Product Management is hard. Why?

Product Management is hard. Why?

You need to understand how to deal with different types of engineers, different types of designers and different types of PMs. Often, they are all in your team.

You need to understand ideation, customer discovery, development process, and go-to-market. Sometimes you need to do a bit of each one. Other times, you need to do a lot of just one.

You need to know when to go broad, when to go narrow, when to “kill” something, and when to build something new. Often all these discussions happen in the same week.

You need to speak up, debate, and show the way. Meanwhile, you need to be an amazing listener, be on the background, and empower others to lead. And it won’t be clear which approach gets you the best outcome at a specific moment.

You need to assume it’s your fault when it doesn’t work, and celebrate the team when it works. And most of the time, you don’t even know whether it worked or not.

You need to say (a lot of) “No” to top-down requests, from high-powered people next to you. At the same time you need to say (as many) “Yes” to customer needs, from users far away from you.

And the “cherries” on top of the cake: in depth learning only happens when you do it, and those around don’t really understand why you exist in the company.

And still, the world has never needed more product builders as it needs now.

Hustle through 💪