 In this presentation, I'm going to answer Internet's burning questions about product management. I'm going to start with a simple search, and here we are, we've talked in most frequently asked questions about product management. My name is Arvind, and I've been at the intersection of business, technology, and design for the last 15 years. I have managed SaaS applications, services, and multi-million dollar global programs for several Fortune 100 companies. Currently, I'm leading the Global Product Strategy for Microsoft Teams. Embeddable experiences across Microsoft first-party apps. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com slash Arvind Dutta. Let's dive right in. Is product management a good career? Yes, it is. As I think of career choices, there are three dimensions to it. Product management pays well, and here in the North America, starting salary for product managers can be in the six-figure range. You can look at several benchmarking studies on Glassdoor or LinkedIn, and product management salaries will be pretty high up there, I think in most countries. Secondly, as I think of what's a good career, I think of whether it has the potential to grow and evolve. And product management is at that inflection point where the entire digital curve is just going to take off. In the last two years, we have seen pretty much every aspect of our personal life and work has gone remote and we are going to be in this hybrid slash remote work, which needs technology to support that to make happen. And we need product managers to essentially manage these technologies. And finally, product management is also reporting. There are leadership opportunities, not just to lead your product roadmap, but also essentially lead to influence your partner teams, your dev team, your design team. You have to be essentially a leader who's providing clarity and direction. So it is pretty rewarding in that sense, where you get to not only work with the different people where you are constantly learning, but you're also seeing the impact of the work that you're doing. Is product management stressful? Like any other job, there are highs and lows in product management. And the way I think about stress is as long as you're able to manage it, then you should be fine. There are essentially few things I want to highlight here. Firstly, as a product manager, if you can anticipate what's coming next and you can plan ahead, then that will give you much more control of the situation. And this is something that you also have to manage through prioritization. At any given time, a product manager is managing a bunch of items that you're juggling between the various teams. And various tasks that you have to accomplish. And what is super important is to make sure you work on what's most important right now. And likewise, you have to provide clarity to the extended teams, your management, and to your direct teams in terms of what we are doing now, what is important, and what is also not important that we are going to wait until we finish our current milestones. Which is also related to managing expectations across your broad team. And most importantly, building trust. Because as a product manager, there are several things that you have to accomplish and then you can't do everything by yourself. So you will have to rely on others. For example, in my role, as a product manager for Microsoft Teams for embeddable experiences, I have to work with other teams where I have to engage with other product managers, other dev teams. And the only way this can happen is if we have mutual understanding of what is the common goal and how we are going to accomplish it. And it's all set on the foundation of trust. Is product management a good career, Reddit? So I did look up some articles in Reddit and I highly recommend that you also check out the thread called product management in Reddit. And you will see some very candid perspectives from various product managers. I will say that a lot of times these tend to be somebody's personal experiences. So they may not generally represent the overall product management field, but it does give you a point of view on what other product managers are facing. Is product management right for me? Yes, it is. If you are a curious person, as a product manager, one of the most important skills you need to have is curiosity. You have to be curious about your customers, their pain points, what are their challenges. You also have to be curious about the technology, your product and how your team is working, what are their pain points. So that is, I think, one of the most critical things here. And if you are that person, then yes, product management is a great fit for you. The second thing that I want to bring up here is product management is a field where you have to constantly manage a broad set of things. So if you're someone who enjoys that breadth of experience, rather than really going deep into something, then again, it's a great place for you. Most product managers are trying to manage multiple things. And in many cases, you may not be an expert of everything that's not possible. You will have to rely on others to get the job done and partner with them. But you do have to have some basic understanding of how it works. So you have to have the mindset of willing to learn and basically jump on new things as they come up. And finally, product management is also a job where you will not have direct authority, but rather you will have to work with people constantly where you're influencing them to achieve that common goal. So if you're somebody who enjoys working with people, if you're social, then that is super important. This is definitely a role where you have to work with people. You pretty much can't work by yourself in this role. So if you're curious, if you like working on broad set of things and you like working with people, I think those are the most important things as a product manager and it's a great fit for you. Is product management hard? So again, the way I think about this is as a product manager, there are certain skills you need to have. And then again, you don't need to be an expert in all of these things, but you can work towards it, but you do need some hard skills and some soft skills. And a few things I want to call out here from hard-skinned perspective, you will have to work with customers and work pretty deeply with the data that you have in hand. And sometimes you may not have enough data as well. So in those cases as a product manager, you will have to take decisions given whatever timelines and whatever data is at hand. So that's an important skill. Something you want to get started on, I would highly recommend taking up some introductory courses on data analysis and customer research both qualitative and qualitative side of things. As a product manager, you also have to manage a project. So you are managing pretty much your products roadmap, you're working with your stakeholders. You are managing communication with your executives and your leaders. So it does require you to have control on basically your timelines. So that's again, an important skill. The third thing here I would want to call out is business sense. Because at the end of the day, you have to work on products that your business cares about. They can data certain cool technologies that you may want to build. But ultimately, if it is not aligned with your objective key results of your business, then you will find that you're not getting enough support, enough funding from your leaders. You also need to be curious enough to understand the technology. And ultimately, communication is super important, whether it's spec writing or giving presentations to your leaders or your team. You have to have the ability to communicate in both written form and speech form to make sure everyone has clarity in the team. Also, when I think of soft skills as a product manager, the willingness to learn in Microsoft, it's also called a growth mindset where you're constantly having an open mind to learn new things or have the beginner's mind. But when you start at a new thing, you have a lot of curiosity. You're asking a bunch of questions. That is very important soft skill that is required as a product manager. You also have to stay organized. Because at any given day, I have to take hundreds and thousands of decisions. And this can only happen if you're really organized. Otherwise, you are always going to be bombarded with a bunch of other distractions. And finally, social skills. I cannot influence enough how important this is. At the end of the day, people you work with, they will not report to you. So the only way you can achieve your common goal is by influencing them, by making sure you all are on the same page. There's clarity, there's a common goal. And working with people ultimately is very, very important as a product manager. Is product management stressful Reddit? So again, Reddit is a great place to get some candid perspectives. But I will say, when you search in Reddit product management, stressful as keywords, you will see a bunch of articles. Several I found about some useful tools to help you prioritize your day-to-day things as a product manager, which I found really interesting. So do check them out. Is product management certification worth it? Yes. If you are someone who has no experience in product management, but you could be a student that was just graduated and wanting to get into product management field, or maybe you are someone who is a dev and who wants to transition within the company as a PM. Or you could be somebody who's in marketing and now wants to be a PM. So if you are in any of those situations where you don't have prior product management experience, I think having a certification course really accelerates your learning, which would take several months and maybe years to basically gain in the real life. So it does give you learning and also credibility to get into PM role. I have also seen product managers come from other backgrounds like MBA, if you go to business school, it's also an entry point to become a product manager. And within the company also, you can start taking up some projects, whether it's in the research field or whether you're working with the customers or the dev teams. That is also a path where within the company you can incrementally pave your path into product management. But ultimately do check out product schools. They have a bunch of interesting courses and a lot of content about product management. So if you're somebody who's in that position where you don't have that experience or who's wanting to accelerate a career, that's a great place to start. Is product management a good career in India? Absolutely it is. India is a growing economy. In fact, the growth is exponential and as we have seen in the last several years, the digital revolution is happening right now in India. And this revolution requires new technologies and new products that need product managers. So yes, it's a great career choice. The other thing I also want to call out is government is very supportive of startups. There are several ways to get funding, resources, whether it's learning, training or infrastructure. I know that there are a lot of opportunities available in India to help startups. And finally, Big Tech, think of any big company whether it's Microsoft, Facebook or Google, they are investing in India. So whether you want to start off in a startup environment or whether you want to join Big Tech, product management is a great career choice. And I think this is not just relevant for India alone. In any emerging country or whether you are in any part of the world, product management is a role which I think is going to be more and more important. Is product management part of marketing? It could be in my previous job before Microsoft, I was in a company where the product management role was within the marketing organization and in Microsoft product management role is in engineering organization. You will see titles like PM or PMM, a PM product manager in some places is in Microsoft, for instance, it's program manager, there are product owner titles and likewise on the marketing side, there is PMM which is product marketing manager or marketing manager. So essentially the difference is if you are a PM then you own the product. And whether you are in the marketing or in the engineering or ultimately what is really important in the PM role is being customer centric. Having the customer obsession, curiosity about what are the customer's pain points and how are you trying to solve it through your solution? So that's the most important mindset. On the PMM side, product marketing manager side, it is more about now you have a product in the shelf, how do I package it up? How do I make sure my sellers are able to sell it? So it's all positioning, packaging in many companies, PMMs are also involved in pricing strategies or channel development. So think of it as like PM is somebody who's building the product and PMM is somebody who's taking a build product packaging it up and then making sure that go-to-market strategy is there so that ultimately we are able to sell the product and reach the right customer. This product management the same as project management. No, it's not. Again, you will see the title of a TPM or a PM. TPM technical program manager or technical project manager, you will see these titles in different companies in different ways, but essentially the difference between the PM and the TPM role is that the PM owns buy and what, which is why are we building a certain feature or the product, addressing a specific pain point that the customer has. And also what exactly are we building in terms of, what is the MVP of this feature, minimum viable product that we're building for this next release? While the TPM or the technical project manager or technical program manager holds how and when, which is, okay, now we have a spec, how do we build it and what resources are needed, what frameworks will be used and then when will we release it? So that's sort of the high level difference. Again, these are the two wheels of the same vehicle. They have to work very closely with each other. There is a lot of overlap in many companies, but that's essentially the difference. So depending on where your interest area lies, you will, you know, both these roles are very good. They also overlap a lot. So there you go. Those were the internet's top 10 most frequently asked questions about product management. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com slash Arvindatta. You can also check out my webpage, Arvindatta.com for more information and reach out to me if you have any questions about product management. I wish you all the best in your journey of product management and do check out all the other videos of product school. Thank you.