Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?
Inspired by this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42656184
I'm starting a new job in a few days as a senior PM at a ~1000 person company, but I've never been a PM before. My career path has been: PhD -> Engineer -> Founder.
My time as a founder has given me some unique perspective on products in my space, but I'm less experienced with the day-to-day of a PM in a medium sized company. My exposure has been second hand watching the PMs while I was an engineer. Any advice on how to help ensure things kick off well?
- understand as much about the product as possible, primarily from a user point of view
- meet as many different verticals as possible and understand how they work
- speak with all other senior PMs and tech leads and understand their workflows
You're going to be working with multiple teams and stakeholders and it's crucial you have a mental map of how everyone's workflow is. You also will have an 'outsiders' view for the first 30-90 days as you look at the product with fresh eyes. Use this to drive insights for the product if applicable.
Lastly, don't ever stop customer meetings. It may not be on the agenda for other Senior PMs, but don't let that stop you. Customer meetings will keep your insights fresh and valid.
Since you may not have seen it in your previous career: be aware of politics in companies (that size). Especially when you are interacting with other departments, PMs and positions generally above yours.
I'm not saying its the most important thing or specific to the first days. But getting the dynamics early on will benefit you, your project and the people involved.
Also more specific to day one: have fun and be excited :) good luck!
Communication books can be useful. I've heard good things about nonviolent communication and, while I've not finished it, crucial conversations has been useful
Along those lines: especially when coming from a technical background and dealing with non-technical stakeholders, wording like "hmm, this would likely be a pretty intensive multi-week project" might have been intended as carrying the benign context "...and the team would be excited if that's what leadership wants to prioritize" but can often be interpreted as "...and I'm going to fight you tooth and nail on this."
Pausing and engaging on the benefits of a proposal can be incredibly valuable, even if your mind has already raced to the considerations about implementation and opportunity cost. Many engineers understand that there's no higher praise than a leader diving into the weeds on something, but many other stakeholders don't have the same context!
Good advice. First step is to identify your enemies. I also would call it “understand dynamics”. Because somebody wanted promotion into your senior position. Somebody just does not like you or someone wants to do things differently. It’s fine. Just know the obstacles before planing the journey.
I get it, but this is just such a cynical take…devoting time & energy during your ramp up to identifying enemies seems to set the wrong tone from day 1. People will take notice no matter how hard you try to conceal it, and that will follow you around. First impressions matter, for you and those around you.
I suggest the opposite: assume good intent from everyone, listen a lot, don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions, identify people who can help your team and identify people who need your help. In leadership, the job is not about you, it’s about setting up your team for success.
> First step is to identify your enemies
The most difficult and political people I know think like this. They never see themselves as the problem. They just think they’re playing defense and playing the meta-game better than others.
If you go into a workplace thinking that your first step is to identify your enemies so you can be on constant high alert to defend yourself, there’s a high risk that you’re going to become the political problem you claim to want to avoid.
What if there are no enemies? What if nobody was denied this role, because it was added headcount to expand the team? Imagine the OP going in on the defense because HN told them to “identify your enemies” as the first step, but really their team just wants to add another person to the group? This type of advice causes more problems than it solves.
What I’m saying is not criticism, I think the word enemies is quite isolating and too negative. It’s definitely true that every place with more than one human has inter-personal motivations and constraints, but I think they often can be fluid and non personal, someone contested the position you got but after the position was granted they realized they’re very much ok with not spending extra work time in the new job for example, or the employee that contested you to the promotion just wanted the raise or the ability to influence more in the company and you didn’t take their dream job. In some of those cases I found I can plaster my coworker name in large font on any work we did together or delegate to them tasks that they really wanted to, and I could win their trust and cooperation even though I got the promotion or something of that sort. It’s super subjective and my own personal experience
Or possibly find your friends and build relationships. Understand the motivations of the people you work with and identify ways to align your goals with theirs. By focusing your energy this way you'll help craft a healthy dynamic rather than be subjected to existing dynamics.
It's probably also worth figuring out who holds power and authority. It's not always based on org or chart.
Probably a bit against the grain, but I don't think you need to try and act like you are an experienced PM. No amount of blog posts or books will quickly get you to that level, only experience will. They were well aware of your background when they hired you. Perhaps they hired you _because_ of it? At a company that size, PMs are often just corporate animals playing politics a good chunk of their time. You'll probably have to become more similar to them over time, but for now, you might just have a honeymoon period where you can add your own flavour to how the product you're assigned to should be run, and make it more successful.
As a founder, you probably already have a lot of the skill set that's needed for that. If you listen to people and apply your intuition, I bet you'll do well.
Sure, understand what the role is generally about, what the expectations are and all that. But I don't think it's a problem that you didn't hold it before, no need to make it one. PMs are in my experience a slightly different job at each company anyway. The most important thing with your background is probably to develop an eye and tactics for the games other PMs and middle managers play.
This is not just first day advice, but more general advice for new PMs:
Talk to your users relentlessly, find out how they use and don't use your product. Get a deep understanding of their workflows and user journeys in the product.
Trim the fat (shift focus) and solve problems they have that the product doesn't solve yet or solve well.
Reduce the steps in their critical user journeys. For example, if it's something they do every day, going from 5 clicks to 3 clicks adds up over time and improves satisfaction.
Dive into metrics and implement quantitative metrics where they don't exist. Survey users for qualitative metrics.
Bring data (metrics, market research, customer quotes etc) to executive meetings to back up your ideas, data speaks louder than your words.
Basically, if your product is in the market you don't need to always guess what to build, your users will guide you. That's not to say you can't innovate too, but a large part of being a PM is bringing the user experience and their frustrations to your team to action.
You should clarify what you mean by PM; product and project management are different things. I assume its one of those rather than Programme Management or Prime Minister...
ps. a cheatsheet for a famous general management-onboarding book The First 90 Days; while it doesn't specifically address your question a lot of it will apply:
https://sourcesofinsight.com/doing-the-first-90-days/
This is true. Although, I’m not sure how many medium size companies have their own Prime Ministers.
Your first few weeks at any company in any role, though, are well spent meeting people and learning the product really well.
I also like to get or sit in on a sales demo and an onboarding call.
Since I've seen a growing number of Chief Of Staffs in startups, I'd guess the number of companies with Prime Minister roles is non-zero.
Maybe even with very sensible titles like 'Junior Prime Minister'.
This is a very fair rebuttal as a person who has worked at a company where we had a 'Chief Spider Wrangler' for a time.
Ask for sales to give you the same demo they give customers.
Ask the engineering team for a demo.
Ask the founder/execs for a demo.
Ask tech support for a rundown of the most frequent issues.
Each of those will show you what each silo think is important.
Also, ask customers for a demo to understand how they use the product and what they think is important.
Befriend someone in the customer support function ASAP. Ask to see their notes, in particular notes they share with other customer support people.
I once got shown a customer support tips shared spreadsheet that was more valuable documentation than anything else in the entire company.
Love that "senior" PMs need to have exactly zero years experience as PM to be a senior PM.
I had the same thought, but if it is a 1000 person company, that is large enough that the seniority level of their title is just as likely to be based on the compensation band of their HR structure as much as having any relevance to their actual skills.
Depends how rest of his career experience has been. He was an engineer and he has been a founder. If the product is technical it very well makes sense for me that he is well beyond junior or mid level depending on overall experience.
Founder is ‘PM on steroids’
Not if the "founder" experience as a founder was micromanaging a startup of 10 people. I had a PM like that once and he was one of the worse PMs I've had.
curious to know more : what about him / her made it that bad ?
I personally disliked being micromanaged. But even trying to leave personal feeling aside, I don't think he knew the team or the product well enough to micromanage the work effectively. It just made everybody more frustrated with him and work.
Well, maybe not everybody, but the others on the team that I talked with. As far as I know after only 9 months 75% of the team had been fired or left.
Founder implies wearing a lot of different hats all at once but also the power to make choices, including defining bureaucracy and processes. Senior PM implies a much more limited silo of skills but also limited powers and a need to be able to fit in with existing bureaucracy and processes.
I maintain a repo of topics for new PMs, plus one-page explanations, in web page format and also as a free ebook. Constructive feedback welcome.
https://github.com/sixarm/project-management-guide
This guide doesn't tell you what to do; it give you much of the lingo and a bunch of framework choices that you can use, or perhaps that the existing teammates are already using.
This is for Project Management, but I think OP is a Product Manager...
whats the difference?
Project management is "create, maintain and drive the ticking off of a to-do list being done by multiple people inside/outside company to achieve a goal" - e.g. "move from Dynamics CRM to Oracle CRM", and it cares a lot about setting exact timelines and ticking off when tasks are done. Most quality control or creative input is done elsewhere.
Product management is "understand a market and customers to create or improve a product, prioritising features to feed to teams to deliver based on some metric (e.g. "creates most new sales" or "slowly improves the lives of existing customers without breaking anything"), and is often highly involved in quality (and perceived quality matters such as UX) and is fairly creative, as it decides what features go into the product.
Product companies tend to have more product managers and less project managers (they’re usually called something else, like simply software engineering managers or tech leads who have take on the project management duties).
Traditional enterprises and software consultancies tend to be organized around projects rather than user-centric products and their features, so they will more often have project managers instead. The product responsibility in turn tends to become more ad hoc, sometimes with someone assigned as a “product owner” outside their regular title.
(My personal view: if a company has project managers and product owners, that’s a sign that it’s probably not the place for me.)
Product Managers decide what they want the Project Managers to manage.
eg: "New Feature X" or "New Product Y" or...
Project Managers are about estimates and critical paths and resolving bottlenecks and competition for resources.
Product Managers are about features and sales and product roadmaps and marketing campaigns etc.
I don't know if it will help, but I wrote a series of three blogs about this topic roughly 10 years ago. Very much informed by my experiences as a brand new PM: https://learntopm.com/2019/11/11/your-first-30-days-in-a-new...
There’s probably advice and books and other things that PMs here and elsewhere can give you, but also get a network together with the other senior PMs and head of product/CTO I reckon and see what’s working and what’s not. Bit of a “listening tour” (and even outside product; what does sales and support think about the product, and about working with the product). One is not a substitute for the other and I’m sure there are some institutional aspects in the company that’ll influence how you manage the product and it’s roadmap. Our ex-PM Jackie who was/is very good also wrote a book specifically for this, that helped build Asana :-) Cracking the PM Career: The Skills, Frameworks, and Practices to Become a Great Product Manager https://amzn.asia/d/3CP2Jex
Great book. A couple of others I’ve also found super helpful:
- The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter (https://a.co/d/dRDXQtg)
- Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (https://a.co/d/aw73ped)
I’ve also found some good stuff in Lenny Rachitsky’s Podcast/Blog (https://www.lennyrachitsky.com)
Depending on the culture of the company, the product management function will come with a range of expectations from the powers that be — figure those out asap. Figure out the big personalities, the values of the company, and obviously start talking to their customers on week 1 and every week (day?) thereafter.
As a senior PM, you probably need to pay a lot more attention to your executive stakeholders than a junior PM who might focus instead on lower level cross functional needs, developer focus, design, etc. I would also suggest that after you’re comfortable with your onboarding that you embrace high visibility and even fight for it if anyone discourages you or devalues your communication efforts. Good luck!
I have never worked as a pure PM, but I have worked with several. I would say that the most important thing is to build trust with your team and to be ready to adapt to the existing process. From there on you can start introducing small changes towards a better working mode, but do not get caught up in process over outcome. Remember why you are there.
Probably spend a lot of time working out who your company's customers are, what problem they want you to solve and how the company is currently performing at doing that. This can be done together with different people, for example the customers themselves, your sales team, your PM team, customer support team, operations, executives, etc. so that you build up a bit of a network internally. This should give you some good background knowledge for developing your product strategy.
Interesting (but perhaps not surprising) none of the top comments mention meeting or learning how to work with the people who build, operate, and maintain the software product that they're managing.
Understanding the dynamic (ie. inherent tension) between engineering and product/business is a really important part of a software job no matter what your role is.
As a junior PM should have a mentor from within the company. Should this be your first step to find a mentor?
From the perspective of an engineer- do a listening tour. Learn as much as you can. Shadow meetings. From there you’ll start to see where you can have an impact.
Depends if the project started with you or was ongoing. If it is the latter, defer to pre-existing coworkers to an extent at first.
I came from the technical side and did the PMI PMP and PMP ACP. I know people are rightfully critical of certifications here, and certifications alone never teach you the thing they certify, but for me it was worth it.
I learned a lot of lingo I was unfamiliar with and the broad and comprehensive treatment of the field gave much more confidence. Being forced to deal with all the topics in PM, at least to some degree, was very eye opening for someone like me, whose experience was restricted to only certain aspects of it.
And not the least, it gives you access to people in similar positions in other organizations and industries for exchange and to learn from.
EDIT: If you meant PM as product manager this is probably not for you. I was curious how common PM for product manager is and searched HN for the abbreviation. Most commonly on HN it stands for - surprise, surprise - prime minister.
perhaps try to find what you can pull from the responsibilities of other project managers to demonstrate your positive impact on the project for the next performance review
It's okay to go slow at first. You have to walk before you can run.
Even though you have experience in the domain, don't rush in and start trying to change everything, first understand why it is the way it is.
Gain your engineers' trust through active listening, kindness, empathy, and engagement on critical topics. Don't be afraid to say "let me do that for you" in the early days. It's both a learning opportunity and a trust building technique.
Meet every stakeholder and peer you can. Ask them about themselves, the company, and their perspective on the opportunities for your product. Set up regular 1:1s with key stakeholders.
Understand what your teams and your mgmt wants from you. They may conflict. If they do, see if you can figure out a way to address both needs. If you can't, you'll need to figure out a way to manage one group's needs while meeting the other's.
Ask for feedback from the engineers you work with and your peers, especially on your first couple of initiatives but I find it's worth doing all the time. If you don't get any meaningful feedback just assume you've done a good job and keep going.
When you use a product for the first time, write down your feedback as you go through it. Identify what you think is confusing or frustrating, but also what you think it working well. Take screenshots or videos as necessary to further illustrate your perspective. Most of the people who work on the product already have probably internalized these faults and no longer see them the way you will with fresh eyes. Discuss your findings with the team.
You'll want to speak with as many customers/users as possible, but unless you're already an expert in the product, not right away. Gain basic competency in the product, develop a hypothesis about what you think needs to be done, and then go speak to users. You'll quickly find out if you're on the right or wrong path.
One thing I've learned is that many founders actually suck at talking to users in a way that gives them actionable information. If that's you, and perhaps why you're not a founder any more (not saying this is you), then quickly learn how to do interviews well. There are plenty of books and videos on this topic.
Celebrate your team's wins and understand that you are there to help your teams win, not the other way around.
Understand that PMs are judged on outcomes not inputs. No body cares if you worked really hard on something or if you cruised into it. The results will speak for you.
Be prepared to say "no" a lot. That's one of the primary jobs of a PM, but be wary of saying it a lot right away. If you're unsure of something in the early days get council from your team or mgmt.
Your teams want you in the problem space, not the solution space. Unless you have some keen insight on a solution or are part of a solution brainstorming session, don't tread into the engineer's domain. Conversely though, embrace engineers that want to get a deeper understanding of the problem space.
Look for leverage points. That is, look for opportunities with low effort and high impact. I've been able to make seemingly big strides in a product early on just by identifying the right leverage points.
I can keep going but I'll stop for now. I hope this helps you on your journey. Best of luck!
How are you a senior PM if this is your first PM role?
senior is the new junior
senior = junior
staff = mid
principal = senior
Title inflation at its finest. Maybe he's 65 or older, thus being a senior PM.
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