This response also applies to one of the other questions asked here - "What qualities stand out in some of the best TPMs you know?"
I strongly believe that you can be a successful technical product manager regardless of your background, as long as you have the passion and growth mindset. It is not rocket science (for that matter, look at Elon Musk for rocket science). So I’ll focus on some of the desirable soft skills that makes one a successful technical product manager -
- Able to technically grok how things work, very fast
- Balanced (between Strategic and Technical thinking) & Objective
- Data driven
- Extreme ownership
- Being thorough
- Strong communication
- High EQ & Empathy
- Dealing with ambiguity and chaos
- Growth mindset
I’m intentionally not focusing on domain skills, because they can learnt. A good technical product manager should be able to take up any problem and build something to solve for it. Along the way they’ll likely gain the domain skills required to meet that goal (Eg: ML/AI, Integrity/Risk, Distributed systems, Autonomous vehicles, Game theory, Ad Auctions etc).
I personally don’t fret over incrementally building my career around a set of ‘domain skills’. I’ve always looked at my career as a mosaic, I’ve done a variety of roles as a technical product person and gained a wide range of experiences. What matters is 3 things:
1) Do you find your work to be meaningful?
2) Are you learning something in that process?
3) Are you having fun?
