 Okay, we're live. So hey everyone, welcome to another product school talk. I'm Cassandra from product school Just to make sure that you guys can see and hear me. Okay. Let's do a quick test here So what I'd like you to do is go ahead and type in Book in the comment section and we'll send you a free copy of the product book So if you guys once you type that in I'll know that you guys could see us Awesome, so it looks like we're good Well, as many of you know, we teach product management coding and data at now 14 campuses We reach recently launched Eight new campuses in Seattle, Boston, Chicago Denver, Boulder, Austin and Toronto and London So we're really excited about that Today's speaker is going to share some insights from his experience as Being a software engineer and moving into products management. So I'd like to welcome Joey Leah Hi, Joey. Thanks for being here with us today. Hey, Cassandra. Thanks for introducing me. Hey guys, how's it going? So Joey is a senior advisor of product management at Dell EMC and he's the leader the leader in cloud Infrastructure and data storage. So I know you have a presentation Set up for us today. So I'll give you a couple seconds to share that sure Awesome, and everyone while he's doing that just a reminder We're gonna take some questions following his presentation. So feel free to type them in the comments and we'll get to them right after And everybody see the presentation Yep, it looks great. The floor is yours So hey guys, I know you guys might be coming from a variety of different backgrounds This presentation is more specific to If you're an engineer who is looking to transition into product management Or our recent PM who came from engine engineering background and are finding some challenges Really going in your first years in a PM gig I want to leave you guys with some actionable advice at the end for Tips of how I transitioned how you could make a transition and we'll mostly talk through You know my journey and how I can relate to what you're trying to do about myself. So I work at EMC corporation now Dell EMC and I've actually spent about nine to ten years at EMC a very long career path Here I started as an engineer. I wrote Python scripts. I worked on test automation and overall, you know, I was a very Rookie person at the time, but I grew my career to Different opportunities that became team lead and at some point I actually transitioned as the lead product manager for the same product. I started on as an engineer Six years an engineer four years as a product manager. I helped build and release four or five four to four versions as an engineer and Four different releases of the product as a product manager and this this product was a very Mature product at the time. It was about ten years in operation a very large healthy customer base a lot of revenues So the the one crazy aspect of it was I inherited a lot of revenues to manage As I transitioned into the lead product management role And it certainly helps you learn a lot of different things about what you're not what you are good at and Subsequently things you're not so great at and I want to help you as an engineering As an engineer, I want to help you fill those gaps Fill those find the strengths find your weaknesses and how you can position yourself to land into a product management role Now fortunately the path to product management is there's a lot of different ways And that's that's a really a great thing. So it's a multifaceted role There's not any one direct path that's going to work for anybody into a role And there are different options and that's really great If that's if your career goal is to get into product management, it's great that you have a lot of options Now what I would expect from most people is if you're you're in an engineer role today You're probably looking for that jump start to get straight into product management And while I'll say it's not impossible. It can be tricky and it can be a little bit difficult Depending on your skill gap. So some some folks usually find a stepping stone Opportunity or role or some kind of educational Effort to really fill in the gap of how to become a product manager. So for me personally, for example I was an engineer I was promoted to team lead of this of the same team that I was working on so my peers became my direct reports I personally did want to do an MBA program I wanted to get the get a formal education and business network with the I went to UCLA. So I wanted to formally network in the UCLA community But it is a lot of time and money to do an MBA So if you're thinking about an MBA for product management, you do want to think about it Very carefully. There's a lot of opportunity costs with doing an MBA program At the second year of my MBA, I did formally transition into product management And so you can kind of see here It's a little bit of a windy road and it can be a long one for yourself So my advice for you if you're all is thinking about different paths to product management Find a path that you're going to be happy with each step of the way You do need to find job satisfaction in each of these steps As you're going to find it very very difficult Especially if your end goal is product management and you're finding yourself You're not able to really get to that point presentation for us Oh, there you go So the first thing I would like you guys to kind of As a starting point if you're starting fresh and you're thinking about product management You'll want to know and be able to do an elevator pitch An elevator pitch is a 60 second or less pitch about why you want to do something And you're going to be generally doing a lot of this in product management You need to be able to pitch your ideas pitch your recommendations And you're going to need to do it in a short amount of time because most of your audiences are executives In this case having a pitch for why you want to move to product to product management Is going to be a really good way to test and flex those skills Here are some examples of some qualities that I believe are going to be pretty relevant for you And don't be discouraged if you don't have these qualities It takes time to really build them build these out realistically especially coming Personally for myself coming from engineering background If you want to take initiative you find problems you see problems and you actually do something about them That's going to be a great quality you can take forward Because as a product manager, you're you're you're not given any formal authority You do have the title manager in your title, but you don't people manage anybody unless you're a director, of course But you formally won't have any authority to tell people what to do You'll actually have to accomplish your job in your role Through others Everything that you do requires someone else's help for that reason You're going to need to take initiatives to find problems that others Are going to have to help you with engineering teams sales teams executive teams Everybody is part of your team and it's going to require a bit of initiative to actually motivate them Another thing is it the way you look at the world Is it That you're proud of the products you're using and technology is you're using and you like talking about technology You know very common attributes for for engineering folk Um, but for product manager the the real attitude and and passion you should have is for your customer Be customer first the technology is only as useful as it is as it drives value for a customer's problem Some of their needs It's really important to not lose sight of focus that your role is to gain insight about customers and problems that they're having And bringing great technologies that can solve those problems Um, I talked about this a little bit before but being diplomatic is extremely important Um, if you're the top engineer You and you're thinking about product management because it is a likely it is a logical career path Forward for a lot of top engineers You might be considered the smartest guy in the room But being the smartest guy in the room Is an advantage in some cases and a disadvantage because you might be tempted to Over oh, you think you know everything about the market But the reality is you don't know everything about the market and that's why we have things like disruptive innovations. These are new Uh technologies and new challenges that are presented to you Um, and and as a product manager you'll need to research them So it's really important to be diplomatic and seek advice seek help seek um information from Any and every source you can about your customer about your market and you need to be very diplomatic to do that A couple reasons which I say I've found from talking to a few engineers, which they're legitimate But they're not the best reasons to move into product management Um, the first one being you you see it as a as an opportunity for career advancement It's okay to be To seek out career advancement by any means you want to grow your career as a as an individual and um seeking a career ladder opportunity is okay, but it's not a great reason and here's why PMS again, you have your you're in you're the glue you're the glue between a lot of different teams and You have to accomplish your objectives through others Which means you might need to put others needs ahead of your own personal needs to to accomplish What's best for the business in some ways? So and if you have an attitude that's that's really Maybe aggressive or You're looking for the best of everything you're the best as an individual contributor, which personally for me I found failure very difficult. I was always succeeding in my engineer role Always being you know respected and recommended by my my my manager But as I came into the park manager role, I found That you're going to fail a lot because that's how you learn as a park manager It's such a multifaceted role and you can't be great at everything And when you when you start having your first Slip and you're going to have it, you know, you have to kind of encounter failure and see it as an opportunity for learning and not You know dwell on it It's going to be challenging for you and and people who are very career-minded are not used to that level of challenge The other aspect is if you're a technologist and you're building patents, that's great But if you're looking at product management as a way to promote your technology not necessarily And but it may or may not come with a lot of customer value It's going to be very very hard for for you Don't get me wrong the the amount of patents and technologies out there are have lots of great potential But a lot of businesses don't have the the resources necessarily to afford large research projects So google's moonshots, for example, many of these are long-term research projects for high disruptive innovation It's great for a company like google has a lot of money and resources But for a vast majority of companies, they're usually restricted by time money people and resources And for that reason, you need to make very educated guesses about what's the right path Forward for the company and for someone who has a lot of technologies that they want to self promote Is is not necessarily the best decision for the business Um, so what what would a business value engineer and here here are what I found as key strengths That I was able to leverage over others who were seeking product management roles as an engineer you'll likely have You'll have an advantage with Understanding your domain really well understanding maybe your product really well or technology pitfalls If you haven't heard of this concept already what I have shown here is something called crossing the chasm It's essentially a technology adoption curve that showcases at what point in the market is a certain technology What growth level it is what maturity level it is an example I use is cryptocurrency a lot of people are buying into cryptocurrency right now So it's probably in the early majority stages Since the price of bitcoin is still rapidly rising It's probably in the early majority right now a lot of people are trying to get into this space get into this market And it's a great growing. It's very healthy and it has no sign of slowing down Which you see here in the the later majority side Um, but the key here was that crypto coin was not easy to acquire Right only the innovators the early adopters knew how to acquire bitcoin, but companies like Coinbase have Uh cracked the equation they've they know how to easily bring the purchasing of bitcoin to a common end user What we call the pragmatist But there there's a point in time for every technology every product Where they face a very difficult challenge to get over what's called the chasm Chasm is a very large gap between early adoption of technology enthusiasts and real users And that gap is where most products fail They fail to find a niche They fail to take their niches outside of their niche to a mass majority market And that's called crossing the chasm the reason understanding the technology is really important Is because you are going to understand possible risks and pitfalls that your technology could run into So in the example of cryptocurrency, you know, one of the technology gaps is really it kind of takes a geek to figure out how to how to purchase cryptocurrency and really understanding that point Is that we need to invest in a very simple iOS interface that says one click of a button that can buy bitcoin that was the key for them coinbase for example to cross the chasm And sometimes it only takes a technologist to understand that what it takes to make something as easy as a click of a button And you're going to have that advantage to you as an engineer So my presentation keeps on freezing up, but hopefully that won't stop us So then the next point I had uh, the slide's not moving But the next point that I did have was that as an engineer and especially if you are transitioning into Um within the same company within the same product line You're likely going to have a network of people and since you are the glue for the company Um, it is going to be beneficial for you to Really have the the the network of the community and the network of people to Work with so you'll have the respect of your engineering teams You'll have respect from your colleagues and you're going to be coming into the role really looking at With with a lot of credibility and if you're moving to a different company Credibility is the really the toughest thing you're going to have to earn and respect from your your peers and colleagues Um, are we still on because I think it seems frozen to me Yeah, we're still on and we can My whole screen is actually frozen at the web web screen is frozen up. So it's drawing me off a little bit So but you guys can still hear me. It sounds like we can still hear you. Okay. Um, if you want to do a quick refresh We can try that Yeah It's it's it's not going to come back. I'm I can tell okay. You guys see the desktop still at least No, I don't see the desktop. I'm still seeing the understand technology pitfalls and risks slide Okay It's not going to move off this slide. So I think we should just Uh, oh, oh, there we go. It's moving. Okay Sorry about that guys technology difficulties Thanks everyone for your patience something to take away from uh doing demos as a product manager You never know what's going to happen in in a production environment things are going to break on you Exactly with that as as you're presenting um So one of the things I want you guys to look for about pitfalls as an engineer and For myself, these were these were biases that kind of happened to me in my first year as an engineer Um, so this is very relevant for you for the for those of you who are in the first year of product management And have recently transitioned from engineering to p.m um You may be very tempted to do engineering's job you as a p.m. You need to state the what what's the problem And why you know, why are we trying to solve this business problem? It has a lot of potential for customer adoption. It has a lot of potential for revenue But you need to avoid describing the how you shouldn't write a requirement that says Build an api for xyz function because we needed to serve this market You know that that's not a great requirement great requirement says this customer has this problem And here's why why they have this problem. They're they're facing a lot of difficulty You know using some function of your product. That's a very good requirement Um, the other thing that you you might be tempted to do is you might be tempted to shoot down ideas you think or know Cannot make time to market if especially if you're coming from the the product that you were working on You know it very deeply. Yeah, it's from from an architectural and in code perspective And you may be tempted to shoot down ideas from your prospects that say Very radical ideas in some of the cases you might be tempted to do that But that's not your role as a product manager. Your role is to present challenges and needs and sometimes Customers can't tell you what they want. You have to kind of figure out based on things that they're saying um what what they need and You might be tempted to really shoot down those Ideas because they seem out of reach for your product But it's really up to your engineering team to make those calls They need to tell you if something is unachievable too much effort Uh too much risk technically Those those decision points need to come from your engineering teams Um the other aspect of it is You you do need to look at um who who you're working with So at engineers engineering managers, um You may have good relationships with them, but you may be spending a lot of time with them All right, they're not necessarily the folks that you you should be spending all of your time with to get your job done The majority of your time should be spent with customers with prospects and getting feedback about improving your product or or market opportunities And as an engineer, you're you might stay in your comfort zone Which is working with engineers and that's that's great. You're going to be spending a lot of time with engineers But you cannot spend any uh one time in one area because it will not be effective for you to um Work too much internally because you're not out there learning about the market right Um Sorry the screen screen froze again Uh, I want to take away the last couple of points of how you guys can make an effective transition Um, which is really you got to know your strengths and your weaknesses And just like when you're thinking about a product You should think of yourself as a product Know what you're good at know what you need some work and what are your gaps map those out And it'll help you craft a course for how you should be approaching Filling the gaps for product management Um, I always tell people there's a chicken and an egg problem You can't you in order to become a product manager. You kind of need some of those skills And it's very common for PM roles to seek out people who've already been PMs Um, so those those opportunities to break in are kind of difficult They're kind of more rare as what I've seen Um, because the preference is for an experienced person Simply because the PM role is a leveraged role Your role affects a lot of different teams and companies and people For that reason, it's a really important role to hire correctly And and and some managers depending on who they are some companies, you know, they're not willing to take the risk on junior talent So what I would like to see is what can you find to substitute your experience? So what strengths you can really use to your advantage? As an engineer, uh, you'll like again, you'll know the technology in the domain really well That's going to be an advantage for you if you're sticking in the same domain Sticking into the the same product perhaps that you're trying to transition to those are all the advantages to you The other one will be that may be an advantage to you is if you work in a B to B company Many of the problems that customers have are very objective They're functional needs. They're trying to accomplish something very task oriented and those needs are generally more logical And I personally find myself as an engineer. I always we always think logically, right? We think of the algorithms we think in outcomes Very logical And it's it's very easy to transition that line of thinking towards a B to B type of role because most product lines are geared towards accomplishing some kind of functional objective and that that should be easier to build customer empathy for B to C products are more going to align with deeper customer empathy Um, a social media product like instagram, right? Not a lot of functional features and objectives things you need to do with the product It's more about how do you share your content? How the person feels about sharing content and and what are the what is the experience? What is the user experience you need to bring in that product? And that's going to require a very deep level of customer empathy skill Um, which what which is why you might find a person who spent their life in marketing or customer engagement Is it has better skills suited for a B to C company? so Without knowing all of your backgrounds what you want to what you want to map out is what your strengths And what are your weaknesses and how how can you find opportunities to really? fill those gaps This was the slide I wanted to show for that but that's okay The last thing I want to take take you guys away with is If you have an opportunity to transition internally Generally, it's easier. I I personally transitioned internally with this within the product I was working on to the park I was now managing and then from there on as you gain gain your skill as a p.m You'll find opportunities inside and outside the company to work on products you Industries you've never worked on Just because you genuinely get more experience and and so my recommendation is do take internal opportunities more seriously Um, I personally took a leadership opportunity. I became a manager of of engineering And that helped me build diplomacy. It helped build credibility visibility Um, which were instrumental in really helping me get things done Um, fortunately what people praised me for in my role is um, I I move really quickly I move on decisions really quickly and I'm able to operationalize a plan very effectively Over over this so my first role was executing a road map someone else built a prd someone else built um, but that allowed me to Really spend my time learning about the strategic aspects of the role Um, and and ultimately I they they saw that potential immune not only could I execute I also think very logically and right for the business And they promoted me to the lead product manager for for the product line So again, find those stepping stones find opportunities that make sense that fill in the gaps And at the same time our jobs and roles that you you you'll find yourself happy. It's always important to find Satisfaction in every role you take Um, with that, um, I'll take any questions that you guys might have Awesome. Thank you so much for the presentation and everything and thanks everybody for your patience Um with the screen, uh, we do have a couple questions coming in As well. So here I'm going to go ahead and pull our first one from zack What's the best way to reach out to customers and users? So this is uh, this is a really interesting one It really depends on your industry and your product But generally you're going to want to find out what people aggregate Where do they discuss about? Their problems their needs and their interests cryptocurrency as an example again A lot of people focus on reddit There's a lot of conversation on reddit and that's where people hang out my industry It's an it industry people don't hang out on reddit They they go to they go to conferences they go to it community channels Sometimes they just one-on-one message each other the key really is finding out where people hang out and when they discuss You jump in and and and provide your insight your advice at some point You'll be presented an opportunity to ask them questions about you know, what do you think about this product idea? Or what do you think about this need? Okay, awesome um are We have a couple minutes. So guys, um, just make sure you type in your questions before them so we can get to them We have another question here from Ra tool, um, how what's your advice to switch from to product management from a user experience? Um, so for a user experience, it sounds like you'll have a very deep knowledge of the customer So you'll have a pretty good empathy about I think the one limiting thing I've heard from ux designers is they don't have technical background technical background is not a necessity for product management But it is advantageous because engineering is your most common stakeholder So I guess the the recommendation here is to Really try to learn about teams. You don't know about teams because you'll you'll work with every team at some point Find a team who team member on that you don't know a lot about so maybe find an engineer Who who you are close with, you know, talk to them about Their challenges their problems and really just get comfortable with talking about and asking questions about their problems That'll generally help you flex that muscle to build empathy More dynamically because you're gonna need to build empathy not just with your customers But also internally like what are they struggling with on an implementation? What are they struggling with with customer support volume those kinds of things? Customer empathy in general is just really the the key skill you'll need for p.m Right, absolutely. Um Here we have another question coming in from zara. Um, my background is in programming and education I'm looking at a transition into a p.m. Role in education technology. Do you have any recommendations for filling in my gap on the business side? Hmm So so this particular role it sounds like you're a domain expert industry expert and you come with a lot of knowledge about um education um And the question was filling your gap of business knowledge now Uh, depending on the company the level of business knowledge may or may not be as important Uh, it kind of depends on On the company itself some companies prefer mba's amazon prefers mba's for example They recruited a lot of people out of ucoa And they prefer a lot of people will have that ability to build business cases and financial models But a lot but not every company is like that Some companies are just looking for subject matter experts s me's And so the the real key here is is to find informational interviews for positions you're Interested in not necessarily with the recruiting manager But with people in your network So if you're targeting a company And you look through your LinkedIn profile and you found a person you might be able to connect with through one of your connections Ask them for an informational interview and just ask them to learn about their company and how how their culture is student Are they very business savvy? Are they very user savvy or are they very product savvy try to learn about what? How they're how they operate Awesome. Um, we had a few more come in. Um, but we're almost out of time. So Um, if we have some time later, we'll get to those in the comments and drop some responses to those as well So before we go, um, what advice would you have for aspiring product managers out there? Um, again, it's it's know your strengths manage yourself like a product You know as you're interviewing, um, know your strengths know your weaknesses know your competitive advantages Engineers come with a few of them. Um, just from a technical standpoint and really use use that to your peer advantage It's not enough to just to express interest as as you guys have probably already figured that out You need to you need to know very deeply what the what the business would value in your skill set And part of that that internal networking and informational interviews is really key to knowing what they value Yes, there are companies like google and amazon who have a very standard rigorous p.m. Interview process and there's not much room for informational interviews um, but uh You know, not everyone should be shooting There necessarily if there there are programming curriculums of course that help help you build that school and product school From what i've seen is a very very great organization to help you build some of that p.m knowledge Um, but but know know what you have an advantage over Awesome. Um, thank you again joey really appreciate your time today and uh sharing with us All right. Thanks everyone. Thanks and um guys to get more information on us You know you can go to productschool.com and we'll see you at next week's talk. Thanks Okay, bye