Advice to a Junior PM

I got some questions on being a PM from someone just starting out, and thought maybe my responses would be useful to others. For lack of any better place to post them, I guess I'll just post them here on LinkedIn.

Questions:

1) What advice would you give someone like me who is looking to get a start in product management in the tech space?

2) What skills are most useful, both technical and non-technical?

3) Are projects to demonstrate above skills valued over internships?

4) What are some of the things you have worked on in your time at Facebook as a PM?

Answers:

Sure! I'll take a stab.

1.) I'd say there are different sorts of PMs - you can "come from" or "lean towards" any of the adjacent fields. Here are what I see as the main types:

Data Science / Growth: PMs usually work closely with the data science / growth folks, and some PMs gravitate more towards that than others. So one "type" of PM would be the type who has a strong background in data science and analytics and growth metrics and does a lot of the work by focusing on numbers and growth strategies.

Design: Another might lean towards design, and leverage creative skills and processes to do the job well. These sorts of PMs are better for zero-to-one products where the data science inclined are often very good at running live products - because building something brand new often can't be validated with numbers and relies on a stronger design sense, whereas once it's out in the wild you often want someone responsive to the users instead of a design prima donna. For what it's worth, I would say I'm definitely a PM who leans heavily on my design skills (and I'm really not much of a data science / numbers person.)

Marketing: PMs can also come from (and always work closely with) marketing. So this is another type - the PM who has very strong intuitions about how to launch products, go-to-market strategy, demographic analysis, and so on. This is related to the data science folks, but certainly distinct.

Engineering: This maybe isn't as much of a "type" but having some technical background can be really helpful for PMs as it facilitates conversations with developers and gives you better immediate intuition on what's possible and what isn't. Obviously I leverage my engineering background a lot when I do PM work.

Your question was a bit broad - I don't really have any totally general advice for new PMs, so this is how I'm going to answer it - first think about what sort of PM work seems most interesting to you - growing live successful products? Building brand new things? Focusing on the technical and plausibility aspects more? Focusing on the users and their needs and empathizing with them more? Etc. Understanding what is most exciting to you will give you a sense of which way to start heading, I think.

2.) I guess I mostly answered this above. But the other thing I'll say is that every tech company (to my understanding, I've only worked for one, videogame companies really aren't the same as tech companies, it turns out) break down roles and responsibilities differently, especially between Product Management, Program Management, and Project Management (it remains one of the industry's great ironies that the disciplines responsible for generating clarity, organization, and direction all picked names that abbreviate to the exact same two letters, causing endless confusion. You had one job...)

This is absolutely my own personal bias, but: I think Project Management is a vastly underrated skillset, and in shockingly short supply. It's the least glamorous work - Delivery Leadership, to steal a term I like from Riot Games - but it's vital, and I think because it's often so grindy, a lot of people avoid doing it and focus on things that feel loftier or more glamorous.

I'd say maybe the best thing you can do to give your career a boost and also be a better human being, it's: Be a great project manager. Practice the humility it takes to do the thankless grunt work of maintaining calendars and deadlines and todo lists and staying on top of people about them. Build the social nuance to do the job without coming across as an annoying nag but rather by coming across as a facilitator who everyone is excited to see because you make their lives better and requirements clearer. And build the discipline to just follow through on it all, all the time. An insane amount of the churn, waste, and turbulence on projects just happens because of balls getting dropped, things falling through the cracks. Catching things before they fall through the cracks doesn't really take much specific skill or competence - it just takes a tireless commitment to doing the work.

If you do that, and just resolve to not drop balls and not let things fall through the cracks, and do it with enough social grace that people are happy with you for doing it rather than annoyed at you, you will already be a greater asset to your team than 99% of people out there.

3.) I don't really know. I think it depends on the team, on the hiring manager. A good team and good manager are, at the end of the day, looking for evidence that a.) you can do the job well, and b.) you have the potential and drive it takes to grow. I think any way you can demonstrate that will do the trick.

4.) My main work at Facebook was on Oculus Medium, the VR sculpting tool. My role on that was a mix of PM, sometimes Lead Engineer, and Creative Director, sort of. Titles are messy, especially in the interstices between industries like Oculus was - some titles we stole from film, some from games, some from tech.

Along the way I also would pinch-hit a bunch as a PM on other internal stuff. I'm much stronger (aka more passionate) as a PM on new things (zero-to-one) rather than live products, so most of the stuff I PMd were internal proofs-of-experience (demos/prototypes) and I did PM work early on on a couple of the headsets.

That's maybe one more thing I'll add about being a good PM: Being a great PM means being able to sit in a room full of people where every single other person knows more than you about the product - the technology, the logistics, the market, the launch window, everything - but you're the one who needs to act with confidence and purpose to give them all direction to keep everyone rowing in the same direction.

So, if you want to be a good PM, I guess what I'm saying is, get used to crippling impostor syndrome. ;)