The Hidden Truth About Becoming a Product Manager
At dinner last night, a brilliant engineering director 👩🏽💻 asked me how to transition into product management. She had all the usual questions: What skills do I need? What courses should I take? Which certifications matter?
I put down my coffee and smiled. She was asking all the wrong questions.
You see, great product managers aren’t made in classrooms. They’re forged in the crucible of real-world experience. Think about it—you’ve spent years building things, leading teams, and navigating corporate storms. That’s not baggage; that’s your secret weapon.
Here’s what nobody tells you about becoming a product manager: Your experience isn’t just relevant—it’s your unfair advantage. While others are memorizing frameworks and methodologies, you already know how things really work. You’ve seen products succeed and fail. You understand the delicate dance between possibility and practicality.
But here’s the real kicker that took me years to figure out: The best products aren’t built by following best practices. They’re built by knowing when to break them. It’s like jazz—you need to know the rules cold before you can improvise. When Instagram first launched, everyone said users wanted more features. Instagram said no to almost everything. That wasn’t following best practices. That was pure jazz.
I learned this the hard way with my first product. I did everything “right”—followed every framework, checked every box. The product was perfect on paper. And you know what? Users hated it. Because I was so busy following playbooks, I forgot to solve real problems.
Take Ming (明), a former engineering lead I mentored. Instead of chasing certifications, she leveraged her technical depth to speak the language of both developers and executives. Within six months, she was running point on our most strategic initiative. Her secret? She treated engineering constraints like creative opportunities. When the team said something was impossible, she didn’t push back—she asked, “What if?” That’s the kind of thinking you can’t learn in a workshop.
Here’s another truth nobody talks about: The best product decisions often feel wrong at first. When Apple removed the headphone jack, everyone screamed. When Netflix moved to streaming, their stock tanked. That’s because real innovation lives in the space between “this is crazy” and “this is obvious.”
A Framework for Transitioning into Product Management
If you’re ready to make the leap, here’s a simple framework to guide you:
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Collect Problems
- Start noticing pain points in your current role. Every frustrated user, every clunky workflow, every “that’s just how it works”—these are your gold mines.
- Great products don’t start with solutions. They start with someone being bothered enough by a problem to do something about it.
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Leverage Your Strengths
- Your technical or operational expertise is your superpower. Use it to bridge gaps between teams and stakeholders.
- Like Ming, treat constraints as creative opportunities. Ask “what if?” instead of accepting limitations.
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Build Bridges
- Product management is about connecting dots—between developers, designers, executives, and users.
- Practice translating technical jargon into business value, and vice versa.
The Jazz of Product Leadership
Product management isn’t about following a script. It’s about knowing when to improvise. As Marty Cagan, author of Inspired, puts it: “The job of a product manager is to discover a product that is valuable, usable, and feasible.” That discovery process is messy, iterative, and deeply human.
So, stop asking about the perfect transition plan. Instead, start collecting problems. The future belongs to those who can bridge the gap between what’s possible and what’s needed. You’ve spent years building that bridge. Now it’s time to cross it.
Call to Action
Here’s your challenge: Share a problem you’ve encountered in your work—and how you solved it (or how you’re still trying to solve it). Let’s start a conversation about the real-world challenges that shape great product leaders.
Remember: Everyone can learn product management. But not everyone can bring years of real-world scar tissue to the table. That’s your superpower. Use it.