Tell me about being a product manager

Has anyone here worked as a product manager at a major tech firm in Silicon Valley? I interviewing coming up for a post-MBA position with one of the current web 2.0 darlings (think LinkedIn, Groupon, Facebook, etc). Was originally approached by a headhunter, and don't know anyone currently at the company, so don't have a great perspective on hours, comp, career path, culture, etc. The day-to-day job description sounds pretty awesome, but I'm curious if anyone on WSO can speak to what a career in product management looks like?

Thanks

 

I work with a lot of PMs from both startups and the 2.0 companies you describe and I think it all depends on the company. For example, Zynga runs a really tight ship and the culture is totally different than that at Google where employees are encouraged to take risks and fail at times. It really depends where the company is in its life cycle - I wouldn't want to be at Yahoo or HP right now, whereas Facebook would be fun as it gears up for its IPO. I would definitely aim for some of the younger companies as they seem to have more of a pulse on what is going on and where there are new monetization opportunities.

 

Had a phone screen earlier today for the above mentioned PM position. Questions were case based and revolved around two topics. First I was asked to design a feature for their primary product - what would the feature be, how would it work, how would I measure it's success, etc. Next I was given a hypothetical crisis situation. I was told that traffic to one portion of the site had dropped 50%, and I was asked to diagnose the problem and propose a fix.

Seems I did well as I was invited for a in office interview in a couple of weeks.

Also, for the person who asked, I do have a technical undergrad degree, and was an engineer for several years prior to bschool. The interview also asked questions about my experience with scripting languages, data models, SQL, etc.

 

Reset, your background seems like it would be a good fit for the Silicon Valley tech space. A lot of the PMs I interface with have some sort of programming/engineering degree (and many of the senior ones also have MBAs on top of that to boot). It seems like the interviews in the valley are more about personality and thinking outside the box once you've shown that you're technically qualified. Good luck with the second round and let us know how it turns out.

 

I like Win10. Very clean interface and just a smoother overall experience. I can actually overclock my machine a bit higher than it could previously go on Win7. The only thing I don't like about it is the automatic driver updates, but that's easily turned off. I much prefer to handle that myself.

I might be preaching to the choir, but it's recommended that you do a clean install of Win10 before you come to conclusions. First, you'll have to update to Win10 from whatever you had before. Once that's done and you see that your copy of Win10 is validated, then you can download the ISO from the Media Tool, wipe your drive clean, and start from scratch. Should get rid of a lot of problems.

 
jennyfd:
Do you know what are there in production manager job description? Tks for sharing!

Hey. Crazy idea, I know, but maybe you should have another whack at that whole English language thing?

Under my tutelage, you will grow from boys to men. From men into gladiators. And from gladiators into SWANSONS.
 

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