 More than 70% of product managers in the tech industry do not know how to code, but they are getting paid over $200,000 per year working for amazing tech companies. Why is that? How can you be able to become a product manager with no technical background? In this video, I'm going to share with you the five steps to become a product manager with no technical background and no experience to make sure they're able to follow the exact same step to make your dream come true to work in the tech industry without coding background. There are many secret steps that wasn't told in the past because lots of people who became a product manager, they never tell you exactly how they make it happen and lots of them seem like they went to Harvard, Stanford, however, there is a proven strategy even if you don't have a prestigious background and you don't have a technical computer science degree, you can still become a product manager in the tech industry and also getting paid significant among the compensation as well. In this video, I'm going to reveal the top five secrets and steps how you can become a product manager in tech without knowing how to code and no technical background, no experience at all. Make sure to stay until the end of this video where I share with you some free resources and free courses you can start taking right away to boost up your confidence and creating your career success into product management. Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, Director of Product and Future Inforbs. I help 100 people blend a dream PM job offering in fan companies and unicorn startup and continue to get promoted as a product leader. In this channel, we cover tech trends and free product management training. Like and subscribe, watch our new video every Tuesday. The first step of becoming a product manager with no technical background is set the right mindset and understand the relationship between product management and tech. First of all, I want to tell you the mindset using data proven strategy. When you look at those chief product officer positions in tech companies, regardless they're big or small and even in healthcare industry, any other industry, the chief product officer is out there. Majority of them do not know how to code and do not come from a technical background. And including myself, I became a director product within four years and my PhD was in material science. And let's say do not know how to code. Actually, I was a chemist making polymers, completely different from what the coding required me to do. And on top of that, guess what? I launched a world winning product in the AI space and also launched the first edge computing product in the world in collaboration with Amazon and Microsoft. And that's in cloud space and AI space. I literally do not have technical background. I don't know how to code. Even if my degree was in material science and engineering, but it's very far away from cloud and AI. Many people had made those kind of transformation in the product management career as well. So first of all, I want you to understand that you can make it happen as well. Now let's cover the basics regarding do PM needs to know how to code. The answer is absolutely no, given the examples it just gave you. But you might ask me this question. Hey Nancy, why some job description saying that, oh, they prefer a candidate with a computer science degree? The true reason is that as a product manager, we need to work with software engineers. If you have a computer science degree or you're able to speak the language of software engineer, it's easier for you to communicate with other people. And however, I've trained thousands of product managers out there and most people today, they do not know how to code, but they can still be a very fluent communicator with software engineers. You just need to know how to speak the language of software engineers, which I'm going to cover in step number five. So make sure stay in the video and share all the tips over there. Let's also understand this question very quickly. So what is the technical product manager and what is the normal product manager? Technical product manager means that you're going to work closer with engineering team. However, broader product manager position can be someone who work in healthcare industry, working for customer facing type of product management roles out there, but technical product manager is someone who actually work closer with engineering team. But even you are a product manager in NETA and TikTok and Uber, there are lots of people working for customer facing type of PM position and they don't need to know how to code and they are not technical product manager. So therefore really depends on how close you are in relationship with engineering team that gives you a technical and non-technical title. Now, knowing that you don't need a tech degree to become a product manager, let's focus on the right strategies. Step number two, you must study the product management skills and understand the transferable skills you have gained in the past job, even if you don't have technical background. Let me prove this to you using one of the job opening at Google, which is the most technical company, but even in the job description, see what the day-to-day responsibilities. They said the following, define the product direction and strategy for product areas with Google workplace, define the product roadmap and managing goals and investment to scale globally, engage with customers, understand the strategies and to a business process and pain point, partner closely with engineering UX and other internal Google teams to drive product and deliver success and foster and facilitate timely decision-making process in a broader network with stakeholders and delivery partners. All of this didn't mention you need code at all and actually all of those are important product management skills everybody need to master. So in summary, the key product management skills you must understand is the following, for example, drive product roadmap, write requirement, doing customer interviews, working across functional teams and those are more important skills than any kind of technical skills to become a product manager. That's why even leading companies like Google is not asking for technical work in the day-to-day work and responsibilities as a product manager. In this video, I talk in depth regarding the top six product management skills that you need to study and learn. You can go dive deeper in this video right here. I also recommend everybody really learn and master those skills. Do not fake it until you make it. In reality, you need to learn it until you make it. There are so many different kind of courses and certification out there. You can definitely check out our own certification courses and free resources on our website at product manager accelerator.io. You're going to see the link in the description of this video as well. Then number three, it's match transferable skills into product management skills. Data that shows that 91% of product managers today came from non-product management background. So which means that majority of you guys might come from the same background. You might be a data scientist. You might be an artist. You might be a marketer. You might be a software engineer. All of us transition from a different discipline into product management. Now, there's also small percentage, which is 9% of them, they went to Harvard and Stanford. For undergrad, the first drop out of college, they joined Google. So those group people, we don't compare us with those lucky people in this video. But if you're those 91%, you should understand that majority of things you've done in the past is very relevant product management. For example, ask you this type of question. Did you interact with customers? Did you understand what the needs, desire and pain points? If so, you have done voice of customer interview. But if you even know, you have done that before and you didn't know the right methodology how to do it. If you have marketing background, you probably need to ask yourself this question. Have I run any campaign to take any product to the market to bring it to the hands of end users and customers? If the answer is yes, then you probably have done those kind of go-to-market strategy and launching product. Those are very valuable experience for product managers and those are transferable skills you talk about in job interviews and resumes and in your job applications as well. Secret number four, is to identify the right type of job to work on, even if you don't know how to code. For example, in this video, I talked about 20 different kind of product management jobs out there and there's so many entitled different flavors of product management. You shouldn't only focus on one thing. For example, cloud product manager. Clearly, cloud product manager require you to have cloud background. But if you focus on B2C product management or E-commerce product management or maybe fintech product management. So really depends on what type of product management job you're going to use your skill set and you actually do not need to know how to code. Of course, for some very technical jobs, they will make it very clear. This person needs to know machine learning algorithm so that you can work closely with engineers to build those machine learning training algorithm and those might need some technical background. But you should just take some AI courses which lead into step number five, which is also the most important part, become a product manager with no technical background. Learn systems design. System design is very different and unique from coding because system design means you need to understand the entire architecture system, what's the key component, what's the key functions of the entire engineering system so that you know how to communicate with engineers. So system design is a kind of thinking you see things in a systematic way and also has a curiosity and know what's the right question to ask your software engineer. I personally learned system design from MIT and I also recommend all of you guys do the same kind of classes. I take MIT, gonna put it in the description of this video. We cover system design in part management training in our course as well. Now, except system design, it can also take entry-level technical classes and all of those are technical one-on-one courses. Only one hour introduction to AI, IoT, system architecture, things like this. For example, there's also lots of free YouTube videos that only 15 minutes, 7 minutes, 20 minutes for you to learn quickly so that you're able to communicate with engineers with a full confidence. Here are my recommended technical one-on-one courses. For example, in the description of this video, I have recommended free training on YouTube. For example, those are cloud computing architecture tutorial, how does the web work, web browser functions and all of those are amazing free training on YouTube that you guys should check it out with many different, very good 7-minute tutorial. Most of them are much shorter than what you think and those really represent the important factors of how you gain the curiosity of learning more. Except these courses, I also recommend 12 different kind of entry-level technical courses. You can directly take through LinkedIn and other platform for almost free. You can go to this website to download all the 12 different kind of entry-level technical courses that I recommend. I'm also gonna put the link in the description of this video. Right now, you probably understand you don't need technical background to become product manager but you might still wondering how can gain those product management skills and experience because all the job openings ask for prior product management experience. And I filmed this video right here. Make sure to check it out how it become product manager with no experience. You can follow the exact step to make your dream come true to become a product manager as well. This is Dr. Nacidi from PMX Editor at IO. Make sure to like and subscribe to the channel and we'll see you in my next video right here.