Recently wrote a thread on the PM role. Turning it into a blogpost (with some minor edits).

/threadstarts

  • There is a joke that people who become PMs are not good at any particular thing and hence they get their MBAs and tell people what to do.

  • TBH I became a PM because it was the only job where I could be good/amazing at multiple things.

kind of a brag thread. ignore if you wish

  • I have heard this joke/comment so many times in my life from various ICs (devs/designer), that I have learned to not engage and just live with it.

  • But I could have mentioned how I was one of the earliest members of Redbus’ team in North East and single handedly doubled their partnerships in the 2 months I was interning with them.

Subho

  • There was a time when I seriously considered Sales and Marketing as my full time career.

  • I was a dev for 1.5 years where I did both front end (android for a few months) and then backend (node.js).

  • I realised that instead of figuring out how to be one of the best devs in the world, I was reading posts on business strategy and design at night.

  • So I moved to Product the first chance I got.

  • I was following what Derek Sivers calls the ‘no speed limit’.

  • AND IT WAS EVERYTHING I IMAGINED IT TO BE.

  • The first month I was figuring out how to launch a new BU inside coupondunia.

  • Next 3 months I was sitting with devs, working on how we would build this product. I was not merely telling people what to do.

  • I was reading documentation, figuring out how attribution worked, how to measure if the end customer actually ended up using our offers.

  • I never liked going deep into micro details.

  • Like how a code block should be structured, which design pattern to use etc never excited me.

  • But thinking in terms of systems did.

  • And I had the best 3 months ever figuring out how to build this new product.

  • I learned marketing. I learned copywriting. I learned design. I did cold calls.

  • I also did wireframes for an actual product for the first time.

  • I built internal dashboards.

  • It was amazing learning experience.

  • I was doing more things not to hide my incompetence at a particular skill, but because I was actually good in multiple things.

  • This realisation helped me fight this huge imposter syndrome I was suffering from, because I was managing a team for the first time and in some cases people almost double my age.

  • But we did well. The new business took off.

  • I started not just reading but building better habits/models to learn more and incorporate the learnings in my day to day work
  • As you can see I also have folders for everything I read and liked.

Bookmarks folder

  • Things I read for each job I held. And also each vertical inside Product Management.

  • TBH one of my biggest fears was also driving me: What if the same joke that I wrote in the first tweet “PM ko aata kya hain” was true?

  • I was obsessed with proving people wrong.

  • I wanted to know more than my Designer, Dev, Data analyst, any IC I worked with.

  • It was not just for ego. It was more than that.

  • I know people think the job of a PM is the easiest.

  • But try
    • convincing your TL about cutting scope of a project without understanding the underlying tech changes required.
    • debating with a designer about interaction on a button without understanding design yourself.

  • Remember that no one reports to you. You have no explicit or implicit authority.

  • But if they respect you then it is 90% of the job done.

  • Relevant posts:

  • Finally this is the reason I read so much. And why with every passing year I want to be at least 10% better in some skill.

  • Because I never wanted
    •  to be in a room with someone where they are thinking “sala PM hain to kuch bhi bolega/ PM will speak shit just because he can”.
    •  to be the person who became a PM because he could not be good in anything.

/end