What's the deal with product management, and what do product managers even do? To crack this mystery, we chatted with:
Let's dive in!
✨ "Product manager" defined
❓ Why do product managers exist?
🔍 What do product managers do?
👩💻 Do product managers need to code?
🤔 Are there product managers outside of tech?
💼 What product managers do day-to-day
💃 What type of people thrive?
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
🌍 Impact
⚖️ Work-life balance
🤸♂️ Flexibility
🤝 The people
⬆️ Your managers
🌱 Learning & development
🌟 Job outlook
💵 Pay
📈 Career progression
🔀 Exit options
5. Where can I find internships?
When you open your favorite app, you're seeing the work of not just developers (who code the app) and designers (who make it look good and easy to use) – you're also seeing the work of a product manager – or "PM" for short.
On the surface, PMs resemble project managers. Like a construction project manager, PMs don't build anything with their own hands. Instead, they partner with the builders (in this case, engineers and designers) to make a finished product – and their job is to keep the project on track so it finishes on time and within budget.
On a deeper level, PMs are problem-solvers. Their main role is actually figuring out what gets built. This means thinking deeply about things like:
Here's how Prosple's product manager explains it.
Project management is making sure everything is set and keeping things on deadline. That's a small part of what product managers do.
Product management starts with a problem. Maybe it's a problem you know from using the product yourself or a problem that a user has alerted you to. Either ways, you'd come up with a solution and then work with different teams to get it built.
But first, you actually need to verify that the problem is there and come up with a solution yourself. Figuring out what "solving the problem looks like" is actually the bulk of the job.
You'd also need to see if this problem is worth solving by extrapolating forward the impact of the solution. For example, if we increase the conversion rate of this section of the website by 5%, what is the increase in job applications over a year? I'd do those calculations across several different projects, which would then tell us which projects we should prioritize.
So at the beginning, you're mainly working with the data team, and not involving engineers and designers yet.
– Product Manager at Prosple
Could a company build products without a product manager? Yes – in fact, you could probably build a product with just engineers.
But these products might not be very user-friendly, which is why companies hire designers. And those who want to make the most of each dollar they invest in their products will want dedicated product managers.
In essence, product managers are paid the big bucks to make sure a company's money is well-spent. They do this by:
You can think of product managers as the glue that holds the digital creation process together. They handle the overarching strategy and logistics, like setting realistic timelines and ensuring the team stays on track.
Without their guidance, the process could easily turn into a free-for-all, resulting in a final product that misses the mark.
In a gist, product managers:
In simpler terms, they're in charge of making sure an app or website is something people love and use all the time.
Nope, for the most part, product managers don’t need to code. Their primary role is to understand customer needs, the product vision, and work with the team to bring that vision to life.
Knowing the basics of coding can help them communicate more effectively with developers, but at the end of the day, they're not being paid to code – they're there to plan, lead, and make sure everyone's "rowing in the same direction."
The vast majority of companies do not expect PMs to be on the same technical level as software engineers, the ones expected to build the actual product.
Many PMs here at JP Morgan are from business backgrounds. Building an app is a big effort, and goes beyond just programming. There's ton of things that go into it – system design, networking, 3rd parties, and more.
I do not really look at code. I partner a lot with architects and engineering leads - who have a better understanding of the full stack.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
That said, there are situations where a product manager would be expected to know how to code. Namely:
At most companies, product managers are a link between marketing and engineering and have some business training (quite a few are MBAs). Not so at Microsoft. PMs are freshly recruited engineering graduates who want to do more than code, or are PMs who have grown up in the organization. They often have zero business training.
– Former Product Manager @ Microsoft
Yes! Product managers are everywhere—anywhere there's a digital product to be made. So you don't just find them at tech companies like Google or Apple.
Take McDonald's, for example. You might have used their app to order a meal or find coupons. A product manager helped make that app easy to use, ensuring it offers what customers like you want, from the latest deals to nutritional info.
Or consider Walmart. Their online shopping site and app didn't just magically appear. Product managers worked behind the scenes, deciding how the app should work, what features it needs, and how to make your shopping experience smooth and hassle-free.
In all these cases, product managers are the bridge between what customers need and the technical teams that build those solutions. So, while the title "product manager" might sound tech-heavy, these professionals are shaping digital experiences across all the industries and services you use every day.
Product management at big tech companies like Facebook and Google tend to be more technical and come from software development backgrounds. So in a way, it can be easier for non-technical people to get into product management in companies outside of the tech sector.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
At a bigger organization, a product manager's day-to-day consists mostly of meetings with various stakeholders both in the product team (the designers and engineers) and across the organization (think: senior management, marketing, and at bigger companies, teams like compliance).
A big part of my job is sitting on different meetings.
- Product team meetings: We talk about any big blockers (problems stopping us from moving forward). It's my job to get ahead of these and clear these up.
- Engineering stand-up meetings: Here, we look at what's stopping the engineering team and any input they need on making things look and work well. I'm there to help out, but the tech lead runs this meeting.
- Marketing and compliance meetings: I speak up for our product, making sure what we do fits with our company's goals and follows regulations.
- Design review meetings: I sit down with the design team to go over their work and see if it can be done by our engineers without too much trouble. Sometimes, we might decide to change a feature to keep things realistic.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
Outside of meetings, you'll also have a mix of tasks to work on.
There are higher-level planning tasks that determine what needs to be built.
- Crafting a business case for a feature: I explain why we should add a new feature, showing how it can make our product better.
- Developing a roadmap: I create a plan that shows where we want our product to go and share this with senior leaders to get everyone on the same track.
- Conducting competitive research: I look at what our competitors are doing to find ways we can do things better or differently.
- Performing data analysis: I dive into data to choose between two potential features, picking the one that users will likely prefer.
- Writing a product brief: I put together a document that outlines what we’re planning to do, who it’s for, and how we’ll know if it’s a success.
- Defining the scope of a feature: I clarify exactly what a new feature will include, helping everyone understand what we’re aiming to build.
There are also more nitty-gritty tasks.
- Running user testing/research with design partners: Working with our design partners, I test our product with real users to get their feedback and ideas.
- Writing Jira tickets: I break down the work into tasks and use a software called "Jira" to track what needs to be done, by who, and by when.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
At a start-up, you'll likely have fewer meetings.
My day-to-day depends on what projects we're working on at the moment (I usually have a mix of projects on the go) and what stages those projects are in.
- Some projects are still in the initial "problem-solving" phase. So for instance, I might go over our website (which is our product), and build a slide deck, where I'm circling parts of the website and thinking of what needs to be changed (e.g. "What if we changed this section to something else?). I'd do some rough wireframing and write a really rough brief that covers what these changes are for and what they're meant to look like.
- Some projects are in the prototyping phase. I'd jump on a call with a designer and they'd turn my rough notes into a prototype or first draft. We'd go back and forth to make sure it looks the way we want it to. I'd then go to engineering and go back and forth to simplify things. Say we can build something but it'll take three years? How can we get it down to three weeks while still keeping 80% of the benefits?
- Some projects are getting ready to be built. I'd write up a scope document, detailing what each feature should do (e.g. what every button should do), so that engineering basically has a crystal-clear blueprint for building the project.
- Some projects are actively being built by engineering. This is when the job is more like project management. I'd mainly check that certain things are being done and reply to questions from engineering. My main goal is to gett things to stay true to what was originally designed.
– Product manager @ Prosple
Although I shy to say who is best fit to be a PM, as I honestly think everyone can be – there are a few qualities a PM should definitely have.
- Very organized - There are so many moving pieces to a product, different partner teams to invovle, timelines, things to do - you need to be very organized. This would be terrible for someone who is not
- Highly engaged - This role is very engaged with partner teams, which results in a lot of meetings. Which could be opposite of, say, a software engineer role.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
Some people are natural problem-solvers, and some people aren't. This career isn't for people who don't like solving problems. No matter how many courses you take, this isn't going to work.
– Product manager @ Prosple
It's intellectually interesting. You get to think about the end-to-end of a product from the business case to watching it go live.
No two days are the same, which is great for me, because I was always curious about a lot of things and wanted to have a broad skillset.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
Product management is an extremely creative role. You have to come up with lots of ideas.
– Product manager @ Prosple
Product management is a soft skill. The "hard skills" that they look for in a PM is the ability to assess user needs, prioritize tasks, etc.. You don't develop true hard skills like designers or engineers.
You're in meetings all the time. I like working with different people so it's OK for me, but I can see it being a drag for people who might be used to, say, an engineering set-up, where they just have one stand-up meeting every day and then work by themselves for the rest of the day.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
You have to be able to hold lots of different things in your memory at once. Like how the RAM of a computer has to hold all its data. You might be solving one problem, but you've also got engineering building a solution to a problem you were working on three months ago and you have to be able to answer every question that comes up. You have to know everything about the thing you're building. That can be challenging.
It's stressful, since you're always solving problems. As enjoyable as it is, it's also mentally exhausting to be making decisions. There's always multiple choices you could make and it's not like you can just give the question to someone else. You're the person who decides "We do this," which can be quite draining.
– Product manager @ Prosple
You also get to see the impact of the work you do. For example, for six months straight, I worked on the search bar feature for our website. And now millions of students use the search bar. Every time I see it, I know all the backend work that went into that. It's not like you're just putting numbers into Excel and you never see what happens.
It helps to compare product management with consulting, which is something I also have experience with.
- Similar to consulting, you get to tackle a wide range of problems. For example, it could be a problem with a certain part of the website, and then you have a problem with another part of the website.
- Unlike consulting, you have ownership of the end result. In consulting, you're with one client for a few weeks to a few months – and as soon as that deal is done, what you've done no longer matters and you move onto the next one. Product management, on the other hand, is more like building a house – you design the windows, the doors, the walls, and the layout, then you work with the builders to bring it to life. So all your different projects come together.
– Product manager @ Prosple
I work 9-6, sometimes more. There's pressure on product to have all the JIRA tasks written or all the Excel done, but if you're in meetings all day long (8 hours of meetings back to back to back from 9-5), you'll need to work on these tasks afterwards (i.e. 5-6 pm).
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
I wouldn't say this is typical of PMs, but at least at Prosple, the work-life balance is good, because my schedule is predictable. I know when my meetings are. They're either:
- Meetings with my team that happen at the same time every week
- Ad hoc meetings which are fine since usually I'm the one scheduling them. Like if I need a designer or engineer to prototype something, I'll set a meeting with the designer or engineering.
And once a project is being built, it's just quick updates over Slack, answering questions and if a meeting is required then we'll have it.
In terms of my day-to-day schedule:
- I get up early, start at 6 am, and try to tackle the hardest thing. This usually means doing three hours of problem-solving work. Or I'll use that time to talk with engineers while they're online (the engineers are in a different time zone from me and there are only 4 hours of overlap each day).
- Then I'll have breakfast. I'll take a break for half-an hour to an hour. I'll leave my apartment and go somewhere in the city around 10 am, then go back to work until 1 o'clock.
- I'll have another break for lunch. Then I work a couple more hours until roughly 2-3.
Then I try to switch off. I have the same laptop for work and personal life but I have them in separate users so I don't get Slack notifications or e-mail.
– Product manager @ Prosple
What does flexible mean? There is a culture of hard work at the firm. Product has to sometimes be flexible in order to meet deadlines and support partner teams. However, I do not feel micromanaged. I have the autonomy to take time off when needed.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
Say I'm tired one day, and it's going to take me three hours to solve a problem, but if I just do it the next day, it'll take me one hour. In that case, I'll just leave it for tomorrow and just take care of admin stuff that aren't as challenging (e.g. emails). So I try to shift my tasks around how I'm feeling.
Overall, it makes the job a lot more relaxing than stressful. For example, I might do a massive day because certain people are all online, and maybe work 10-11 hours just smashing out. And then the next thing, I'll work 5 hours.
– Product manager @ Prosple
I work a lot with fellow PMs that own different parts of our shared product. I also work with software designers and engineers. Some other folks I work with less frequently include compliance, business operations, finance, legal. I love working with all of them.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
I report to Senior Product Managers or Heads of Product. These are folks that are responsible for the overall product or specific part of the product.
What I love most about product is how flat product orgs tend to be. I don't see them as "my boss" but as my teammates that we work together to solve problems. They are very organized, can tell great stories, manage stakeholders very well, and are highly detail-oriented. I feel very supported as they want me to grow as a PM and a person.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
Big banks are great places to learn. Within the firm, there's company training on how the bank works and the payment solutions we sell, for instance.
There's also internal education hubs as well as access to e-learning platforms like Udemy.
I've also had an education benefit, essentially $7500 a year to spend towards education – This is what I've benefited the most from. I've been using that to pursue a Software Development Certificate from UC Berkeley Extension. A friend of mine is doing a Master's in Data Science from UPenn.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
I had a mentor – the head of growth at Facebook. The founders of Prosple knew him, and they scheduled time for me to chat with him, and he basically taught me the process of "wins on the board."
I was really junior then, and he shared that if you want to get a big project, execute well on little projects. That way, when you say, "I want to work on this," it's not coming out of left field. You're building up a reputation as someone who makes good decisions and can get things done.
Then, you get to the point where you're no longer just talking at the "feature" level, which is executing on a feature someone wants you to build. The next level above that is working out what problems to solve.
– Product manager @ Prosple
A lot of consumer-oriented companies need to make apps. It's not just FAANG – those are just the most popular.
Within banking in particular, I'd say that product management is definitely a growing field. Banks are just like any other company – they need PM roles.
Banks are a bit behind, because they're not known for being innovative, and that's because their bread-and-butter comes from deals and clients and money-moving – not apps. So they didn't necessarily care for a while. But if they don't innovate and build new products, they'll get beaten by fintech companies. So that's why there's much more investment across Wall Street to build more apps – and why this space is growing.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
It's interesting with AI going around. A certain proportion of coders might be replaced with AI, potentially designers too, assuming people learn to write really clear prompts to an AI.
I suspect that it's going to take a lot longer for AI to replace product managers. It would be another level of AI if you could give it a real-world problem and ask it to come up with a solution.
For example, it would be hard to ask an AI, "Hey, users don't like sending cover letters for jobs, which is affecting the number of users who apply to jobs on our site. How could I fix this?" AI might be able to help brainstorm solutions, but I'm not sure AI would be able to come up with creative solutions like "Have you tried removing the need for cover letters?"
– Product manager @ Prosple
According to Redfish Technology, a recruitment firm that helps companies fill IT & tech roles, these are the average salaries for product managers as you move up the ladder.
| Level | Median annual salary |
| Product Analyst (Associate Product Manager) | $75k-$90k |
| Junior Product Manager | $85k-$120k |
| Product Manager | $120k-$160k |
| Senior Product Manager | $160k-$185k |
| Lead Product Manager | $172k-$200k |
| Principal Product Manager | $180k-$220k |
| VP Product | $225k-$300k |
| Chief Product Officer | $250k-$325k |
How does the role change as you progress through the product management career?
In my case, I started out needing someone to tell me what to do and who to talk to. After a while, I began spotting problems on my own and suggesting ways to fix them, but I'd still check in before doing anything. Now when I see a problem, I come up with a fix, and just do it. I take the lead on making changes or deciding the product's direction.
So, moving up in product management is really about going from following directions to making the calls yourself.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
With Prosple, we don't have a structured program, but I started with a small part of the product (the emails we send to students), proved myself gradually, worked on bigger and bigger parts of the product (e.g. "How do we get more users to sign up?") before being given responsibility for the whole student site.
- In the beginning, I was responsible for working on the e-mail side of things (we send emails to students with recommended job opportunities). This didn't require any engineering work, so I just worked on it myself.
- After a couple of months, I could point to tangible results. That's when I was allocated some engineering resources so I could implement a form in the sign-up process. And that worked – the bit of extra data we captured from the form allowed us to increase conversion rates in our emails by 30%.
- Incrementally, I got bigger projects until I was able to revamp the homepage.
Early product management is about solving problems that are given to you. Then as you get more senior, you decide what problems need to be solved and how to solve them.
– Product manager @ Prosple
Here's how your titles and responsibilities would change over time.
When you start in product management fresh out of college, you're usually an Associate PM (APM). At this stage, you're basically the sidekick to a more seasoned PM, doing things like:
- Working with data using Excel and SQL.
- Putting together business cases (basically presentations that update senior stakeholders on what's going on).
- Planning out what the product's next moves are with roadmaps and briefs.
- Sketching out rough ideas for new features or products.
- Running tests with users, from asking them questions to checking if they like the final product.
- Sitting in on engineering meetings to keep up with the devs.
As a product management intern, you get to do a "sliver" of those things. You'll be assigned to a PM, get involved with a feature, meet lots of people on the team.
As you get better and more comfortable with the team, you move up to being a full Product Manager (PM). That means leading projects and maybe even giving guidance to newer PMs.
Next, you could become a Senior Product Manager, which is still mostly an individual contributor role but you supervise some PMs.
After that, there's the Group Product Manager (GPM), who looks after a bunch of PMs. Then, you've got Product Directors (i.e. Director of Product Management, Senior Director), VP of Product, and finally, the Chief Product Officer (CPO).
The titles and levels depend on the company. Some will have PM I, PM II, etc. And even though there's a hierarchy, everyone in product management kind of does the same stuff. The big difference is how much guidance you need.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
Within the product space, there's PM, Senior PM, Product Owner (where you're responsible for all of a product), and then Head of Product (which is either part of C-suite or close to that level).
At a product-first company (where the product is their core business), then rising to the top of that product line could put you in a good position to go for an executive role like CEO or something like that because you understand everything about the product and the business.
– Product manager @ Prosple
Strategy roles: A part of product management is business analysis, which could lend itself to a strategy role.
Other roles in product: Good product managers have an interest in business, design, and tech, so if you come from a business background, you'll want to improve your understanding of engineering or design. If you discover a passion for these other product roles and work on developing the relevant hard skills, you could probably pivot into them.
– Product manager @ JP Morgan
PM is a really good pathway to entrepreneurship, which is what I'm thinking.
- You're basically being paid to learn to solve problems and work with people.
- You get to work with many different teams, so product people have a good sense of what everyone is doing, as opposed to say, sales, where you might only know sales.
- You know how you get something built in the easiest possible way and how to bring people together to get something built.
I can also see the PM skillset being useful basically anywhere. That's because if you're a PM, you know how to solve problems and manage people. So it doesn't matter if you're solving problems for a wine company or a tech company.
– Product manager @ Prosple
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