AMA: Carta Director of Product Management, Anton Kravchenko on Developing Your Product Management Career

My favorite interview question was asked by a hiring manager ~8 years ago when I interviewed for an Associate PM position at MuleSoft. I was asked the following: "Imagine humans decided to take the moon and put it through a giant chopper/grinder. The mass that comes out of the chopper is being dumped on the surface of the earth. The question was - do you need an oxygen mask to climb on the top of this mass" This is a quantitative question that is typically asked in the PM interviews, but more fu ...Read More

There are different paths that each product manager takes, but the common ones I've seen are: 1. Joining a tech company as an Associate PM or an intern straight from college. For college grads, I suggest starting by connecting with other product managers (e.g. via LinkedIn) to better understand what we do. There are great books available on this topic as well -- "Cracking PM Interview" is among my favorites. I also created a series of videos explaining tech jobs and what do I do in more detail - ...Read More

To make the decision, I think of opportunity, ambitions, passion, and time: Opportunity - obviously there is a matter of compensation, but there is also an opportunity for professional growth. For example, joining a startup allows you to grow much quicker -- you will be wearing different hats and working much closer to the company leadership. You will make a lot of mistakes, but the learnings will be much greater. Ambitions - depending on where you at in life, different things might take a prior ...Read More

There are different paths that each product manager takes, but the common ones I've seen are: 1. Joining a tech company as an Associate PM or an intern straight from college. For college grads, I suggest starting by connecting with other product managers (e.g. via LinkedIn) to better understand what we do. There are great books available on this topic as well -- "Cracking PM Interview" is among my favorites. I also created a series of videos explaining tech jobs and what do I do in more detail - ...Read More

There are different ways you can think about it, but I like to think about PMs as those that build new products (0-->1) and PMs that come in to manage an existing product (1-->N). 0-->1: Product Managers who build a new product or service from scratch often need to innovate, which means building something that no one else has built before.  1-->N: Joining a company to own an existing product, also means that product-market fit has been already established. As a PM you will focus on s ...Read More

Let me break it down by covering 3 different levels of PMs: Associate PM -- the bar here is that you have great critical thinking, clear communication, energy, and a mix of CS and business degree.  Senior PM -- in addition to the above, you must have a track record of previously released products and features. The experience here is what matters as you learn how to avoid mistakes. You also know what Product Management is all about e.g. market, users, technology, etc. As a Sr PM, you don't need t ...Read More

Different folks would enjoy different things e.g. if you are an introvert -- the IC track might be more suitable as you will be spending a good chunk of your time creating docs, prototypes, etc. It's fun -- just a different kind of fun. If your personality craves people interactions, the people leader track might be more appropriate.  Being a good people manager is hard, you need to lead by example and support your team whenever they need you. You also need to be comfortable with confronting peo ...Read More

To make this decision, I think of opportunity, ambitions, passion, and time: Opportunity - obviously there is a matter of compensation, but there is also an opportunity for professional growth. For example, joining a startup allows you to grow much quicker -- you will be wearing different hats and working much closer to the company leadership. You will make a lot of mistakes, but the learnings will be much greater. Ambitions - depending on where you at in life, different things might take a prio ...Read More

It's less about metrics and more about the outcomes you are creating for the business. For example, you might bring 10,000 new users or improve a UX for a specific feature -- but what matters at the end of the day is how you impacted the business. Has any of that made the business grow faster or made it more resilient among competitors? Depending on the company size and what you do, some outcomes might be more obvious than others -- for example, there was a time when I worked as a PM for a relat ...Read More

Typically, promotions are the result of an individual's performance and business needs. In other words, it's hard to make a case for becoming a Director if your area can be covered by a single Sr PM, so both you and your product area need to grow.  PM Directors are also people managers who hire and build a team of other Product Managers. Having good people skills is important but you also need to be a great PM, so you can lead and help your team of Product Managers grow.  Finally, shifting to be ...Read More