Consumer Product Management

From a career ladder perspective, the typical career path is * PM/Senior PM working within a specific team and demonstrating ability to execute, deliver and prioritize * Group PM managing multiple Product Managers and their respective teams usually driven by an expansion of remit / impact area * Director/Sr. Director Representing product stragegy and roadmap and influencing decisions at the peer and executive level * VP+ owning full product or business lines, accountable for key metrics Generally your career growth in Product is very closely aligned to the size of business im...

Early in your career, focus on absorbing and learning as much as you can -- what product management is, what plays naturally to your strengths and interests. Explore, be hungry, be curious. Tap into what really excites you and you’ll discover what you really enjoy. Lean into opportunities to gather different skills and gain exposure to different industries and domains. By the time you hit mid-career and know you want to do consumer product management, you’ll also get a sense for what you enjoy and what you don’t. For e.g:, As a Senior PM, I knew that I enjoyed building marketplace B2C pr...

I'll directly answer the question, but then challenge it. The most typical path that I've seen has been starting as an Associate/Junior PM after completing either a Computer Science, Information Systems or Business undergrad degree. However ... in my opinion, PM is a craft that benefits more than any other from diverse backgrounds. I've worked with PMs who were previously marketers, project managers, engineers, business development managers and designers. In fact, due to the varied backgrounds from each of the PMs I work with, I learn about new ways to approach problems. All that to s...

Be your customer as much as you can. Try everything you make multiple times in different scenarios. There's a reason companies like Starbucks and DoorDash have programs in place that put their corp staff on the ground - it opens your eyes to things that you might not have otherwise spotted. I'm also a huge fan having a regular forum for your teams to interact with your customers. In the enterprise setting these can be Early Access Programs that have select customers try out new products ahead of time for unfiltered, early feedback. In a more consumer world you can build the scaffolding f...

Two constant challenges for me in any product role has been finding the right way to say no. This could be to your customers asking for a particular feature or your organization that has decided to prioritize certain aspects differently.  The best way to overcome this challenge is by having your facts and data clear. For example, it is easy to convince leadership about your prioritization rationale if you have data to back up your claims, whether it is potential revenue or customer impact.

Without going into specifics, the biggest challenge has been cross-organization influencing. My time at both Microsoft and Google has exposed me to lots of intra-organization projects with varying levels of buy-in from each team. The level of effort and coordination required to pull not one, but two organizations in the same direction can be enormous. As a PM - at any level - it's your role to effectively communicate why what you're trying to acheive makes sense for other teams, your company and ultimately your customers. Even if you're aligned on principles and strategies, there are doz...

In the past, many successful consumer products could be successful by executing off of a single approach. You may have been an SEO driven org that was ok with an inferior UX but converted really well. You could be a high UX driven org where word of mouth spread based on the quality of the product, but the growth funnels may have been less optimized.   Now the consumer expectations are so high and the competition of mindshare is so intense that you do have to stick the landing and adopt the full suite of approaches right out of the gate to drive consumer adoption. This includes a deeper b...

Great question! This is a fun one and something I could spend a lot of time talking about. Let's pick a trend in a few different areas; Job role, Job market, Strategy, Industry trend, Consumer trend. [Job role] Collaboration in a remote world Communication is the most critical skill for PMs and the shift to a remote-inclusive world has made that skill more difficult. I've found collaboration to particularly challenging. There are a miriad of online tools at our disposal and PM needs to get to grips with them and incorporate them into the new way of working. [Job market] Faster turnov...

Obviously this looks different at varying levels of tenure and experience, but key themes are: * Customer focus * Business impact * People / relationships Customer focus speaks to if this person is able to put themselves in the shoes of the customer, whether b2b or b2c, and experience the product the way our end users do. Can they empathize with the user we are building for and their unmet needs? But this needs to tie back to results and impact. Is this person able to understand what success looks like for the business, take a data-driven approach to making decisions, and does this sh...

This varies by organization. Regardless of the size of your product team, you should have the expectations for each level of product well defined and socialized throughout the organization (typically APM, PM, SPM, Group or Principle PM, Director etc). Even if you are only a team of one, it helps to have these levels defined, especially if you hope to hire new team members in the future or you want to make a case for yourself down the road for a promotion. That being said, I take a number of factors into account.  * Is this PM meeting or exceeding the expectations for their level?  * A...

The most important criterion for a promotion is:  Are you consistently performing at a level that would allow you to meet all expectations of your next level. This requires three things: 1. A clear articluation of what it means to perform at the next level: Typically this includes a framework with levels, skill categories (strategy, vision, execution, etc) and a description of what is expected at each level for each dimension. 2. A role with an opportunity to perform at the next level: Often this will require being in a stretch role for a few months so you get the opp...

Promotion readiness varies quite a bit between companies, but I think there are some common themes that most agree on: * Performing at the next level. If you're meeting expecations for your role at your current level, the chances are you'd be underacheiving at the level above. That's why most organizations would like to see sustained performance at the level above where you are now. In cases where the diffferences between levels are clearly spelled out, this would mean you can take a look at the criteria where you fall short and work on those areas. For companies that do...

I think of interviewing as a muscle that you develop and keep strong. Approach interviewing in an intentional way, and get additional help where you need it. I recommend picking up one of the popular product interview books. They cover the basics about telling your own story, and describe the range of interview styles and questions you'll face. You’ll learn about the difference between behavioral interviews and case interviews. Take the time to do real mock interviews. What do I mean by “real mock”? Pair up with others who are interviewing or are willing to listen to give you feedback on...

There are so many great resources nowadays on what to expect for big tech interviews, so instead of reiterating they key themes from those, here's my not-so-common take: *  Understand what the interviewer is looking for. Across big tech, the interviewer panel is diverse and each person is trying to get enough signal to make a recommendation for the area they are evaluating. It's in your interest to find out early on what it is they are after. For example, if you know you're being evaluated for Product Sense, spending 20 minutes to go deep on architecture or analytics isn't ...

There are really 3 types of consumer companies * The bigs: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Airbnb, Spotify etc - these are mega corporations that have achieved product market fit and are now monetizing at an incredible scale. In general their orgs are huge, processes are locked in, and PMs have very thin surface areas to work on and usually there is limited innovation vs optimization opportunities. But you are also working on products that literally touch hundreds of millions of users daily. * Hyper scale companies: these are companies that have found product market fit ...

Let's split evaluating the company and evaluating the opportunity. When evaluating the company - or if it's a huge company like Google, the division - I like to think about three criteria first and foremost: 1.  User value - Is the company delivering undenyable user value with the product/service it's offering? A company that is set out to solve for concrete user needs with a great product/service is set up for success. There are of course many other related components such as good market positioning, differentiation from competition and a sound business model, but ...

For Product Management, my general advice is to experiment with it. Try to understand your customers and market, define the product vision and work through requirements for your features. You can also go through exercises with side projects. For Project Management, I don't have personal experience, but I would say try getting hands on experience alongside your current role is the best path.

When I joined my company, my mandate was to improve the way that customers got to value quickly. With the support of a research team, designers, and lots of conversations with customers, I saw an opportunity to build a resource center that consolidated best practice resources and pointed new and experienced customers to the steps needed to get the most value out of their products. The resource center would help customers with self-serve onboarding. Because I was building a post-sales experience I had to think through my KPIs, and how they could capture or measure good outcomes for the cust...

As B2B products have evolved to be much more customer centric and "consumer grade" the expectations of product management are largely the same and infact, a lot of consumer PMs are finding great success in B2B by bringing their techniques and experience and applying them to B2B. You may have heard the term "product led growth" in many SaaS businesses. In reality this just translates to a consumer principle of product/market fit and validation through organic growth vs. a traditional enterprise top down / RFP process play. For PMs - one big difference in B2B is customer specific revenu...

When I first made the transition from B2C to B2B product roles there were two areas that surprised me, and which I had to approach differently.  Customer and Buyer Personas: I had been used to thinking about different customer segments and their needs, but generally my target customer was also the buyer. My experience was different in a B2B role.  I learned that I had to discern (via research, surveys, conversations with customer and with account execs) a range of customer personas, and that usually only one of them would make the buying decision. The other personas were important inf...