 Okay, and we are live now. Thanks everyone for joining us today for an exclusive AMA session. So we're here inside the Facebook group with Carlos, our CEO of product school. Hi, Carlos. How are you doing today? Thanks, yeah. Thank you for having me. Awesome. Well guys, so today's AMA session, first we're going to begin by hearing a bit more about Carlos's background for those who who don't know and what we're doing over here at product school and then we'll open the floor for Q&A. So Carlos, can you talk a little bit more about your background and how you got into product management? Absolutely. So as you mentioned before, I am the CEO and founder of product school. We started the company four years ago in San Francisco, California, and this is based out of my own necessity. I started my career as a software engineer and I soon realized that even though I was good enough at coding, I didn't want to spend my whole life as a coder. I was always very curious about, but how can we make money? How can we connect the technology part with the business part? And I just didn't know what my options were. I was just a good enough engineer, but back in the day, there weren't that many options and knowledge out there about product management. So I decided to kind of learn from the go. I started a couple of startups and the benefits of having a technical background is that you can start without asking for much help in tech because I was able to build my first website and obviously as the companies grew and I had to take care of many other things like marketing or routine operations. So at that point, I had to get help from the technical standpoint and I hired some of my classmates from computer science. Obviously, I run out of classmates at some point, so I had to also bring new people and when the engineering team was big enough, I wasn't able to manage the whole engineering team and take care of everything. So I also had to promote or hire additional people to work as product managers. So that's kind of how I was aware and I learned about product management. After my experience, I decided to go back to school and I went to business school. I did a master's degree in business and that was also very eye-opening because I kind of went from computer science all the way to high-level strategy and I realized that even though there are benefits in both ends, product management is a happy medium where you need to be tactical enough and technical enough to understand how engineers work, even though you don't need to be an engineer and at the same time, you need to be strategic enough to know about business and how to grow a company even though you don't need to have an MBA. So that's what inspired me to start school called Product School that I wish I had eight, nine years ago when I was just starting tech. Awesome. Thanks for sharing that. Guys, just so you know, you can start typing in your questions and we'll take a few of those as soon as we're done here. So Carlos, can you talk a little bit more about the type of background that you need in order to get into product management? Absolutely. So I just give example of one type of background which is mine, coming from software engineering to product management. That's actually the most common background in Silicon Valley but also there are many other backgrounds. We have a campus in New York. A lot of our students there come from business background, could be management consulting, could be investment banking or marketing. If you don't come from a traditional engineering degree, at some point you're going to need to learn enough about how to work with engineers but you can definitely leverage all your background in data, management consulting and pretty much learning fast and figuring out problems. We've also got a lot of people that come from entrepreneurial backgrounds, people that started companies and it doesn't mean that your company has to be successful or even though it doesn't mean that the company needs to be full-time. The fact that you are passionate enough about building something, even if it's on the side, that means a lot and a lot of companies appreciate people with that type of curiosity. Those three are the most common backgrounds that we've seen in product school. Now we start to see a trend of designers that also want to become product managers. The way we define product, and by the way I'm talking about software products or mostly websites and mobile apps, it's the intersection between engineering, design and business. Any of those areas are a good way to start into product. Then of course you have edge cases or people that had one student who was a lawyer and became product manager. We had a teacher. Those are not the most common backgrounds but the point here is that you can make it happen. It's not going to be easy but obviously there are many options. It's not just for engineers. Right, of course. Awesome. Thanks, Carlos. We have a couple of questions actually coming in through another group as well. One of those is, I have a couple years. Sorry, this one is from Sarah. I have two years experience in engineering and I'm going through interview processes now and sending out my resume. What advice do you have for me? In terms of the job hunt? That's a good one. If you are an engineer and you are trying to switch careers into product, the first thing you have to do is to speak product because if I'm a recruiter and I take a look at your LinkedIn profile or resume and it says software engineer, technical skills, PHP, Java, C++, there is nothing in there that is telling me that you want to become a product manager. The first person who's going to read that resume is probably not a product manager. It's probably a recruiter. The recruiter needs some indications that you are into product. You probably have to play with the bullet points that you used to describe the work that you've done because even though you are an engineer and you haven't worked as a product manager officially, I'm sure that you've done some product stuff there. Maybe you already manage a team of engineers. That's huge. Maybe you already managed a team of engineers. Maybe thanks to your suggestions, you were able to lead the development of a specific feature. Even though you had to run it by your product manager, but I want to see things that you've done outside of coding because if you've coded for two years, I already get that you know how to code, that you are applying to a product management position, not to an engineering position. If you want to apply using your LinkedIn profile, I will also take a look at the headline. Your headline on LinkedIn is not your current job. You could use that headline to mention that you are passionate about product and so on. That's an opportunity for you to demonstrate that you are not just an engineer. Last but not least, I would also mention site projects or other things that you've done aside from work. If you had a startup, even if it wasn't successful, or even if it wasn't full-time, put it there. If you participate in a hackathon and you build something, even if it is just for the weekend, put it there. If you have a GitHub account or a personal website or a portfolio where you created some wireframes, put it there. That's definitely important, especially for your first PM job, and then as you grow in your career as a product manager, that will be less important because by then you will have real and official product management experience. Absolutely, awesome. We have a few questions coming in actually right on Facebook. This one is from Karen. Do you have any recommendations for transitioning from IT project management to product management with an MBA in MIS? My God, you have a lot of good things there. This is a good point. Let's define the difference between project manager and product manager. When you start a company in technology, there's no need for a product manager. It's usually a CEO or one of the founders who's acting as that product person. It gets to a point where you have, let's say, five, seven, 10 engineers. As kind of what happened to me, the founder doesn't have time to run the product full-time and take care of everything else. At that point, you probably hire your first product manager. Most of the cases, that first PM, it's an internal promotion because it's so hard to delegate your baby that you probably look for ways to identify someone who already cares about that. In any case, it's only when you get to that point of 10 engineers or so when you hire your first PM. If you are trying to apply for PM jobs, I would look for medium-sized to large organizations that already have a product market fit. The company is up and running. They have a product team. Hopefully, someone is senior, so you can also continue learning as you join. When it gets to that point, a product manager is not enough. As I explained before, you are going to be interacting with engineering, design, and marketing. It's kind of this triangle where you are in the middle. Once you have enough engineers, even though you will continue as a product manager, you will want to hire someone as a project manager. This is someone who sits in between product and engineering, someone who comes from a technical background, most of the cases, and it's going to help you with the tactical execution of your sprints with your engineers. It's someone who's going to be working with engineers on a daily basis, making sure all the requirements are on point. We are tackling all the right stories on JIRA. We are executing on time. We are correcting deviations because the product manager is going to be working with that project manager and at the same time, connecting with design, marketing, and the overall strategy of the company. It's project management. It's a good stepping stone into product management. That's why we actually a lot of our students come from a project or program management background. At the same time, you can look at the different size of the companies because I'm sure that if you are a project manager in a big enough company, that's very similar to what a product manager would be doing in a smaller organization. It's important that you read the job descriptions of the different companies because not every company defines product or project the same way. Just as a quick summary, project is more tactical. It's more focused on timeline and pure execution of your engineers while product has some of that plus the overall vision with the rest of the stakeholders. Awesome. Thanks, Carlos. Speaking of the definition of product management, our next question is from Ravi. He says product management has no definition in where I live currently. Some company will say a PM that we were looking for has to do code review or someone else will say they have to architect and some say they have to do sales. Are these necessary? Can a PM be fresh out of college? Who would be an ideal PM? That's a really good point. Similar to what we were saying before about reading the job description because this term is not that old. Companies are still defining that and especially in other markets. We started in San Francisco and we expanded to New York and Los Angeles. Those are our existing campuses. Two weeks ago, we announced the expansion of product school to eight more locations. We are going to be in Seattle, Austin, Denver, Boulder, Chicago, Boston. That's in the US. We are also expanding internationally to Toronto in Canada and to London in the UK. Each market is slightly different and it requires different adjustments in terms of curriculum and the instructors who teach that. The common baseline here is in order to become a product manager, you do need to have some experience before. I believe that in order to be an effective manager, you have to have some experience on the ground. This is not something that you can take. If you ask me about the perfect PM, I would say at least two to three years of experience before. It doesn't need to be in product, it could be in engineering, it could be in marketing, it could be in design, it could be in project management, but something similar. Then there are some skill sets that are kind of dysfunctional across the board. One is technical factor. I mentioned before that you don't need to be a software engineer in order to be a good PM, but it's true that you need to speak tech. If you are technical enough, that's going to give you a leg up because you are going to need to earn the respect of your engineers. Learning how to code and feeling comfortable enough working with engineers and talking the lingo is critical. That's number one. Number two is industry domain, especially if you're trying to break into product. It's always easier for you to get your first PM job in an industry that you know than switching careers and industries at the same time. Let me give you an example. Let's say you work in marketing in an e-commerce company. If you really want to become a product manager, well, it's going to be easier for you to get that first PM job at another e-commerce company than at a fintech company or at tech company because you are switching industries and roads at the same time. Another option for you is to, if you really want to switch industries first, maybe you switch from marketing in e-commerce to marketing in fintech, and then from there try to get into a PM job in fintech. That's number two industry domain. That's something that you can only get with experience. You need to be obsessed about the product, about the market, about the competitors. You really need to be the advocate for your product there, and that makes time. Number three, and by the way, that becomes less relevant as you grow in your career. Once you get your first PM job, you can transfer those skill sets across industries in an easier way. Number three is communication skills. The same way I said that business people need to get technical enough. Here, technical people or people who are not used to interact with others, they also need to feel comfortable interacting. This is not just about being a public speaker or a book author. It's about making sure that you can communicate across the board. You can send the right email. You can schedule the right meetings. You can schedule the right in-person commissions. You can make sure that you can get the buy-in from people to push in the same direction. I know it sounds really easy, but it's probably the hardest skill, especially as you grow in your career. Those three skill sets are number three for us in terms of keys that we've seen for our students to become product managers. In our courses, we offer three different courses depending on your background. The main course is called product management. This one is two months part-time, so the idea is that you can continue with your full-time job or activity and take our classes on weekends or during the week at night should be compatible, but if you feel like you also need to learn more about the technical skill sets, we have a course called coding for managers that teaches you how to code a fully functional website enough to work with engineers. It's not going to make you a software engineer, but it's going to make you technical enough. Then we have a third course called data analytics for managers. Data is becoming extremely important. It's a course where we cover A-B testing, we cover CQL, and we also cover a little bit of machine learning, not to make you a data scientist, but to make you data-driven enough. Awesome. Thank you, Carlos. We have a couple more questions here. This one is from Joe. I'm trying to break into product management. I'm currently a business analyst, and I'm getting some product owner experience on internal tools that aren't in front of a large audience. If my end goal is product management, which looks better if he has the opportunity to join a friend at a startup or in a business development role? If your goal is to become a product manager, whatever gets you closer to the product team, because you join a large organization, you have the opportunity to see things that are working and meet other people that work in the product team. At the same time, it's probably so specific that maybe business development at a larger organization is already so well defined that maybe there is not much interaction with product. While business development in a smaller organization may have more leeway for you to do product stuff and connect with other people, but at the same time, there are less processes. So if you want to learn in the proper way, you don't have that yet. So I think in general, if you want to break into product, it's probably easier to apply for medium to large organizations for the reasons that you describe. There's a product team in place, there's a product that is working, there are senior people you can learn from, and there are also more open opportunities while in startups, there are not that many product management opportunities until the company gets to a certain size. Great. And we have time for just one or two more questions. So just make sure you get them in. Another question that actually came in through was from Melissa. What other tools or resources can you suggest to learn about product management? Really good point. Actually, we published a book called the product book two months ago, and its life on Amazon, it became best-seller in the first week. And the reason why we built this book is because there are so many books out there that mostly talk about how to hack your career and how to hack your LinkedIn profile. And of course, that's an important part when you're looking for a job. But before that, you also need to understand the tactical steps on how to build that the entire product. And there is a framework that you just need to know, and there are some tools that most of companies use. And of course, tools will change, but it's important to at least understand the process and how people do it. This book was created by multiple instructors that taught at Rhodes School. Most of our instructors come from Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, LinkedIn, those type of companies, all of them keep their food and jobs and teach on the side. So it was a good opportunity to collect some of their knowledge on best practices and frameworks and put it in a book. So it's easy for you to read. And that would be a good starting point. If you are also in any of the cities where we have a campus, we have 14 campuses now, we are constantly hosting events. Those events are free or charged or very, very cheap. And we invite product managers from top companies twice a week. So that's a nice opportunity for you to network with other people in the product community and learn something new. I think those are your two best bets. And then of course, we have a Slack community and a Facebook group. That's why you are joining this webinar today. And we have over 20,000 members. So we are constantly sharing job opportunities, events, content. And I think now there is no excuse not to learn more about product. Like the information is out there. I think it's also about you committing time to make it happen. Absolutely. Well, that's all the time we have for today. So thank you so much, Carlos. Before you go, can you offer final words of wisdom or advice to aspiring product managers? The only thing I would add is build something. I think that's the best way you can prove that you really want to become a product manager is by building something. Do not wait for you to get a job in order to build something today. You can build your website. You can build a mobile app. You can team up with someone. It doesn't need to be a perfect product. It just has to work. And that will lead you to more and more opportunities. Great. Thank you again, Carlos. And thanks to everybody in our Facebook group. This is great for everybody to join us today. As you guys know, you can learn more about us at productschool.com. And as Carlos mentioned too, we also have a Slack community that you can join as well. So thank you. Bye.