This Week #1: Must reads on growth, what PMs should focus on when joining a new team, and the value of an MBA
Sep 2019
When hiring for lead PM or director roles, nothing beats experience doing the actual job. An MBA is rarely worth it if you already have a PM position—there are better ways to accelerate your career through mentorship, working on diverse products, and switching to stronger teams.
Related
Ideas from across Lenny's archive that connect to this one
How to get into product management
Jun 2019Product managers hold disproportionate influence over key decisions yet lack direct authority over their teams. Success requires building trust, making decisive calls, and helping everyone do their best work—not through command, but through influence and credibility.
Gokul Rajaram on designing your product development process, when and how to hire your first PM, a playbook for hiring leaders, getting ahead in you career, how to get started angel investing, more
Jun 2022While good engineers are important, the leverage of a good PM is disproportionately higher. One bad product manager can create cascading errors across an entire engineering team, making PM hiring and development one of the highest-leverage decisions a founder makes.
How to get into product management
Jun 2019A PM who is good at nothing else but execution is valuable to a team, while a team with a PM that can't execute is better off without that PM. Shipping beats strategy when forced to choose.
How to get into product management
Jun 2019Teams look to the PM to help reach decisions. The PM's job isn't to make every decision, but to ensure a decision gets made—whether by themselves, their team, or stakeholders. Indecision is the real enemy.
How to get into product management
Jun 2019One of the most underrated traits for PMs is the ability to project confidence through preparation and follow-through. When you consistently say what you'll do and then do it exceptionally well, quality and pace improve dramatically around you.
Import your highlights, and we'll find the connections you've been missing.