Welcome to "The New PM", a new series

Welcome to The New PM, a series of articles for new-ish product people trying to build great products without losing their minds.

If you’re a product guru already, fully confident in your ability to build delightful, innovative products at scale, this series is not for you.

This series is for product people still figuring it out.

?? “Who are you and why should I subscribe?”

My name is Lachlan, and I’m a new-ish Product Manager at LinkedIn. I focus on helping our users write and publish articles on LinkedIn.

I'm writing this series to...

1. Help other PMs. Figuring out how to build product is hard. I know this from first hand experience. I found my best teachers to be mistakes I made and recent PMs who knew my struggle. This series is an attempt to help new product folks make fewer dumb mistakes than I did, and give them a place to ask questions.
2. Help myself. I’m still figuring a lot of this out, and I expect that forcing myself to put my thoughts to paper will help me refine my own thinking on how to build good products.

You should subscribe if you…

• Want to get better at building good products
• Want to be a part of a group of people learning product (and are interested in reading, writing, and responding to comments)
• Are NOT an asshole

You should NOT subscribe if you…

• Have already completely figured out how to build products
• Have no interest in participating in this group
• Are an asshole

?? “Why should I read your writing and not a real expert like Ben Horowitz’s writing?”

Ben Horowitz is a smart guy. You should probably read his stuff too.

But Ben Horowitz, and other product rockstars, can’t do two things for you that I can. They can’t write about what it’s like starting out in product in 2018, and they can’t (won’t) respond to your questions, comments, and feedback (unless you’re waaaaaaay more important than I am.)

Think of this series as one non-expert’s attempt to think out loud with other product people about how to do this job well.

I’ll be drawing on my own experience (read: mistakes) and on insights from more experienced product people from LinkedIn and other top tech companies I talk to.

?? “What happens if I subscribe?”

If you subscribe, you’ll get notified each time I publish a new article in this series.

?? Potential topics to cover

• What's a PM?
• What's a product life cycle?
• Buzzwords / acronyms to know
• Writing a good spec
• Working with eng/design partners
• Why a "suck list" can make you a better PM
• Product book reviews
• Interviews with senior PMs
• Tips for influencing without authority

...plus whatever y'all want to hear / talk about.

?? This series is an experiment.

My “hypothesis” is that there are enough new-ish PMs out there interested in this content that my writing this will be worth it.

It'll be “worth it” if we can start a small “community” of product people who help each other stay sane and get better at product.

So, if you want to be a part of that experiment, and are NOT an asshole, click “Subscribe”, leave a comment, and I’ll see you in four weeks.

Cheers,

Lachlan