Empower Your Product Management with Business Contact Leads for Product Management

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today we'll be talking about product management leveling and how to advance your career as a product manager [Music] there are many different levels for product management in the industry and they do vary from company to company but there are some common themes let's start at the bottom and we'll work our way up first is the apm or associate product manager roles these are the new graduate roles that are designed to be inclusive of people who maybe don't have product management experience and are typically new graduates but for instance facebook's rpm program accepts not only new graduates but people who are new to product management in general these programs are often designed with a sort of graduate school mentality the people in the program are all in a cohort so you can learn from each other and there are often a lot of activities and training to help people get ready for the product management role in the company that was actually the role that i did when i first worked at google i was an apm or associate product manager it was a really awesome opportunity to understand how product management works what product management even is and to meet a lot of friends and other really awesome mentors in the program now after the apm stage or you know some people may even transition straight in you have product manager and product managers are sort of like the l4 of the ecosystem and l4 l5 um at some of these tech companies there's this uh usually a framing of like l3 l4 l5 that indicate levels it starts at l3 at the new grad level and then it kind of works its way up product managers without sort of that prefix of associate or principal or group are sort of like the standard product manager lford l5 level in this role you'll have a little bit wider scope than associate product manager and more expectations because you have that experience and you'll usually be working with a decently sized product area you won't be managing anyone yet but you will be working with a series of engineers on engineering projects this is i would say the standard of bread and butter product management role and sort of the level that most people think of when they think of product managers now as you advance your career as a product manager there's actually sort of a choice that you can make not only is there's product manager there's senior product manager which is sort of just an inflation of the different um scope and size and complexity and uh expectations of your ability to think from a product perspective and have that product sensibility but as you get a little bit more senior there's a decision point there are principal product managers and there are group product managers and so if you imagine sort of a ladder there's associate product manager product manager senior product manager there's a branch in that ladder and so you can go on the principal product management track or you can go to the group product management track and the main difference between these two tracks is simply the uh factor of whether or not you will be managing someone so in the principle product management track um it's more of an ic or individual contributor role what this means is that you will be working still in expanded capacity above that of a senior product manager you'll probably have a lot of increased scope so be working with a very large product area you'll be asked to do very intensive product analysis work and product sense work so you might be making really big vision boards for where the product direction should go or you might be you know really working with senior level folks or engineering managers on the team to kind of understand and figure out what the direction of the product should be that is the principal product management track then you have the group product management track which is more about managing people and so uh just to caveat this like one common mistake when people who are not familiar with project management they hear the word manager and they assume that a product manager is managing people that does not actually happen until you get to that group product management stage i'm in a group product manager role you are now not only responsible for the product vision and increased scope but you're also responsible for managing other product managers usually from that associate or junior product manager level up until the product manager or senior product manager level um and in this group product manager role your focus shifts a little bit away from the intensity around the product and product sense and figuring out the vision for the product and a little bit more into managing other product managers to be effective in their roles to do some of the things that you were doing earlier in your career to decide between these two tracks is really a personal decision and it's really helpful as you advance your career to think about what aspects of this do i enjoy do i enjoy the people aspects do i enjoy mentoring other people if so maybe group product management is great or are you really just thoughtful and really creative when it comes to building products and you just really love the act of building a really amazing product and you want a lot of that control and you want a lot of that sort of uh influence that you would have in an engineering organization to build the amazing product that you want to build and different companies have this in different ways not all of them have that split but generally this is a pattern especially at the larger companies now as you continue to advance in your career and generally the group product management track also sort of has more of a ladder involved but both roles can actually lead you into more senior product management abilities um generally at some point if a principal product manager wants to advance their career they will have to shift into people management the next sort of position on top of that being product director and so in this case you now are definitely managing a team of product managers and you have a very large scope product directors um often are responsible for an entire organization for for example uh maybe the google search app or something on an iphone i might be an entire product director's responsibility and that product director will be responsible for determining the vision of the product for managing the product managers and allocating the product managers to different projects and areas um and working really really closely with another engineering leader of the company to determine what is going to be built that quarter or that year after product director and then you have vp of product and above that you have maybe chief product officer um and these roles are senior or more exec level roles and they vary from company to company but at that point you are really an executive at the company and expected to really think about headcount think about the vision of the entire company and how product management or the product organization fits into that and how it hits important key performance indicators or kpis for the company and you'll be held to a much higher standard because at that point you're a senior manager at the company um so that hopefully gives a general picture of what product management looks like as you advance your career um in my opinion there's no real right answer in that split of principle versus group product management and ultimately the role continues to increase in scope complexity and expectations as you continue to advance your career product management is one of the most fulfilling careers i'm so grateful to have entered into product management and i hope this video was helpful and getting a little bit more clarity around how product management works and how to advance your career in product management [Music]