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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?
by 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 agoWorking 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 agoTotally 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 agoI 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 agoDitto. 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 agoWould you be open to chatting to me as a mentor?
- seekingcharlie 8y agoWould you be open to chatting to me as a mentor?
- dawhizkid 8y agoIt'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 agothere 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 agoThank you for these!!
- storgendibal 8y agoGibson Biddle has some great articles and resources for PMs to develop their careers. http://www.gibsonbiddle.com/ http://www.gibsonbiddle.com/
- clementkao 8y agoPart 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.