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What are the required hard skills for a product manager?

Also is it a plus for a product manager to know how to read code?

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3 Answers
  1. Mamuna Oyofo, MBA
    Mamuna Oyofo, MBA

    Shopify VP of Product • 4y

    Answered another question about hard skills. I don't think its generally necessary for PMs to read code but I do think it is important for you to understand the concept/principles. An overview would be very helpful in making you a good partner to your other more technical peers. It also helps when talking through any blockers or considerations to keep in mind.

    1,800 Views
  2. Katherine Man
    Katherine Man

    HubSpot Group Product Manager, CRM Platform • 2mo

    Core hard skills are data fluency, experimentation, and technical literacy. You should be able to define metrics, run analyses, design experiments, and interpret results. You need enough systems understanding to make tradeoffs with engineering and to scope work realistically. Reading code is a meaningful plus because it reduces ambiguity and speeds up decision making, but it is not required. What matters is that you can reason about how things work, where they break, and what it costs to change ...Read More

    425 Views
  3. Lexi Lowe
    Lexi Lowe

    Hex Head of Product | Formerly Fivetran • 1y

    There are different opinions on having an engineering background and the ability to write code for Product people. My perspective is that its easier to come together with your engineering partners when they are empowered to drive the code level details and you are empowered to define the requirements so you can make technical tradeoffs together but each have your respective ownership. I've seen collisions when product managers also are engineers and they get too deep into the technical details a ...Read More

    847 Views

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