AMA: Carta Director of Product Management, Anton Kravchenko on Product Management Skills

I care less about specific resources and more about the iterative approach to professional growth. True learning comes from building a network of other PMs and subscribing to content that resonates with you. The more you stay plugged into real-life stories of what works and what doesn't, the faster you grow. That's why the Bay Area is great for accelerated professional growth as a PM. Currently, I'm obsessed with "All-In Podcast" by top VCs in the valley. Next month, I might come across something more interesting. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCESLZhusAkFfsNsApnjF_Cg

Classic PM answer - it depends. The longer you are at the organization, the better intuition you will develop. The same applies to the product maturity, e.g. 0-1 vs. 1-N. New product to market requires PMs to look at trends and have a better sense of the customer needs. Well-established product decisions align more with data e.g. Google's conclusion that ms of latency = impact on $ revenue. 

Usually, tech companies organize their teams so that there is a fully dedicated UX designer accompanying each PM. I can't say the same about data teams. Almost in every company, PMs own KPIs for their product area. This means that you have to define what metrics your engineering team needs to capture and instrument dashboards that inform your product roadmaps. 

Your team size, overall organization dynamic, and product maturity all shape the skills you need to improve day-to-day operations. Distilling to the basics, I'd go with the following: * Customer Focus: PMs who put the customer at the center of their decision-making process often help other departments understand their customers' needs better. * Communication: being a skilled communicator, both in writing and verbally, is key to enabling cross-functional teams. * Agile: Many PMs use agile methodology to manage their projects. Understanding agile principles and developing your own "secret sauce" would help you rally the teams forward. 

I don't think it's black & white. There is a broader spectrum of colors here. Leverage your superpowers to shine and learn the skills that help you do your job better. What matters is delivering results that move the business forward. These results will be noticed, and the rest will organically follow. 

Start with your passion for Product Management and DWIT attitude. Find a team who needs an extra pair of hands. Partner with them in your free time. Deliver results that are visible to others. From there, it's an easy sell organizationally for "why" you should become a PM when the organization needs one. 

My top soft skills: 1. Storytelling: As PMs, we must communicate complex ideas clearly and concisely to a range of stakeholders, including developers, designers, executives, and customers. Personally, I spend a good chunk of time creating artifacts that align multiple stakeholders on the direction of my area. 2. Natural curiosity: I never stop asking a why question. I don't assume others have asked this question or might have a better understanding of customer needs or architecture constraints. I'm always curious to understand conceptually how things work and why they are needed. 3. Team play: successful PMs should always start with strong working relationships. I empathize with each of my teammates and deeply care about their personal and professional lives. This pays good dividends allowing me to bounce ideas and ask why questions frequently. My top hard skills: 1. UX design: great PMs are obsessed with perfecting their craft. During my time at Apple, I remember "Simplify. Simplify. Simplify" written on the wall to bring the best UX out of everyone who worked on a new feature. 2. Technical knowledge: While PMs are not expected to code, a solid technical background fosters productive debate with engineering teams. From my experience, presenting an ideal-world PRD often = 3-6+ months estimate. Deeply understanding technical constraints allows PMs to have a better sense of time vs. UX tradeoffs, thus shipping products to market faster. 3. Data analysis: All PMs should be comfortable with data analysis to inform product decisions. This means gathering and analyzing usage data and market trends to inform product roadmap. 

This is a challenging one, as people's problems could be mentally draining and less exciting to deal with. Tactically, I'd advise speaking with your HR business partner and seeking their advice by sharing specific examples. Longer term, I'd suggest practicing radical candor with your manager. This process takes time & energy as you need to build trust. If you haven't yet, I suggest reading Radical Candor by Kim Scott.

This might not be the answer you'd expected ;) I'm a first-generation immigrant, and I didn't really have a choice early in my career. I simply needed a company to sponsor my visa. After changing four jobs in the first year, I joined a company that was willing to invest in my immigration. Luckily, my new role was at the intersection of marketing & product, so I had to see both directions. I chose Product as I wanted to build things and understand how they work.

1. [If available] Intern as a PM before applying for a full-time position would put you ahead of other candidates. 2. Read Cracking the PM Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell and practice, practice, practice. 3. Use LinkedIn to reach out to other PMs at your dream company. Speak with them to get a better pulse of the company and the work they do. Often, showing that you go the extra mile matters.

I usually recommend starting with the following books: 1. Cracking the PM Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell 2. On Design Thinking by Tim Brown 3. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries As for the courses, I hear great things about: * Reforge - www.reforge.com * Managing your PM Career in 2023 & beyond - https://maven.com/shreyas-doshi/product-management-career

I like to start by understanding the historical context and how teams arrived at where they are. What decisions were made and why. What worked well and what didn't go according to the plan. Starting there also enables me to build early relationships with key stakeholders and understand the collective vision for the product area. Then, I like to take a fresh look at things by taking an outside-in look. This is when I research market trends and competitor strategies. This helps me learn from others in the industry and have a broader pulse for customer needs. 

Being a team player and sharing team responsibilities e.g. sharing scrum ceremonies with your EM, will help you be equal partners. Don't forget that while you're doing customer calls, aligning stakeholders, or writing PRDs, your EM is directly managing the engineering team. This takes energy and time. 

I like to challenge those I hire with questions that don't fit the usual narrative. Below is an example of my Friday fun question: Imagine humans decided to take the moon and push it through a giant rock grinder. The rock and matter that comes from another side of the grinder are dumped on earth. Question — would a human need an oxygen mask at the top of that rock structure? I look for out-of-the-box thinking and thoughtful process to derive the answer.