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so what does a product manager actually do and how much do you make should I be getting in on this hi I'm Chloe I'm a product manager at Discord living in La I worked in tech for almost a decade now working at these places and today is where I re-explain what I do as a product manager and I will tell you how it really is I made this video about two and a half years ago which kind of jump started my channel but I now have way more product experiences and a juicy stories to tell give us some hot sauce Chloe yeah you know I'm here to serve I'm not gonna repeat the same stuff in the last video just watch it oh my God I was such a baby what an era I hate watching my own videos well how did the product manager role even start Tech Bros would say that PMS were made to make their lives easier so that they can just code all day or they might say that PMS don't do anything respectfully shut up it actually began a hundred years ago with these guys Procter and Gamble our boy Neil was like guys guys I have an idea hear me out the brand man ah what do you think they manage their products check the sales and generate the marketing we're gonna make big money we are how I interpret this is that basically products are not successful unless people buy them so we need people to really understand what other people want so we can build products that they would buy customer needs apparently HP was like that's genius bro let's do it too it was a revolution there was a whole slew of events that happened but basically if you want to build successful products fast you'll need someone to use every brain cell and their body to figure out the who what why where how while everyone else actually builds a thing that is the fastest path so product management has now become one of the most influential business critical highest paid functions at any tech company in Silicon Valley because like they're known to be the CEOs of the product but do me a favor and don't say that to anyone else I just hate that phrase but there is some truth to it because PMS make decisions period I still don't get it okay first you gotta know how products are built what's a product in tech tech a product can be something like threads being launched or something like voice memos on hinge or sending stickers in chat or sending gifted Subs on twitch sometimes it's a button sometimes it's removing a button and sometimes it's placing that button somewhere else you know how Instagram removed light counts at one point from Post Yeah there's like a whole team behind that speaking of teams this is what your team would look like if you're kind of lean you have your engineers your engineering manager your product designer and your data scientist if your company is rich rich then you got all these people to help you out but if you're not then you as a PM get to do all of their jobs fun right and everyone who you have to get blessings from are here which usually exist in larger companies let me explain how products are shipped some exec is going to be like yo make me more money increase engagement compete with Twitter remember bigger number better company uh you want to get paid or what yes chef is your job to write down precisely what the problem is how you're going to solve it how to measure it and what the game plan looks like that is the understand phase you write it all in a DOT called aprd you bring that to a bunch of people who will tear it apart rip you into pieces and make you question yourself worse which we call the proverbial firing squad it's par for the course because you are asking for 10 Engineers designers data scientists for six months for what actually I'm gonna calculate it so if everyone is paid 200 000 that's 200 000 times 10 people including you divided by 12 monthly times six for six months and that is a million you're asking for a million on this so you better have good answers and when it's blessed your team goes to execute and at this point everyone is putting a gun to your head saying go faster go faster we have investors to impress we've got stonks to go up I want a promotion so what you do is you're going to scope the least amount of work to test whether or not your theory is going to work this is the minimum viable product the MVP build it take some random users split into two groups control and test and give the feature to the test group and see if your metrics will change in the test group this is a b testing if your metrics are great and everything's stats sick then ding ding you are blessed by the product Gods you can officially launch so y'all will build the bells and missiles get the product marketing campaign ready and launch the thing to everyone else which is literally just pressing a deploy button and it's actually very anticlimactic but then you start seeing the charts go up and you like oh yeah it's working the reason we do it this way is that it would be very silly to have spent all year working on this all the way through just to flop by the end of it so to not live a life of shame we take these many steps to validate whether we're building the right direction build test iterate build test iterate that is the tried and true method to build products that people love it's like you don't know until you try but you don't want to try too hard until you know enough you know oh my God the sun went down and I'm gonna have to bump the lighting a little bit sorry about that wait how do I become a product manager let's get a little up close and personal with this one I actually have several videos on how to break in and my own story as well but it's kind of hard to do it without any direct help there are a lot of boot camps and online classes a lot of them you can find on Career Foundry which is an online school for your career change engine Tech and they're also the sponsor of today's video and they're very relevant so listen up career Foundry has all of the hot tech programs you need oh I might check out design since you're here you have to check out their PM program I have not seen anything like this it's about six months long and one online async so you can just take classes after your nine to five you don't have to quit your job for this they give you dual mentors when it's an actual industry mentor and the other is a PM tutor and they give you a career specialist to help you with interview prep and refining your LinkedIn I thought The Perks ended there but you actually have a job guarantee at the end of the program they're so confident that they're gonna transform your career that they know you're gonna get a job and if you don't they will refund you 100 of the tuition that is insane they've seen Uber drivers become web devs cabin crew become data analysts and musicians become ux designers but the magic is in their coursework they first introduce you all the key skills of a PM then they immerse you so you do all the projects that PMS actually do and your portfolio is going to be lit because career Foundry knows what your future employers are looking for if you need a little boost career Foundry has hooked us up with a 10 discount so use the link down below thank you to Career Foundry for sponsoring now back to the video so what does a product manager's life look like well our lives look like hell but PM secretly loved the heat you know for the plot in the PM World there is nothing certain except for death and meetings there is no time to work so you gotta work in between meetings during meetings during lunch you got to become a master at prioritizing your never-ending to-do list and you've got to say no when everyone's trying to ask for your time if you can't this job isn't for you sorry I was cleaning my table but generally my week looks like this product team means where we go through progress priorities problems morning stand-ups with my Engineers which are 15 minutes long to find potential blockers coming up and there's always something new to ruin my day and a bunch of other meetings you and your designer are best friends y'all chat every day y'all are jamming on figma working on the next designs to hand over to Engineers designers are usually like oh my God what if we do all of these things and you're like oh that's really cute but maybe not now because Engineers don't have a lot of time we meet with data and you talk about exactly at what point this product is a go what are your success metrics what are your guard rails let's say You're Building live streaming for Instagram or Tick Tock and it's great more people are spending more time on the app but everyone is live streaming NSFW content you're screwed you check dashboards you talk to your users get user feedback report bugs write new proposals manage the to-do list for the entire team and you also meet with marketing and you figure out the go to market plan for the product listen you got to do everything it takes to launch this product successfully capiche capiche but Khloe what does it take to be a great PM well in my opinion I think a great PM is someone who can make really strong decisions that all of us can rally behind like they know the space well they know what people want they can clearly explain why this over that there's lots of clarity Direction Vision this thing is gonna win and this person knows it you want to be on their team there's lots of other great traits of course but this one makes a PM stand out the most I think some other great traits behaviors principles are one you are a great communicator you write well you speak clearly and succinctly you explain the why behind every decision you can draw very clear through lines when things are really complicated like what exactly is happening here sift through the noise for me you know how to adjust the elevation of detail based on whatever audience is in the room you get all these crazy people in the room to debate decide commit together because lack of clarity gives the rash and nobody likes that no we don't well I'm drinking aloe juice two you're very opinionated with good reason this all comes down to time and expertise like when someone throws out a puzzling question at you you have an opinion on it you gotta be like 10 steps ahead of everyone else when there's a question that no one knows about everyone's gonna look to you as a leader and you better have an answer you're always thinking about the future the greater impact the implications the dependencies you're a Visionary Harry and number three you're a leader but you don't get paid like one and people don't report to you so they don't got that loyalty to you so you have to organically build trust in the team so that they know they're in good hands and they trust your decisions if some goes down and the results are not good you gotta help the team Embrace a brutal facts you gotta have grit this is not an easy job products fail all the time and the execs can trust you like you can make decisions run with it and they don't have to check in on you very much you have everything under control number four you are a great executor I think this is way too underrated because Visionaries get all of the credit but ultimately if you're cannot access guy and ideas are worthless you're always helping the team move faster you're helping them get to 80 20 Solutions you unblock people you document you get things organized you make things happen so should I be a PM I think it's so funny because I've had several software Engineers slide into my DMs and they're like should I become a product manager and I'm like um I don't know you have a pretty sweet gig like you're getting paid the same if not more and you arguably have less work if you play your cards right don't ruin what you have because it's not a glamorous job you eat all the time like one of my directors had told me that before product fails it's your fault product succeeds it's the team's success someone's butt hurt you get feedback you swallow your pride you take it you resolve it and you move on you get reored you deliver the news you're understaffed oh you gotta do their jobs now and I have done a lot of people's jobs as a PM before and now and it's a lot of writing prds product strategy dogs and it's not up to date some Engineers gonna whine to you and be like well it wasn't in the PRD it's a lot of work you're glued to your desk you are your desk me and my PM friends we're malnourished sleep deprived and out of shape and it's hard to take time off culturally there's like one of you and five to ten other Engineers so if one of them take the day off they're fine people don't even notice but if you do who's gonna cover for you I will say I don't know if I can do this if I finally be become a mother there are not a lot of mothers in this profession interesting because this job isn't chill you're always on during meetings you need to be sharp put together people need to trust you as a leader and that's just like a lot of stress on the body for an office job it's also a thankless job sometimes they do a lot of BS admin work like taking the notes or planning a social or doing expenses for other people you write a lot of updates for people to poke into when you argue back and forth in Hidden DMS and meetings that nobody sees it's very political too a lot of Optics you get feedback on everything perception and reputation are everything you had one badslide feedback you don't sound very confident answering a question feedback Engineers don't know what they're doing this week feedback for you so you gotta have thick skin so why do you do it the real answer is money The Prestige yeah I know the impacts actually and I like the pain no really it's like people who love living at the gym they love the pain the pain makes them feel something inside I know it's weird it's the overcompensating second gen immigrant oldest sibling trying to prove something to the world you know but yeah I do like a job at its core very intellectually stimulating I work with a lot a very smart High EQ people it's really cool to be a decision maker at the Forefront of an industry like we're in the news millions of people use our products like when I go to a party and people ask me what I do they know we're creating history in Tech and it's kind of sick yeah but you still didn't tell me how much you get paid look I have a whole video on this so definitely check that out to get like all of the comp stats I am not opposed to sharing my salary it is six figures but let's make a deal I'll tell you if we hit 100K on this channel okay Shake on it but honestly this job has changed my life financially I can now pay for things I pay for my family I buy nice things for myself I don't have to check the bill when I go out to eat with my friends I am so grateful I hope you enjoyed this casually explained version of what I do as a product manager I have a ton of other PM videos for you to check out but I also do a lot of videos about my life in my late 20s finances Health relationships and how stuff because your girl just bought a house this channel is all about adulting so let us grow up together I've been posting almost every day on Instagram and Tick Tock so follow me there for my Slice of Life videos and subscribe here my dream is to hit 100k this year on all of the platforms we'll see if we can make it happen together shout out to career boundary for sponsoring this video and definitely definitely check them out I'll see y'all next time stay safe y'all bye [Music]