Lexi Lowe

Every company is different but I can tell you what I've been working on as a part of my transition to product leadership: Impact - as an individual contributor I proactively drove high profile company wide initiatives that helped me to show that I could make a huge impact for the business in addition to evolving the product experience and functionality. This forced me to understand what mattered to the business and how product changes impact business outcomes and helped me to get a seat at the t ...Read More

I think the most common mistake that I see is jumping to solutions quickly. This is definitely my biggest mistake as I started as a product manager. For me, it was/is really easy to think I know the answer and to move quickly from the unknown/undefined to the known/defined stage and ultimately check something off the list by delivering it into the hands of customers. However, the role of the product manager is to stay in curiosity and research and the unknown for long enough in order to get enou ...Read More

Based on my experience working at both smaller startups (25-50 people) and larger companies (1000+) as a product manager, there is merit to both. I really appreciated starting my product career at a larger company because there were established processes / best practices and resources like design and dedicated engineering teams and other practitioners to learn from. This allowed for me to understand the mindset and process of doing product at scale which I then took with me when I moved into wor ...Read More

This isn't easy and many companies, including Hex, are looking for domain expertise to maintain a super high velocity in driving value for users. Learning a domain takes a lot of time. However, there are things you can do to be a more effective interviewee when you don't domain experience: Demonstrate strong fundamental product skills (focus on the why and the outcome that you drove). Practice your interviews and come with strong preparation and communication. Focus on the effectiveness of your ...Read More

Product management is different at every organization and there are many organizations where it is more of a project management function. If your manager is assigning project management work - talk directly to them about it to understand their expectations of the role and share what you're interested in focusing on. Usually you can find a path forward that will allow you to do the higher impact work. If you can't, leave! There are other organizations that really value folks who can set a vision ...Read More

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

When you're first starting out in product, you're building your product tool belt and the focus is on execution, customer empathy, technical depth and collaboration to drive a (measurable) outcome. As you become more senior, being able to drive a strategy based on a deep understanding of users, the market and being able to effectively prioritize to drive the biggest business outcomes becomes critical. Being able to align with cross-functional stakeholders and leadership is a huge focus. This req ...Read More

I have two tips for breaking into Product Management but I'm sure there are many more.  The first is to work with Product Management in your current role and/or talk to current Product Managers. Product Management can be seen as a very appealing job but many don't understand the day to day and trade offs of the role. By working with or informationally interviewing folks who are currently doing the job, you'll get more information on whether the job is actually for you and what appeals to you abo ...Read More

I think most great PMs come from a different field first. I have not worked with anyone who hasn't but I know they're out there. This is because the context that you gain from whatever your field is will help you have a superpower as a PM to build on. For me that was coming from analytics, so data is a core superpower. For a software engineer, understanding the architecture and being able to translate requirements really effectively could be your superpower to build from. My recommendation to he ...Read More

Your organization may have resources to build a baseline on data analysis and engineering acumen and you should seek those out first and engage with them. I try to read everything in the internal wiki and the public facing docs when I start a job. Next, find a mentor who does their own analytics or works in engineering who can walk you through a deeper level. Specifically, get mentorship around these skills as a baseline: running a query to answer a data question that you have building a dashboa ...Read More