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.
I would be interesting in knowing about this career too. Anyone knows what the interview questions are like?
Question: Do you have a background in programming/CS? I've a friend who's a PM over at the Goog, and he tells me that most of their PMs have double degrees/majors in CS + (anything not CS).
More for my personal curiosity than anything else. Being a PM at a younger tech firm is one of my dream jobs.
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.
Product Managers At Microsoft Be Like (Originally Posted: 08/30/2015)
Windows 7 and Previous Generations: - Why fuck with perfection? Let's just keep releasing the same product with very modest updates. It's the ultimate cashflow machine!
Windows 8: - Let's get rid of the start menu that has become our trademark and gives our customers a clean, simple, and very functional user experience. - Let's have an automatic restart every time we install updates that have zero meaningful impact on the user experience. Let's also give the user no control of when that restart will take place after they press the restart later button too many times. You think it will piss off the finance guys if we make the auto save feature not work whenever we force a restart? -Start Screen=A giant cluster fuck of useless apps that slow people down from going where they want to go?!?!? Done and done.
Windows 10: - A lot of people were upset about not having a start menu in Windows 8, so let's use one that is less user friendly than any previous generation. - We need to improve customer service. Let's charge $100 whenever someone wants to ask us a question about our shitty product. Excel turns your PC into a giant blinking yellow screen whenever you have color coded cells? Not our fucking problem!
I'd have a lot more to say about Windows 10, but I couldn't last more than 3 hours with it.
Your IQ must hover around 95 if you have issues with either Windows 10 or Office 365
Damn. That's about 5 points too low to have a successful Wall Street career.
i switched to mac just before windows 8 hit... thank goodness
i was looking at getting a back up pc, windows 7 only please
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.
XP 4 Life
Production manager job description (Originally Posted: 12/01/2011)
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?
He must be a male HR rep..
See sample here: http://www.humanresources.hrvinet.com/production-manager-job-descriptio…
Tech Product Manager to Business School (Originally Posted: 03/06/2015)
Can anyone comment on how B-schools view Product Managers from tech companies? Does anyone have classmates with that background or 1st hand experience?
How to become a product manager? (Originally Posted: 04/08/2016)
Hello Everyone,
I'm a sophomore from a target. I was wondering if my ultimate goal is to become a product manager in a tech company, what route should I choose?
I've heard people said that banking/consulting, then MBA, then PM. Also heard that I should join a Financial Leadership Program in a tech company and move to PM later.
I do enjoy banking, but being able to design a product, define its strategy and monitor its development are more appealing to me.
Thank you so much for any advice!
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