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Product-building articles by PMs at major tech companies

430 points by itsrishabh 8y ago

cpeterso 8y ago
Some product and business management blogs that I follow: Google's re:Work blog: https://rework.withgoogle.com/ https://rework.withgoogle.com/ Harvard Business Review (HBR) blog: https://hbr.org/the-latest https://hbr.org/the-latest Practicing IT Project Manager blog shares curated links to project and product management articles: http://blog.practicingitpm.com/ http://blog.practicingitpm.com/
polote 8y ago
There is clearly a lack of boards/forums/websites dedicated to product managers. But what I miss the more is a website, when we can get valuable insights about best practices. On HN you can get super useful information about any stack/language/framework by reading the comments, but when you are a PM you have nowhere to get that kind of information
- adpirz 8y ago
  My partner is struggling with this very thing at her work, I'm curious: what are go-to resources for PMs in terms of professional development?
  - rock_hard 8y ago
    Working with more senior PMs is the only working solution I have found. Product Management is a very complex role...there is no straight forward learning path today other than doing the job ,building shit and strong mentor ship!
    - monkeydust 8y ago
      Totally agree. I've taken a number of juniors on over the years where I have spotted raw talent. I would say 50% of them are now killing it versus more experienced (and expensive) external hires. 20% are doing just fine. And 30% just couldn't make it work, at least in our organisation. It's a tough, complicated and at times lonely role but I wouldn't do anything else... working for someone else at least.
    - MrTonyD 8y ago
      I couldn't agree more. I had the PM title twice before I worked with some senior PMs at a very successful Fortune 50. What a difference experience makes. I cringe when I think about how incompetent I was in my first two PM roles.
      - mud_dauber 8y ago
        Ditto. My first three stints (albeit with zero help from peers or mentors) were terrible. It seems like you need a couple of epic screwups under your belt before the patterns start to present themselves.
        seekingcharlie 8y ago
        Would you be open to chatting to me as a mentor?
      - seekingcharlie 8y ago
        Would you be open to chatting to me as a mentor?
    - dawhizkid 8y ago
      It's also very different from company to company. Some companies will refuse to hire non-technical PMs. In other companies you will find PMs who do not know basic SQL. It's strange.
  - clairity 8y ago
    there was a spinoff professional networking/mentoring group whose name is escaping me at the moment, but she can find such resources via women in product: https://www.womenpm.org https://www.womenpm.org yc’s ffc ( https://blog.ycombinator.com/?s=ffc https://blog.ycombinator.com/?s=ffc ) is also useful for the more entrepreurially minded.
    - adpirz 8y ago
      Thank you for these!!
  - storgendibal 8y ago
    Gibson Biddle has some great articles and resources for PMs to develop their careers. http://www.gibsonbiddle.com/ http://www.gibsonbiddle.com/
  - clementkao 8y ago
    Part of the challenge here is that the product manager role itself isn't well-defined. My favorite analogy here is the one about cancer - cancer isn't one disease, it's thousands of diseases that all look the same on the surface, but are really different when you dive in. A cure for skin cancer doesn't really help get you closer to a cure for lung cancer, as an example. Specifically for your partner - what kind of product management is she doing? B2B or B2C? Customer-facing products or internal products? Web or mobile? The more specificity you have, the more likely you'll be able to find more relevant professional development resources for her particular flavor of product management. That being said - once a PM hits a particular threshold of experience and self-awareness, they can generally come up with their own professional development track, though it always helps to have a mentor.
- tschwimmer 8y ago
  Too true brother. Lots of fluffy thinkpieces that are really marketing or recruiting but very little substantive discussion about how to indentify and prioritize what’s important.
  - clementkao 8y ago
    Out of genuine curiosity - which topics or questions would be most valuable to you? I've written 50+ articles on Product Manager HQ, and the feedback I've heard from my readers thus far is that each one has been uniquely insightful, covering topics that they haven't yet seen discussed by other blogs. I'm doing my best to close knowledge gaps - would love to hear what's on your mind!
- pitzahoy 8y ago
  I know of a sub (https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductManagement/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductManagement/), but it doesn't seem to be kept up to date very well.
- SysINT 8y ago
  Are you looking for domain or technology specific project management (PM) information, or referencing best practices for PMs in general? E.g., is https://pm.stackexchange.com/ https://pm.stackexchange.com/ what you are looking for or more developer and technology-centric planning techniques?
  - pault 8y ago
    Project manager is not the same role as product manager
- myguysi 8y ago
  Might not be what you’re looking for but I’ve found the SVPG blog a good resource for reading: https://svpg.com/ https://svpg.com/ Though I think you’re possibly looking for discussions rather than lectures?
- carchase 8y ago
  A couple of sites that have been useful to me, in no particular order (not affiliated w/ any): - productmanagerhq.com - productschool.com - mindtheproduct.com - roadmap.com - departmentofproduct.com
  - NearAP 8y ago
    Another resource - https://www.forproductmanagers.com/ https://www.forproductmanagers.com/
    - m_krzem 8y ago
      This seems not to have been updated since July 2018, do you know what happened there?
  - 3into10power5 8y ago
    productmanagerhq.com has been a let down for me. Its mostly people sharing articles and tool recommendations. No real or deep discussion. No one points flaws in others thinking/products. I was very disappointed with the community. That said, the article recommendation in weekly newsletter are good .
    - BigJono 8y ago
      I find that's 99% of professional communities. Even the comments here. Cargo culting gets you way further in most careers than making good decisions. Unless you're high enough up in your company to seriously shape it's future, it's usually +EV to just follow the herd and to be seen doing it, loudly, and often. Hence all the shitty Medium articles about how great every single tool/ideology/framework/technique is.
  - villaumbrosia 8y ago
    Thanks for the mention of ProductSchool - we also have a whole bunch of other free resources / communities for PMs at: https://www.productschool.com/free-resources/ https://www.productschool.com/free-resources/
- mud_dauber 8y ago
  Sounds like a good reason to release an HN clone for PMs - or use the r/ProductManagement or r/prodmgmt forums on Reddit in a more consistent manner. I'm all for sharing best practices too - but they're locked in my Google Keep without real sharing capability. SMH.
  - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
    I can spin a clone up tonight if there is enough interest, cause it's something I think would be valuable. That said, we tried this before specifically for longer form hacker news discussions [1] and it died in less than a year. Not sure how to guage interest without seeming spammy, people can email me or just upvote this comment I suppose. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17091262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17091262 [2] https://hackerforums.co/ https://hackerforums.co/
    - aerophilic 8y ago
      What would a potential url be? Suspect it would be useful to keep the ycombinator “brand”. So maybe a sub-site like “pm.ycombinator.com”? Mentioning it here to see what others think... Edit: Another thought: what if there was a way to “set” an option which would “filter” ycombinator depending I your background interest? When submitting you “tag” of relevant to an area (such as pm, software dev, testing, etc). If you set your interest levels at the top, it will automatically prioritize items based on interest, but allow general interest items to remain on top. (Also avoids issue of second website to visit)
    - mud_dauber 8y ago
      I wouldn’t do it until we had a way of enforcing the no-fluff rule - even more so than generic up/down voting. I wish there was an ArXiV for this type of knowledge.
      - clementkao 8y ago
        I think the arXiv idea has a lot of merit! The key challenge there is that while scientists are expected to produce papers and to review papers, product managers are not expected to do so. We're expected to manage our products (which makes lots of sense), but that leaves us little time to curate a neutral and high-quality repository of product management knowledge. While I've done my best to share my knowledge in my spare time (I've published 50+ articles at Product Manager HQ), I strongly believe there's a systemic challenge at play here. Many of my colleagues are insanely good at what they do, yet they haven't written any articles on product management because that behavior isn't incentivized.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- s17n 8y ago
  It’s because the PM role is largely bullshit.
  - timlloyd 8y ago
    What experiences have you had which lead you to think that?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- dopeboy 8y ago
  Agreed. Have you checked out BestPracticer? I've found it useful and they have a PM section too: https://bestpracticer.com/topic/product-management-1519960042439x420131867052987200 https://bestpracticer.com/topic/product-management-151996004...
- dawhizkid 8y ago
  Has anyone noticed how few "Who's Hiring?" posts are looking for PMs. In an avg month with nearly 1000 comments, I see maybe 10-15 instances of the word "Product Manager"
  - NearAP 8y ago
    I believe companies have more software engineers than PMs which invariably means there will be more software engineering vacancies than PM vacancies I also think the attrition rate for PMs are much much lower than that of Developers.
    - opportune 8y ago
      Yeah, I don't think PMs can really burn out / grow to hate your job as easily as developers do (unless you just have low performance). Also their skills don't transfer as easily. I see people with the title of "PM" (not product though) I work with making more than me who just click through the data visualizations/backend I made and turn that into reports to management... why would anybody give up that job when 1) they are making a lot of money doing something low-stress 2) those skills don't transfer at all. It's also just a case where lots more people are qualified for this kind of job so it's not as hard to fill a position when the need arrises.
      - NearAP 8y ago
        >>>> It's also just a case where lots more people are qualified for this kind of job so it's not as hard to fill a position when the need arrises.>>>> Interesting. I think it's the opposite. Because PM culture differs from company to company, I feel like companies interview for PMs with a bias for how they expect their PMs to behave. This would be unlike Developers where companies are looking for folks proficient in specific languages. I've had friends who interviewed with companies for PM positions and the focus was on their doing great UI mockups. The interviewer was looking for good UIs. Unfortunately, these folks were coming from places where the UI mockup they did was just basic placement of elements to communicate the elements they expected their solutions to use. A seperate design team would later turn their mockups into beautiful UIs
- rchaud 8y ago
  The challenge in building such a community is that PM is a highly sought after job in the tech sector, so any forum or website built around PM discussion is inevitably going to turn into something like Medium, which today is a list of poorly written thought pieces by (mostly) amateurs.
  - lewislin 8y ago
    Agreed. Good PMs are busy, and busy ones don't have time to just hang out.
    - killjoywashere 8y ago
      This is where spending some years in a big organization can be really helpful. You can find mentors who have managed major products. You learn from them, but at least as importantly, you have their contact info and these are people who answer their email when you have an interesting problem or question for them. Doesn't have to be corporate. The high end of government has some really stratospheric talent executing high cost, high stakes projects.
    - yeahitslikethat 8y ago
      Those who can, do.
    - pry86 8y ago
      Really? Good developers are busy too. And somehow they have time to hang out too. Look all the available knowledge and OpenSource.
    - clementkao 8y ago
      While I agree that good PMs are busy, I'd argue that the bigger problem is that busy PMs aren't incentivized to share their knowledge. I've been doing my best to try to share my knowledge as a product manager (disclaimer, I write for Product Manager HQ), but that's been a challenge - it takes anywhere from 8-20 hours for me to pull together a thoughtful article, especially because I'm keenly aware of the fact that there's an overwhelming number of low-quality product management articles. I've been lucky to have time on weekends to write, and I know that's not a luxury that every product manager has. Many of my peers and colleagues are hesitant to jump into writing, specifically because they aren't incentivized to do so. (I'm incentivized by my personal mission "to make other people's lives happier, easier, and better", but personal missions can only incentivize a single person...) Hackathons are a great way for engineers to share their abilities with others outside of their day-to-day work. I wonder whether there are similar outlets for PMs - maybe some sort of open-mic for best practices, or a company-sponsored "blog day" where every PM sits down for the day and pulls together learnings?
- timlloyd 8y ago
  Following John Cutler, Marty Cagan and Teresa Torres helps
- bryanmccarty 8y ago
  It's already been mentioned by a few others, but just calling out Roadmap.com again. I actually help manage the community. So, if you have any feedback or things you'd like to see improved, send it my way. I'm always trying to make the site more functional and encourage meaningful conversations. Also, as a side note, we put up a monthly jobs thread on the 1st of each month (and it's pinned as the first question on the homepage). I just put up the February one this morning.
  - m_krzem 8y ago
    Wow, how have I never come across this site. What's your current strategy to encourage more meaningful conversations? I see in some threads you yourself add the first answer, I imagine to set the tone which I think is a good strategy. What's the current main problem? Not enough answers, or lack of "quality" answers? How do you quantify/measure quality interaction? Sorry for this inquisitive interview, it's just a very interesting topic. I'd like to automate my own processes, and haven't spoken to anyone managing a reddit-style forum before (apart form one guy who is creating one, but that's a dev more than a community person ^_^)
- m_krzem 8y ago
  I was researching this recently (why, I'll say in a sec), found a couple of interesting clack channels of sites people mentioned here: producthq, women in product, product coalition, product school, etc.. A lot of discussions are unstructured or hard to keep track of. I mean, it's slack, not a forum. What I'm helping create with the wonderful team at JAM London is a curated collection of 'Hot Tips' with short practical and no-nonsense answers form PMs for PMs. It's picking up interest, looks like your question hit the nail on the head! :D https://www.jamlondon.io/tips/ https://www.jamlondon.io/tips/
- clementkao 8y ago
  (Disclaimer - I'm a writer at Product Manager HQ, so my perspective is biased!) I've seen that boards/forums and websites/blogs are distinct categories of resources. I haven't found a board/forum that really helped me to grow as a product manager yet. My hypothesis is that because there are so many different kinds of product managers, it's difficult to hit any kind of critical mass of invested users who can all answer each other's questions. Even a forum with thousands of PM's may not succeed, because there are so many kinds of product managers (B2B vs B2C, web vs mobile, API vs UI, internal vs external, etc.) That said, there are Slack communities that are a bit more lively than boards/forums, but even then the user ratios are usually heavily skewed towards newer PMs rather than more tenured PMs. I strongly believe there are great websites/blogs, however. Two of my favorites (again, bias warning): 1) Product Manager HQ (https://www.productmanagerhq.com/ https://www.productmanagerhq.com/) - generally relevant content for aspiring PMs, new PMs, and experienced PMs. Not as much content for Heads of Product, unfortunately. 2) Black Box of Product Management (https://blackboxofpm.com/ https://blackboxofpm.com/) - solid resource for directors of product and higher.
captain_crabs 8y ago
General question I've been wondering tangentially related: Engineers: is working [edit: replacing 'under' with 'with' due to replies! good clarification, didn't mean under] with a non-technical product manager a dealbreaker for you? (Do you look to filter out places you'd work at while job searching?) Conversely, have you ever worked under a non-technical product manager you loved? Would you mind sharing details about your situation?
- StevePerkins 8y ago
  20-years in the industry and counting, and I've never even MET a "technical product manager". I have met a handful of people who somewhat thought of themselves as technical. Because they did a touch of Visual Basic or something in their first job out of school, before immediately washing out and pursuing a non-technical career. Some of those guys liked to talk loudly about how much they're "one of you", and "get it", etc. Without exception, that subset of PM's/PO's were absolutely dreadful to work with as a developer. I would ONLY want to work with a non-technical PM/PO, who stays in their lane and is comfortable with their role.
  - hector_vasquez 8y ago
    I work at a big company and about half the PMs I work with were developers, myself included (for around 15 years). I have found this to be totally normal both when I was coding all day and now that I'm managing all day. There are no lanes.
  - bshoemaker 8y ago
    You sound insufferable
- mikeleeorg 8y ago
  By "working under" do you mean having an engineer report directly to a product manager, where the PM is responsible for the engineer's career growth, compensation, reviews, etc? As a former engineer turned product manager, I would not advocate such a reporting structure. A PM wouldn't be the best person to help manage an engineer's career growth and everything else. I think it's perfectly fine to be on the same cross-functional team though.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ArtWomb 8y ago
This is glorious! And actually saves me quite a bit of time. This subject extends much deeper than the rote teaching of "soft skills" to engineers. And is more akin to realizing one's own humanity ;) I can also recommend a text called Product Design and Development used in the grad-level MIT class http://www.ulrich-eppinger.net/ http://www.ulrich-eppinger.net/
monkeydust 8y ago
Good to know there other PMs out there. I have found HN invaluable over last few years for news discovery and insights. Not sure we need a new board just more PM posts in this one.
ct520 8y ago
Great find thx for sharing
rblion 8y ago
Thanks, this is useful.
yingw787 8y ago
Two sites I've found on Product Management while listening to Indie Hackers podcasts include: - Product Management HQ: https://www.productmanagerhq.com/ https://www.productmanagerhq.com/ - Roadmap.com: https://www.roadmap.com/ https://www.roadmap.com/ I haven't used them enough to rate how good they are, though.
dawhizkid 8y ago
I've been a PM for over 2 years now, and not really sure it is right for me anymore. Anyone jump from PM to something else?
- dman 8y ago
  What were the parts that you thought were not a great fit?
  - dawhizkid 8y ago
    It's just an extremely nebulous role and completely different from company to company, which means you could be perceived as great in one co and terrible in another. I find it hard to measure my own real value.
    - NearAP 8y ago
      You're right - it differs from company to company. I think you'll enjoy the role if you are in a company where the PM drives the feature - the PM determines what features should be implemented, does the design (UI, logic, behavior, etc and then Dev does the technical design and codes it). One way to measure your value is also your ability to solve customer's problems. By this I mean - you could have a feature/capabilities and then a customer has a unique situation; being able to figure out how to use your feature in a non-conventional manner or coming up with a work-around (not one that creates a loop hole) to solve the problem can feel rewarding. The challenge though is that it is sometimes difficult to quantify this when you are trying to move companies
3into10power5 8y ago
Most of the Product related articles you see on medium or on internet are mostly ideas or advice. There are very few "rubber meets the road" kind of resources.
- clementkao 8y ago
  I'm curious to learn more! I've generally been trying to write articles based on personal experience rather than abstract frameworks or untested advice. In your mind, what would a "rubber meets the road" kind of resource look like? What sorts of questions would it address?
no6inbash 8y ago
I had high hopes for /r/ProductManagement/, but it's not very active. That said, here are a few of my favorite product management resources: - https://medium.com/@johnpcutler https://medium.com/@johnpcutler - https://www.productplan.com/blog/ https://www.productplan.com/blog/ - http://firstround.com/review/ http://firstround.com/review/ - https://www.kennorton.com/ https://www.kennorton.com/
rahimnathwani 8y ago
If you're looking for your next PM role in London, hit me up. Email address in profile.
- baxtr 8y ago
  Same here for Munich! :-)
adwivedi9994 8y ago
Agreed with the lack of resources being available. This is one of the main reasons why we, at Pendo, launched https://productcraft.com/ https://productcraft.com/
peterwwillis 8y ago
It's the same with DevOps. There are very few books and thousands of articles. I'm slowly trying to filter and categorize them so they can be reviewed and summarized, because only a few people will ever read these things and the information won't get to regular people.
xuesj 8y ago
Thanks! It is a good article about PM, I will recommend to my friends.
marenamm 8y ago
The Women in Product community is an incredible resource. If you’re a PM and identify as a women come join us at https://www.womenpm.org https://www.womenpm.org or https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=160194611065222&ref=content_filter https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=160194611065222&ref=co...!
qnsi 8y ago
Does anyone want to discuss website find.xyz? I have a hard time finding information on the internet. As they state on their website, if you google something it's SEO game and very often how much the article matches your keywords and not specifically highest quality articles first. However, I find it hard to find information on find.xyz that interests me. When you click on tech you see a lot of Benedict's tech news (Maybe he is investor?). Maybe the problem is the site seems to be new. How do you find information online? I tend to find best articles here on hackernews and on twitter, but it is very random. I wish there was a way to find high quality articles on stuff that interests me without googling for hours.

430 points by itsrishabh 8y ago

Some product and business management blogs that I follow: Google's re:Work blog: https://rework.withgoogle.com/ https://rework.withgoogle.com/ Harvard Business Review (HBR) blog: https://hbr.org/the-latest https://hbr.org/the-latest Practicing IT Project Manager blog shares curated links to project and product management articles: http://blog.practicingitpm.com/ http://blog.practicingitpm.com/

polote 8y ago

There is clearly a lack of boards/forums/websites dedicated to product managers. But what I miss the more is a website, when we can get valuable insights about best practices. On HN you can get super useful information about any stack/language/framework by reading the comments, but when you are a PM you have nowhere to get that kind of information

adpirz 8y ago
My partner is struggling with this very thing at her work, I'm curious: what are go-to resources for PMs in terms of professional development?
- rock_hard 8y ago
  Working with more senior PMs is the only working solution I have found. Product Management is a very complex role...there is no straight forward learning path today other than doing the job ,building shit and strong mentor ship!
  - monkeydust 8y ago
    Totally agree. I've taken a number of juniors on over the years where I have spotted raw talent. I would say 50% of them are now killing it versus more experienced (and expensive) external hires. 20% are doing just fine. And 30% just couldn't make it work, at least in our organisation. It's a tough, complicated and at times lonely role but I wouldn't do anything else... working for someone else at least.
  - MrTonyD 8y ago
    I couldn't agree more. I had the PM title twice before I worked with some senior PMs at a very successful Fortune 50. What a difference experience makes. I cringe when I think about how incompetent I was in my first two PM roles.
    - mud_dauber 8y ago
      Ditto. My first three stints (albeit with zero help from peers or mentors) were terrible. It seems like you need a couple of epic screwups under your belt before the patterns start to present themselves.
      - seekingcharlie 8y ago
        Would you be open to chatting to me as a mentor?
    - seekingcharlie 8y ago
      Would you be open to chatting to me as a mentor?
  - dawhizkid 8y ago
    It's also very different from company to company. Some companies will refuse to hire non-technical PMs. In other companies you will find PMs who do not know basic SQL. It's strange.
- clairity 8y ago
  there was a spinoff professional networking/mentoring group whose name is escaping me at the moment, but she can find such resources via women in product: https://www.womenpm.org https://www.womenpm.org yc’s ffc ( https://blog.ycombinator.com/?s=ffc https://blog.ycombinator.com/?s=ffc ) is also useful for the more entrepreurially minded.
  - adpirz 8y ago
    Thank you for these!!
- storgendibal 8y ago
  Gibson Biddle has some great articles and resources for PMs to develop their careers. http://www.gibsonbiddle.com/ http://www.gibsonbiddle.com/
- clementkao 8y ago
  Part of the challenge here is that the product manager role itself isn't well-defined. My favorite analogy here is the one about cancer - cancer isn't one disease, it's thousands of diseases that all look the same on the surface, but are really different when you dive in. A cure for skin cancer doesn't really help get you closer to a cure for lung cancer, as an example. Specifically for your partner - what kind of product management is she doing? B2B or B2C? Customer-facing products or internal products? Web or mobile? The more specificity you have, the more likely you'll be able to find more relevant professional development resources for her particular flavor of product management. That being said - once a PM hits a particular threshold of experience and self-awareness, they can generally come up with their own professional development track, though it always helps to have a mentor.
tschwimmer 8y ago
Too true brother. Lots of fluffy thinkpieces that are really marketing or recruiting but very little substantive discussion about how to indentify and prioritize what’s important.
- clementkao 8y ago
  Out of genuine curiosity - which topics or questions would be most valuable to you? I've written 50+ articles on Product Manager HQ, and the feedback I've heard from my readers thus far is that each one has been uniquely insightful, covering topics that they haven't yet seen discussed by other blogs. I'm doing my best to close knowledge gaps - would love to hear what's on your mind!
pitzahoy 8y ago
I know of a sub (https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductManagement/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProductManagement/), but it doesn't seem to be kept up to date very well.
SysINT 8y ago
Are you looking for domain or technology specific project management (PM) information, or referencing best practices for PMs in general? E.g., is https://pm.stackexchange.com/ https://pm.stackexchange.com/ what you are looking for or more developer and technology-centric planning techniques?
- pault 8y ago
  Project manager is not the same role as product manager
myguysi 8y ago
Might not be what you’re looking for but I’ve found the SVPG blog a good resource for reading: https://svpg.com/ https://svpg.com/ Though I think you’re possibly looking for discussions rather than lectures?
carchase 8y ago
A couple of sites that have been useful to me, in no particular order (not affiliated w/ any): - productmanagerhq.com - productschool.com - mindtheproduct.com - roadmap.com - departmentofproduct.com
- NearAP 8y ago
  Another resource - https://www.forproductmanagers.com/ https://www.forproductmanagers.com/
  - m_krzem 8y ago
    This seems not to have been updated since July 2018, do you know what happened there?
- 3into10power5 8y ago
  productmanagerhq.com has been a let down for me. Its mostly people sharing articles and tool recommendations. No real or deep discussion. No one points flaws in others thinking/products. I was very disappointed with the community. That said, the article recommendation in weekly newsletter are good .
  - BigJono 8y ago
    I find that's 99% of professional communities. Even the comments here. Cargo culting gets you way further in most careers than making good decisions. Unless you're high enough up in your company to seriously shape it's future, it's usually +EV to just follow the herd and to be seen doing it, loudly, and often. Hence all the shitty Medium articles about how great every single tool/ideology/framework/technique is.
- villaumbrosia 8y ago
  Thanks for the mention of ProductSchool - we also have a whole bunch of other free resources / communities for PMs at: https://www.productschool.com/free-resources/ https://www.productschool.com/free-resources/
mud_dauber 8y ago
Sounds like a good reason to release an HN clone for PMs - or use the r/ProductManagement or r/prodmgmt forums on Reddit in a more consistent manner. I'm all for sharing best practices too - but they're locked in my Google Keep without real sharing capability. SMH.
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  I can spin a clone up tonight if there is enough interest, cause it's something I think would be valuable. That said, we tried this before specifically for longer form hacker news discussions [1] and it died in less than a year. Not sure how to guage interest without seeming spammy, people can email me or just upvote this comment I suppose. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17091262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17091262 [2] https://hackerforums.co/ https://hackerforums.co/
  - aerophilic 8y ago
    What would a potential url be? Suspect it would be useful to keep the ycombinator “brand”. So maybe a sub-site like “pm.ycombinator.com”? Mentioning it here to see what others think... Edit: Another thought: what if there was a way to “set” an option which would “filter” ycombinator depending I your background interest? When submitting you “tag” of relevant to an area (such as pm, software dev, testing, etc). If you set your interest levels at the top, it will automatically prioritize items based on interest, but allow general interest items to remain on top. (Also avoids issue of second website to visit)
  - mud_dauber 8y ago
    I wouldn’t do it until we had a way of enforcing the no-fluff rule - even more so than generic up/down voting. I wish there was an ArXiV for this type of knowledge.
    - clementkao 8y ago
      I think the arXiv idea has a lot of merit! The key challenge there is that while scientists are expected to produce papers and to review papers, product managers are not expected to do so. We're expected to manage our products (which makes lots of sense), but that leaves us little time to curate a neutral and high-quality repository of product management knowledge. While I've done my best to share my knowledge in my spare time (I've published 50+ articles at Product Manager HQ), I strongly believe there's a systemic challenge at play here. Many of my colleagues are insanely good at what they do, yet they haven't written any articles on product management because that behavior isn't incentivized.
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s17n 8y ago
It’s because the PM role is largely bullshit.
- timlloyd 8y ago
  What experiences have you had which lead you to think that?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
dopeboy 8y ago
Agreed. Have you checked out BestPracticer? I've found it useful and they have a PM section too: https://bestpracticer.com/topic/product-management-1519960042439x420131867052987200 https://bestpracticer.com/topic/product-management-151996004...
dawhizkid 8y ago
Has anyone noticed how few "Who's Hiring?" posts are looking for PMs. In an avg month with nearly 1000 comments, I see maybe 10-15 instances of the word "Product Manager"
- NearAP 8y ago
  I believe companies have more software engineers than PMs which invariably means there will be more software engineering vacancies than PM vacancies I also think the attrition rate for PMs are much much lower than that of Developers.
  - opportune 8y ago
    Yeah, I don't think PMs can really burn out / grow to hate your job as easily as developers do (unless you just have low performance). Also their skills don't transfer as easily. I see people with the title of "PM" (not product though) I work with making more than me who just click through the data visualizations/backend I made and turn that into reports to management... why would anybody give up that job when 1) they are making a lot of money doing something low-stress 2) those skills don't transfer at all. It's also just a case where lots more people are qualified for this kind of job so it's not as hard to fill a position when the need arrises.
    - NearAP 8y ago
      >>>> It's also just a case where lots more people are qualified for this kind of job so it's not as hard to fill a position when the need arrises.>>>> Interesting. I think it's the opposite. Because PM culture differs from company to company, I feel like companies interview for PMs with a bias for how they expect their PMs to behave. This would be unlike Developers where companies are looking for folks proficient in specific languages. I've had friends who interviewed with companies for PM positions and the focus was on their doing great UI mockups. The interviewer was looking for good UIs. Unfortunately, these folks were coming from places where the UI mockup they did was just basic placement of elements to communicate the elements they expected their solutions to use. A seperate design team would later turn their mockups into beautiful UIs
rchaud 8y ago
The challenge in building such a community is that PM is a highly sought after job in the tech sector, so any forum or website built around PM discussion is inevitably going to turn into something like Medium, which today is a list of poorly written thought pieces by (mostly) amateurs.
- lewislin 8y ago
  Agreed. Good PMs are busy, and busy ones don't have time to just hang out.
  - killjoywashere 8y ago
    This is where spending some years in a big organization can be really helpful. You can find mentors who have managed major products. You learn from them, but at least as importantly, you have their contact info and these are people who answer their email when you have an interesting problem or question for them. Doesn't have to be corporate. The high end of government has some really stratospheric talent executing high cost, high stakes projects.
  - yeahitslikethat 8y ago
    Those who can, do.
  - pry86 8y ago
    Really? Good developers are busy too. And somehow they have time to hang out too. Look all the available knowledge and OpenSource.
  - clementkao 8y ago
    While I agree that good PMs are busy, I'd argue that the bigger problem is that busy PMs aren't incentivized to share their knowledge. I've been doing my best to try to share my knowledge as a product manager (disclaimer, I write for Product Manager HQ), but that's been a challenge - it takes anywhere from 8-20 hours for me to pull together a thoughtful article, especially because I'm keenly aware of the fact that there's an overwhelming number of low-quality product management articles. I've been lucky to have time on weekends to write, and I know that's not a luxury that every product manager has. Many of my peers and colleagues are hesitant to jump into writing, specifically because they aren't incentivized to do so. (I'm incentivized by my personal mission "to make other people's lives happier, easier, and better", but personal missions can only incentivize a single person...) Hackathons are a great way for engineers to share their abilities with others outside of their day-to-day work. I wonder whether there are similar outlets for PMs - maybe some sort of open-mic for best practices, or a company-sponsored "blog day" where every PM sits down for the day and pulls together learnings?
timlloyd 8y ago
Following John Cutler, Marty Cagan and Teresa Torres helps
bryanmccarty 8y ago
It's already been mentioned by a few others, but just calling out Roadmap.com again. I actually help manage the community. So, if you have any feedback or things you'd like to see improved, send it my way. I'm always trying to make the site more functional and encourage meaningful conversations. Also, as a side note, we put up a monthly jobs thread on the 1st of each month (and it's pinned as the first question on the homepage). I just put up the February one this morning.
- m_krzem 8y ago
  Wow, how have I never come across this site. What's your current strategy to encourage more meaningful conversations? I see in some threads you yourself add the first answer, I imagine to set the tone which I think is a good strategy. What's the current main problem? Not enough answers, or lack of "quality" answers? How do you quantify/measure quality interaction? Sorry for this inquisitive interview, it's just a very interesting topic. I'd like to automate my own processes, and haven't spoken to anyone managing a reddit-style forum before (apart form one guy who is creating one, but that's a dev more than a community person ^_^)
m_krzem 8y ago
I was researching this recently (why, I'll say in a sec), found a couple of interesting clack channels of sites people mentioned here: producthq, women in product, product coalition, product school, etc.. A lot of discussions are unstructured or hard to keep track of. I mean, it's slack, not a forum. What I'm helping create with the wonderful team at JAM London is a curated collection of 'Hot Tips' with short practical and no-nonsense answers form PMs for PMs. It's picking up interest, looks like your question hit the nail on the head! :D https://www.jamlondon.io/tips/ https://www.jamlondon.io/tips/
clementkao 8y ago
(Disclaimer - I'm a writer at Product Manager HQ, so my perspective is biased!) I've seen that boards/forums and websites/blogs are distinct categories of resources. I haven't found a board/forum that really helped me to grow as a product manager yet. My hypothesis is that because there are so many different kinds of product managers, it's difficult to hit any kind of critical mass of invested users who can all answer each other's questions. Even a forum with thousands of PM's may not succeed, because there are so many kinds of product managers (B2B vs B2C, web vs mobile, API vs UI, internal vs external, etc.) That said, there are Slack communities that are a bit more lively than boards/forums, but even then the user ratios are usually heavily skewed towards newer PMs rather than more tenured PMs. I strongly believe there are great websites/blogs, however. Two of my favorites (again, bias warning): 1) Product Manager HQ (https://www.productmanagerhq.com/ https://www.productmanagerhq.com/) - generally relevant content for aspiring PMs, new PMs, and experienced PMs. Not as much content for Heads of Product, unfortunately. 2) Black Box of Product Management (https://blackboxofpm.com/ https://blackboxofpm.com/) - solid resource for directors of product and higher.

captain_crabs 8y ago

General question I've been wondering tangentially related: Engineers: is working [edit: replacing 'under' with 'with' due to replies! good clarification, didn't mean under] with a non-technical product manager a dealbreaker for you? (Do you look to filter out places you'd work at while job searching?) Conversely, have you ever worked under a non-technical product manager you loved? Would you mind sharing details about your situation?

StevePerkins 8y ago
20-years in the industry and counting, and I've never even MET a "technical product manager". I have met a handful of people who somewhat thought of themselves as technical. Because they did a touch of Visual Basic or something in their first job out of school, before immediately washing out and pursuing a non-technical career. Some of those guys liked to talk loudly about how much they're "one of you", and "get it", etc. Without exception, that subset of PM's/PO's were absolutely dreadful to work with as a developer. I would ONLY want to work with a non-technical PM/PO, who stays in their lane and is comfortable with their role.
- hector_vasquez 8y ago
  I work at a big company and about half the PMs I work with were developers, myself included (for around 15 years). I have found this to be totally normal both when I was coding all day and now that I'm managing all day. There are no lanes.
- bshoemaker 8y ago
  You sound insufferable
mikeleeorg 8y ago
By "working under" do you mean having an engineer report directly to a product manager, where the PM is responsible for the engineer's career growth, compensation, reviews, etc? As a former engineer turned product manager, I would not advocate such a reporting structure. A PM wouldn't be the best person to help manage an engineer's career growth and everything else. I think it's perfectly fine to be on the same cross-functional team though.

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ArtWomb 8y ago

This is glorious! And actually saves me quite a bit of time. This subject extends much deeper than the rote teaching of "soft skills" to engineers. And is more akin to realizing one's own humanity ;) I can also recommend a text called Product Design and Development used in the grad-level MIT class http://www.ulrich-eppinger.net/ http://www.ulrich-eppinger.net/

monkeydust 8y ago

Good to know there other PMs out there. I have found HN invaluable over last few years for news discovery and insights. Not sure we need a new board just more PM posts in this one.

ct520 8y ago

Great find thx for sharing

rblion 8y ago

Thanks, this is useful.

yingw787 8y ago

Two sites I've found on Product Management while listening to Indie Hackers podcasts include: - Product Management HQ: https://www.productmanagerhq.com/ https://www.productmanagerhq.com/ - Roadmap.com: https://www.roadmap.com/ https://www.roadmap.com/ I haven't used them enough to rate how good they are, though.

dawhizkid 8y ago

I've been a PM for over 2 years now, and not really sure it is right for me anymore. Anyone jump from PM to something else?

dman 8y ago
What were the parts that you thought were not a great fit?
- dawhizkid 8y ago
  It's just an extremely nebulous role and completely different from company to company, which means you could be perceived as great in one co and terrible in another. I find it hard to measure my own real value.
  - NearAP 8y ago
    You're right - it differs from company to company. I think you'll enjoy the role if you are in a company where the PM drives the feature - the PM determines what features should be implemented, does the design (UI, logic, behavior, etc and then Dev does the technical design and codes it). One way to measure your value is also your ability to solve customer's problems. By this I mean - you could have a feature/capabilities and then a customer has a unique situation; being able to figure out how to use your feature in a non-conventional manner or coming up with a work-around (not one that creates a loop hole) to solve the problem can feel rewarding. The challenge though is that it is sometimes difficult to quantify this when you are trying to move companies

3into10power5 8y ago

Most of the Product related articles you see on medium or on internet are mostly ideas or advice. There are very few "rubber meets the road" kind of resources.

clementkao 8y ago
I'm curious to learn more! I've generally been trying to write articles based on personal experience rather than abstract frameworks or untested advice. In your mind, what would a "rubber meets the road" kind of resource look like? What sorts of questions would it address?

no6inbash 8y ago

I had high hopes for /r/ProductManagement/, but it's not very active. That said, here are a few of my favorite product management resources: - https://medium.com/@johnpcutler https://medium.com/@johnpcutler - https://www.productplan.com/blog/ https://www.productplan.com/blog/ - http://firstround.com/review/ http://firstround.com/review/ - https://www.kennorton.com/ https://www.kennorton.com/

rahimnathwani 8y ago

If you're looking for your next PM role in London, hit me up. Email address in profile.

baxtr 8y ago
Same here for Munich! :-)

adwivedi9994 8y ago

Agreed with the lack of resources being available. This is one of the main reasons why we, at Pendo, launched https://productcraft.com/ https://productcraft.com/

peterwwillis 8y ago

It's the same with DevOps. There are very few books and thousands of articles. I'm slowly trying to filter and categorize them so they can be reviewed and summarized, because only a few people will ever read these things and the information won't get to regular people.

xuesj 8y ago

Thanks! It is a good article about PM, I will recommend to my friends.

marenamm 8y ago

The Women in Product community is an incredible resource. If you’re a PM and identify as a women come join us at https://www.womenpm.org https://www.womenpm.org or https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=160194611065222&ref=content_filter https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=160194611065222&ref=co...!

qnsi 8y ago

Does anyone want to discuss website find.xyz? I have a hard time finding information on the internet. As they state on their website, if you google something it's SEO game and very often how much the article matches your keywords and not specifically highest quality articles first. However, I find it hard to find information on find.xyz that interests me. When you click on tech you see a lot of Benedict's tech news (Maybe he is investor?). Maybe the problem is the site seems to be new. How do you find information online? I tend to find best articles here on hackernews and on twitter, but it is very random. I wish there was a way to find high quality articles on stuff that interests me without googling for hours.