The Pros and Cons of Product Management

This question originally appeared on Quora: What are the pros and cons of becoming a product manager?

Answer by Dan Schmidt, PM my entire career, on Quora

If you are considering becoming a product manager, you are probably not comparing the role's merits to unrelated professions such as sushi chef or race car driver. Instead, you are likely evaluating the appeal of product management relative to adjacent roles that touch technology products (engineering, design, business development, marketing, etc..). Here's a map of the types of roles that surround a product (it's not meant to be comprehensive):

Traditionally, for example, engineers focus on the technology, designers focus on connecting users with the technology, and business development focuses on connecting users with the business. Most roles have the opportunity to wear different hats, but their core responsibilities are limited to one or two vertices around the product; the technology, the users, or the business -- not all three.

Product managers, in contrast, are responsible for healthy functioning across all three product vertices. This leads to the first pro or con of becoming a product manager, depending on your interests: If you are interested in technology, user behavior, and business, product management is the only role, other than CEO, that allows you to intensely focus on how all three realms come together. If you are uninterested in one of the vertices (technology, users, or business), product management is not right for you.

But having interest in technology, users, and business does not necessarily mean that product management is the best role for you. Especially in dynamic startup environments, there is opportunity for any role to work in all product areas. Companies are often founded by engineers with design and business chops or designers who can build their own prototypes. So why would you choose to be a product manager over a versatile engineer or designer?

As someone who has been a product manager their entire career, the largest con I have experienced is that my job doesn't ask me to develop the tangible skills to build a product myself. I've become an expert at working with engineers and designers, but not at writing code or creating pixel-perfect mockups. This means that, when I have my own product idea, I cannot make it come to life myself. Instead, I must influence others to do so. When I have a full team at my disposal, it's amazing how my ideas become real. But when I want to get a new startup concept off the ground, I struggle with my inability to independently make it a reality.

But developing the core skills of an engineer or designer takes time. A pro of working as a product manager is that your time can be spent instead devoted exclusively to the metacognitive skills that holistically bring a product together. As I've explained in The Product Management Triangle (A Graphical Model), the fundamental duties of product management are to recognize and fill critical areas of white space around your product and two resolve tension between conflicting inputs. Creating the connective tissue of communication around a product is its own craft that is as deep as engineering or design; it's a craft that the industry is only beginning to understand. It entails creating frameworks that translate across diverse disciplines and emotionally intelligent communications that breed trust, understanding, consensus, and collaboration. There is no better way to acquire these skills than as a product manager.

Product managers must create the structure that the rest of the team works within. As the person ultimately accountable for the success or failure of the product, the product manager can always ask themselves the question, "are we doing the right thing?" If you're of the right temperament, the ownership, unboundedness, and autonomy inherent in the role is a pro. But for others, the level of anxiety it induces is a con. Some would rather not have to consider the full realm of possibility each day and instead be given a clean problem to solve.

See my posts A Visual Vocabulary for Product Building and A System for Designing Startup Teams for elaborations on some of the concepts discussed in this answer.

What are the pros and cons of becoming a product manager?: originally appeared on Quora: The best answer to any question. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:


Quora: The best answer to any question.