AMA: Splunk Director of Product Management, Subu Baskaran on Developing your Product Management Career

There is no one silver bullet for a product management candidate. If I were to look for specific traits, definitely high up on the list would be how long a PM candidate explores the “problem space.” Honestly, ideas are a dime a dozen, but understanding a customer problem and isolating the right pain point, in my opinion, differentiates an average PM from a great PM. Finally, remember that a PM's main job is to ensure we are building products for the right customer problem. So, having an explorat ...Read More

The answer depends on the size of the company. But if I generalize, if you are a new grad or new to the function, then your first job would be Product Manager. Then, depending on whether you are in B2C or B2B companies, there are different levels with slightly different titles. In B2B tech companies, the titles progress from PM to senior PM, Principal, and Director. As a Director, you typically become a people manager responsible for an area of the business. Some companies might even have titles ...Read More

Skills vary at different levels of product management, similar to other functions. In large organizations, product management usually has two tracks:  1) the IC track - PMs can grow as individual contributors to director or even VP (depending on the company size) levels. Again, it's hard to pinpoint the exact skill level for a set PM trajectory as this varies from company to company. But at a high level, an entry-level PM with a good product sense and a curiosity to learn and execute an end-to-e ...Read More

If you are a new PM in an organization, my advice would be the following: Be curious - learn as much as possible about the customers, users, features, and the system. Talk to as many people as possible and arrive at your point of view. Make allies - Identify engineers, UXdesigners, and sales teams (B2B) that you connect with and validate your learnings periodically. Question status quo - Once you have a particular POV, ask questions if something seems wrong. If it's new learning, admit it, but i ...Read More

If you are an entry-level product manager or a first-time PM switching from a different function, executing a feature end-to-end is the best place to start. During execution, one can learn system behavior and develop necessary POVs, such as user behavior and the jobs-to-be-done for the persona. During this process, a PM works closely with peers in the User Experience and Engineering teams, helping the PM understand how the team operates. Also, during interactions with customers and the sales tea ...Read More

The PM-Director role can differ from company to company. Based on my experience, at the Director level, one becomes a people manager managing an area of the business. I see a good Director of PM who understands the changing landscape and has a POV about how your company should navigate the change. So here are the top 3 skills I believe a PM should acquire to move to a Director level: Consistently delivering results that positively impact many customers and iterating on them with a long-term visi ...Read More

In short, have a long-term perspective on what you are building. As a senior PM, you are more inclined to ship faster. This might look great and temporarily get you the spotlight, but what ultimately matters is the difference it makes to the customer in the long run and how it impacts the company goals/metrics. Know that if you plan to build what your customer is asking, you are too late and playing catch-up with the competitors. Having a long-term perspective, such as where the industry is head ...Read More

I have worked with PMs who do not have an engineering or CS background but have worked in other functions in a Tech company, such as Project Management, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success, to name a few. The underlying skills for these functions overlap with the PM job, such as requirements gathering, listening to customers, narrowing down their pain points, identifying the right target messaging and product positioning, etc. If your skills align better with one of the other functions, I wou ...Read More