Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
3people
2015–2021years
80% recommend20% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- A list I put together a while back: https://www.encona.com/posts/product-manager-resources
Overview books:
* Inspired
* The Product Manager’s Desk Reference
* The Lean Startup
* Agile Product Management with Scrum
Interview preparation (good for breadth, even if you’re not applying for jobs):
* Decode & Conquer
* Cracking the PM interview
Other good books for PMs:
* Hooked
* The Design of Everyday Things
* Zero to One
* Traction
- Judging from this comment, I would say you lack confidence. Recruiters and interviewers can see this coming from a mile away. Perhaps, you are trying to jump up the proverbial software engineering ladder to fast...
I would highly recommend you read the book: Decode and Conquer. I would also recommend Cracking the Coding Interview and Cracking the PM Interview. If you can solve those problems on a white board, you can pass a technical SE interview.
I would also suggest you:
1. Work on a problem for a few minutes and try to solve it. If you can't, look at the solution and understand how the solution was derived. Go back and solve the problem again. You are not finished here. Go back a few days later and work on the same problem - repeating this several times a week. Over time, you will grow more confident and can quickly recall concepts that are potentially causing you to perform poorly on your technical interviews.
GL
- "Have any of you made a similar jump?"
People get hired as PMs at large tech companies from all sorts of backgrounds. My pre-PM background is only slightly less varied than yours. Email me if you want to chat or want specific advice.
I'd recommend you pick up a couple of PM interview books: (i) Decode and Conquer, (ii) Cracking the PM interview. They aren't just useful for interview preparation, but helpful in thinking whether you want to do this sort of job, how to prepare your CV etc.
- Overview of being a PM:
- Inspired
- The Product Manager's Desk Reference
- The Lean Startup
- Agile Product Management with Scrum
Targeted at interview preparation, but good for breadth:
- Decode & Conquer
- Cracking the PM interview
Other good books for PMs:
- Talking to Humans
- Hooked
- The Design of Everyday Things
- Zero to One
- Traction
- I started as a technical project manager over 10 years ago and slowly moved into product management in my last job almost 5 years ago. Cannot say it is a very successful product (due to the technology and market choices, both made without me at the very early stage of the product).
But the reason I'm writing this post is to say I don't get the hiring process for product managers. And before I go ahead, I accept that the problem can be with me and not the process. But the process feels entirely superficial and arbitrary to me. The typical problem given at the interview is like 'Design a solution to the problem X'. What exactly to do next is an entirely subjective choice. I've read the famous "Decode and Conquer", but even then it leaves a lot to be answered. In the end you are not really solving the problem, you need to please the interviewer instead. Do they want you to challenge the problem first? Do they want you to challenge the suggested technology to solve it (why do we want to build a bot and not a mobile app?) ? Do they want me to dive straight into making hypotheses? Design solutions?
It feels that the key to pass a product manager interview is to find an interviewer on the same wavelength with you. Probably I'm just venting, but not sure if anyone else feels the same or maybe you have any tips (including 'change your job!' haha)
