Why product management is an impossible job
Dream big, start small…
I joined Forma as a product manager when there were ~150 people. For a series B startup of this size, it felt incredibly put together. We had a library of beautifully formatted Notion docs about “how to PM”, including a matrix that specifies PM levels and attributes. This is what we use to evaluate skills & competencies and talk about career advancement. One of the skills is “Dream big, start small”. On the one hand, you need to be visionary and ambitious in order to rally people behind a cause. On the other, you are asked to be pragmatic and experimental so that the team can move with speed and correct course in time.
PM is an impossible job because you are constantly switching between strategic big-picture thinking and practical decision-making, probably two different parts of the brain. You’re asked to set the vision and strategy and also make difficult trade-offs so that the team can focus and deliver incremental value. You need to clear all the Slack messages, emails, Notion mentions, Linear tickets and also have time to do “deep work”. You should be very confident in the general direction, but also very flexible about how to get there because your hypotheses may be wrong.
You may begin the day with a presentation on the 3-year product strategy to the leadership. Then, you immediately jump into a sprint planning meeting to nail down the details of a user story. Over lunch, you read on your phone about the latest trend in AI, and get excited about how the company can automate some workflows. Then during a project kick-off meeting, your team spends 30 min discussing where to cut scope because the existing software infrastructure poses a challenge. To cap it off, you have 1-on-1s with your engineering manager and designer about what to demo in the upcoming product reviews.
Product management is an impossible job because you need to have the 300,000 feet view and set bold ambitious goals, but also take that “big vague plan” then break it down into “smaller non-vague pieces” for others, and sweat the details along the way. There are twelve different skills a PM should have and it’s impossible to be good at all of them (source: Ravi-Mehta.com).
Build conviction, then stay out of the way
Product managers usually partner closely with designers and engineers. You often see a triad of PM, engineering manager, and designer together, discussing a Figma prototype, mapping user stories in front of a whiteboard, or strategically adding a buffer to the roadmap to absorb inevitable “top-down guidance” (you know what I’m talking about). Product managers should be somewhat creative and technical with a basic understanding of design principles and software architecture, but their main value add is to build conviction around a product vision.
A head of design once gave me feedback that I gave too much guidance too early and that this wasn’t leaving enough room for creativity. What I learned is that a good PM brings the “what & why” to the table with all the right context, and leaves the “how” to the designer and the engineer. They point to a summit and rally the team to march in the same direction, but they don’t dictate how the team gets there. As a PM, my job is to bring the vision, the objective, and the context for why this is the right next problem to solve, then let the team do their magic. Product management is a highly leveraged position and setting boundaries means everyone gets to focus on what they do best & we can lean on each other for help.
Why is it important to draw the line here? If you have a solution in mind, why spend the extra time brainstorming and collaborating? Let’s be honest, the first solution you come up with is usually the most obvious one, but it’s rarely the most optimal one. It’s human nature to take the path of least resistance. PM is an impossible job because you’re asked to do things that are the opposite of human nature. If you can stay skeptical, and curious and challenge everyone to think better, your team will build better products. Moreover, everyone will be more motivated with a strong sense of autonomy and ownership.
Rise to the challenge, but stay authentic to your career goals
Let’s talk about re-org, which is a company-wide shift in focus to adapt to new realities. It might happen every year or every other year. Claire Hughes Johnson says in her book Scaling People that “Reorg is a sign of dynamism.” I love this positive view, although in reality, I still go through all five stages of grief before being fully committed to a new role.
PM is a really demanding job because it’s a leverage role and you are often deployed to where the company needs, and sometimes that doesn’t align with what you need. Sometimes the career path feels like a zig-zag and that you are not going anywhere. But as long as you’re still growing, and staying authentic to your career goals, it’s going to pay off in the long run. Here’s one of my favorite TED talks: it’s about growth mindset and resilience.
These are my field notes and observations and the title is probably a click-bait. I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from joining the PM community. Quite the opposite, we need more folks with diverse backgrounds to enrich the field. I want to share my struggles and hope that it resonates somewhat with you.
To end, I’ll leave you this quote from Theodore Roosevelt from his 1910 “Man in the Arena” speech:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; …who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
Stay in the arena and keep going at it!