences and hope it will be helpful to some of you out there.
- But to start things off, who the heck am I?
- So here I am, I’m at Fitbit, I’ve “made it” as a product manager. But getting there was hard. At times I was confused, felt I didn’t belong in the field, and thought I’d have a go at my childhood dream of being a witch. Though with no Hogwarts acceptance letter in sight, I soldiered on, learning a few things in the process. I’m going to share some of those learnings, alongside the steps I took to “arrive” in product.
- Everyone starts here. And you’ll often find yourself back here at many points in your career. It’s an uncomfortable, but crucial first step. And admitting you have no idea what you’re doing is SO. IMPORTANT. Because how can you learn and grow if you walk around thinking you know everything? Though this is the easiest step to admit defeat on. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by how much you don’t know and give up before you even start trying. As a recovering perfectionist, I know this all too well. But knowing you know nothing is the first
- This might be a result of my deep-rooted engineering brain, but to identify how to get to your end goal (that you know nothing about), you need to get an understanding of the system. So for product, when I identified that as a career path I wanted to follow, I needed some markers on what the role was so that I knew how to get there. There are a million ways to do this, and the easiest most obvious first step is to google what you’re interested in. This will lead you to interesting articles, thought leaders, and insights. Subscribe to ones you find interesting (personally, I love Signal v. Noise on Medium) and soak up a myriad of perspectives. And also, talk to product managers at your company, tell them you’re interested in the field. Ask them to share their story, what qualities they think make a good product manager. Then _observe_ PMs at your org. Sometimes what people say are very different from what they do.
- So at this point, you’ll probably have discovered a million different definitions from a million different people, and you’re not sure what’s right or wrong. That’s, well, product management for you. At this point, step away from the computer, attempt to clear your head, synthesize the information, and prep for step 4.
- Once you’ve got a general framework in mind, find the things you do well and hone in on them. Product management is incredibly broad, which can be confusing, per the last slide. But it’s also a benefit, because almost any discipline can map to a core competency of product management. So in my case, I was working as a program manager at Udacity. I was in charge of the iOS Developer Nanodegree, which was a program that taught how to become an iOS Developer. We started the level pretty high, assuming most individuals knew how to program. Post-launch, we quickly discovered that this wasn’t the case. However, in reviewing student performance data, I knew our current Nanodegree model wouldn’t work for the beginner programmer. We spent too long without students failing to get feedback on their work. And we knew video format was difficult to consume, especially for those with full-time jobs. We also knew that we had to get this product to market quickly, since the need was so great. So I brainstormed with my team of curriculum developers, and together, we devised a plan that would get us to market quickly and potentially solve some customer problems. Only problem was, it wouldn’t work with our current classroom environment.
- As you get to understand more about the role and key characteristics, you’ll also naturally notice areas where you can develop. Whether it’s advice from other product managers or tips you’ve read in an article, you’ll know where to focus. For me, I felt I was lacking a framework. I felt I was getting a lot of different definitions of product management from a lot of different people and I needed to form my own frame of reference. At the risk of sounding like an advertisement, I chose Product School for this task.
- Research. Build. Iterate. My favorite practice piece here is to research companies I’m interested in. I read reviews, search Twitter for feedback, try to find interviews with their leading product people. What I’m looking for here is opportunity: what is something the company should build based on what I’m seeing?
- As I mentioned earlier, product management is a very broad field, with plenty of correlations to a variety of roles. You should by now have an idea of how work you’ve done in maps to the core competencies of a product role.
- Here’s a dirty little not-so-secret: you’re not going to nail every interview. This actually took me a long time to come to terms with.
- The game’s not over once you land the job, I’m afraid. You’re now entering a world filled with extremely confident individuals who, at times, might seem completely out of your league. Don’t take that to mean that you don’t belong, or that you’ll never catch up.