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FloatingDonut
FloatingDonut
Flipkart

PMs with 10+ YOE of experience, what are some lessons that you want to share with folks who've just started out

Would be great if you can share somethings that you've learnt it the hard way especially on topics like stakeholder management (dealing with engineering/ execs/ founders/ P&L team), learning/ upskilling, switching internally/ externally, perfection vs hacky stuff

16mo ago
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JumpyNoodle
JumpyNoodle
Siply16mo

Stakeholders will only listen to you if you can make their lives easier. If you want to build something and get everyone onboard, you need to solve a problem from everyone involved. Otherwise you won’t be able to build anything

SnoozyTaco
SnoozyTaco
Grapevine16mo

Let me share a piece of advise on communications-

  • Communication is the key to succeed in this role. It'll give you non linear results in long run.
  • Be great at explaining and writing ie in long run you've to sell your ideas internally
  • Take up a course if required. Read up - https://www.amazon.in/Pyramid-Principle-Writing-Thinking-Financial/dp/0273710516
ZestyDonut
ZestyDonut
Stealth16mo

How is this book ? Have heard good things about

SqueakyNugget
SqueakyNugget
Flipkart16mo

Do whatever is good for the business. You are a sales guy but with massive leverage given to you by tech.

Forget PM frameworks, product vs project management, processes etc. It’s all only useful as far as it helps you ship faster and bring in the money

GigglyBanana
GigglyBanana
Stealth16mo
  • For the first 5-6 years , put your head down and build and learn the craft. Don’t take up fake courses and talk/ analyse about product sense. I see useless APMs trying out thought leadership on LinkedIn.
  • Learn hard skills first -
    Technical knowledge, Writing, Statistics, Financial prudence

& soft skills post that -
Stakeholder alignment , user interviewing, Managing up, Politicking, Manipulation (reqd when working in large teams)

  • Get out of sprint mentality every once in a while to make sure you’re not loosing the larger context
JumpyPotato
JumpyPotato
Nothing Tech16mo

Great points. A few followup question-

  1. Any one stop resource you might recommend to built financial prudence around corporate finance, VC, equity etc, ESOPs, P&L etc?
  2. Statistics? Why? What all in statistics?
  3. How important or bread and butter should SQL be for PMs?
GigglyBanana
GigglyBanana
Stealth16mo
  1. Searched a lot, there isn’t one single place but there are tons of great substacks, Yt videos on individual topics
  2. To understand and analyse data and its 2nd or 3rd order effects. Basic math every one knows , higher algebra gives much greater higher order insights. This is a mix of Stats and probability. Specifics - Distributions, Standard deviations, differential deltas etc.
  3. My opinion- very important, not just to analyse stuff , but find hidden schema level patterns. But, with transformers, it’ll eventually move to Natural language querying in 5 years with >95% accuracy
ZestyHamster
ZestyHamster
Google16mo

Not 10+ YOE but: The best ideas don't always win and the worst ideas don't always die out. So have conviction in logic and rationality as you traverse your career. But take punts on ideas as you never know what might work out.

PeppyPenguin
PeppyPenguin
Walmart16mo

One of the most important thing is building relationship with engineering. If the engg respects you, you are sorted. And one of the way to do it is finding out one scenario where you guided the team. Just one instance. That is enough to atleast start a relationship with them

GroovyDonut
GroovyDonut
Stealth16mo

End of the day, everything will happen as per stakeholders ask. How much you want to convince them as to why it wont work will fall into deaf ears.

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