What technical questions can we expect for product management interviews?

Technical questions are usually asked in a few contexts within a PM Interview.

• Understanding a PM's experience working with engineers: These questions are usually asked in rounds led by engineering stakeholders. A typical question concerns making a hard prioritization decision due to a technical constraint. A PM is expected to know enough technical details to understand the various choices, their pros and cons, and make prioritization decisions accordingly.

• Data Analysis and SQL: Most PMs do some level of data analysis themselves. Especially for early startups or lean teams where there is either no or insufficient data support, PMs are expected to know the basics of SQL, understand and prioritize where they need instrumentation, and even create some reporting/dashboarding for themselves and the company. For such a role, it's quite common to have a round on data analysis and sometimes even SQL.

• Platform, Infra PM roles: If you are applying for a role that is platform or infrastructure-specific, it's expected for PMs to have a degree of understanding of the same. Technical depth also depends on the role (early or mid-career). For eg: Dev API PMs, Authentication PMs etc.

Technical questions for product management are often trying to measure different aspects of the job - which varies highly day to day. Incredible context switching is required for PMs, but there is also a rhythm to the business with planning cycles happening every quarter/month that retains consistency. Some of these categories include product sense, market segmentation and focus, business model, critical thinking, competition, decision making, pricing and packaging. Communication is also pretty important, but not often considered "technical" part of the interview.

There are so many resources for interviewing for MAANG that would help you prepare for a PM interview no matter where you interview. Interviewing at Google or Meta is quite different than interviewing at a Series C/D or mid-size public company, so I'll just drop some resources I've used: Bijan's PM Exercises, Exponent, Reddit r/ProductManagement, and Diego Granados' YouTube videos. Cracking the Tech Career is also a great book to read - it's still relevant. These resources have mock interviews, interview question banks from recent interview candidates, and ways to use frameworks (but not overly so) to answer technical questions.

I always ask the following questions:

Tell me about your product. How does it work?

How was your product differentiated from the competition?