In Today’s Newsletter:
PM’s Bright FuturePMs future remains bright, despite all the doom and gloom. Companies from Home Depot to Google aren't just spending money wily-nily. Yes, there are some PMs who just aren't great. But, on average, PMs are returning back multiple-fold in their salary to their companies. I know this sounds wrong when Brian Chesky is telling you he's "eliminated traditional product management" and Linear has 1 PM. But the vast majority of fast-growing tech companies have PMs. In something of a 5-10 engineers per PM ratio. The fact is - and all good CTOs know this: More than 10 engineers operating on their own tend to have less business impact than 10 operating with a PM. Of course, there are some exceptions (like truly technical teams). But, on the whole, it's true. What a PM does is find out what's at the intersection of:
Most of the other ideas tend to violate one of these 3 principles. 1. What's good for users You'd be surprised, but a lot of exec's ideas aren't good for users: • Move a top free feature to paid Without PMs, individually charismatic executives end up swaying engineering groups. What actually gets built becomes more a symptom of who's well-connected than what's good for users. A good PM wrangles the chaos and is the voice of the user. 2. What's good for the business In design driven cultures like Airbnb, a shocking amount of product features have absolutely no impact. Ronny Kohavi led A/B testing at Airbnb. Here's how their A/B test success rates compared: • Airbnb: 8% succeeded That's pitiful performance. Going by gut feel is fine up until a point. But it means you're going to reduce your hit rate on moving forward the business. If you're trying to build a penny pinching machine in a competitive market like Amazon, that discipline is needed. And PMs are the people held accountable for it. 3. What's achievable incrementally by the team While our wildest dreams might be interesting... They often take time and don't let us learn along the way. PMs play the crucial role of helping chunk the work into manageable milestones. "Now, what about all those layoffs?" It's true. Not every PM is equal. There was some overhiring of PMs that was done in the 10-year bull market. Product is the ultimate "long-term investment." Product features can become the engine of your growth, but they usually take 6-12 months to fully impact. And PMs also take 6-12 months to fully ramp up. So PMs tend to have their impact 12-24 months after hire. With the short-termism demanded by higher interest rates... Businesses had to cut these longer-term investments. But PM's future is bright. The Keys to Mastering PMBeing an exceptional PM isn't just being good at one thing. It's >16, across these 4 areas:
When people ask me what skills should they work on... My first question is: what are you good and bad at? Your superpowers are great things to rely on: • Great at PRDs? Showcase them Then, everything that's a weakness is something to work on. PMs can't really afford to be weak at any one thing. Let's take an example in each category. MAJOR OUTPUTS HARD SKILLS SOFT SKILLS CAREER SKILLS Mastery of a successful PM career requires just that much breadth. You can't be weak in any of these 16 areas. That’s why I wrote about them all. Demographics ≠ Good PersonaThis is one of the most common mistakes product teams make. → "25-34 year-olds with >$150K household income" Sound familiar? That's how most teams define personas. The problem is, demographics do not make a person. Just think about "25-34 year-olds with >$150K household income" for a second. You could: Much better factors to define a persona for product teams are product usage related. So, if you're a TikTok PM, personas might start with user states: → "Never Used" Then, you do more research on the types of people that these look like. And you imbue those personas with a lot more definition. Think: a. Their job to be done Let's expand on "Impulse Purchasers" (high value). After research, you might find: • Job to be done is mindless entertainment after a long day These can become the basis for your overall persona. I find the best teams often give them names. It might be "Joe the NYC Millenial." Once you give a name and texture to these personas, teams can actually build for them. Magic is unlocked. Features go from being built for everyone, for being built for specific people. For instance, for Joe the NYC Millenial, you might: 1. Help him onboard his friends with more local NYC content Personas become the basis for a holistic product strategy. But you need to abandon demographics to get there. 10 Tech Predictions for 2024...Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to Product Growth to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
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