Top 2 reasons to pursue Product Management

Since there is a ‘wave’ of Product Management nowadays, people just want to get into a PM role, but do they even know why?

Here are my top 2 reasons to get into Product Management

1. You want to be an entrepreneur

If you are thinking of doing something of your own, like starting your own company in the long run or even in the near future then Product management is the most suitable career path for you.

You will learn/develop following skills (you may add more to the list) while working as a PM (often called mini-CEO) which would definitely help you in your entrepreneurial venture:

a. User research/Market research skills

b. Customer empathy while building products

c. Leadership skills and the ability to take initiatives

d. Problem solving/Critical thinking ability

e. Understanding on the Software development lifecycle and how products are shipped

f. Communication, collaboration, and prioritization skills as PMs have to work with multiple stakeholders

Of course you need many more skills apart from these to be an entrepreneur such as being able to create a strong vision, roadmap, and an execution plan. Also, innovation, risk management, a bit of finance, marketing, and legal structure are helpful skills for your entrepreneurial venture which again you can gain when you climb the ladder in the PM industry.

2. You are interested in ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’ instead of the ‘How?’

This is especially applicable for Software Engineers who are responsible for coming up with ways to solve a problem and implement it through coding.

Don’t worry if you are not a Software Engineer and can’t relate, the point is engineers usually work on implementing the solution and come up with optimised methods to do the same i.e. ‘How’ part of the product.

‘What’ & ‘Why’ is basically what are we building and why are we doing this? What’s the purpose? What’s the goal? What’s the outcome?

Now, if deciding the vision, strategy, and roadmap for the product, talking to customers, gathering requirements, coming up with new features for the product, collaborating with different teams, keeping track of product performance, dealing with uncertainties etc. seems more exciting to you than the coding part which I had mentioned above, then my friend, you should pursue a role in Product Management.

I hope this article helps you to brainstorm on your reasons to pursue product management.

Please comment down your top reasons to pursue product management and let the discussion begin :)

Read my article on how to switch to product management here