The Economy Thread III: Not Actual Advice And You Shouldn't Lie To Investors

[archibaldcrane]

Those Cole Mercer ones are a really great place to start. I might look into LinkedIn premium though. I went through several of his courses on LinkedIn Learning and I want to say it was available with LinkedIn Premium, but it might have been my company's learning subscription or something I'm honestly not sure.

Cool, I'll probably do that top Cole Mercer one then. There's a 7 day free trial so I'm just going to use that and spend my mornings while the kids are at camp next week grinding through it.

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[Mayareira]

I second Linkedin Premium. It gives you free access to the entire Learning (previously Lynda) Library. It’ll help you with the supplementary skills down the road as well.

[archibaldcrane]

Can't believe I'm going to have to become a LinkedIn guy, what the hell

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[Outlaw]

I second Linkedin Premium. It gives you free access to the entire Learning (previously Lynda) Library. It’ll help you with the supplementary skills down the road as well.

But does it tell you the secret key words and phrases to use on your resume that companies plug into their bots that automatically flag you for a call back or email? >.>

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[Mayareira]

But does it tell you the secret key words and phrases to use on your resume that companies plug into their bots that automatically flag you for a call back or email? >.>

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Its worse than ever. As a part of Microsoft’s AI stuff they’ve integrated AI assistant to linkedin. All you have to do is to write an extremely simple sentence about yourself like “I am a Software Architect” and click assistant.

It turns that sentence into paragraphs of buzzwords extracted from every piece of information on your accounts. This is contrary to what we’ve learned about direct communication but yeah, every account is a buzzword salad now.

Good luck to those bots lol.

[Zetanio]

All you have to do is drink wine with a guy for 18 years and become one of his best friends to (probably) get a $25/hr gig

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ya but after a few years of that you can get $250/hr gigs. PM work accelerates quickly if you deliver on your work.

I'm getting some offers for outside consulting stuff and the disclosures are even tighter than when I had insider info from a major public company. literally don't know the company i'll be talking to or the people in the meeting until I join. big money per hour though.

[archibaldcrane]

Am excite

Switching careers potentially at age 43 is...psychologically harder for me than I thought. It's probably the right move but it's intimidating.

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[jelkwaz]

For what it's worth I think that PM is a good path to be on, because it's less about domain knowledge and more about process knowledge. So once you've gotten some experience doing it, it's pretty industry-agnostic as far as moving to a different role. I'm in the electric utilities industry and have spent all of my career in the software development realm, but now I have manufacturers of residential and commercial meters coming after me.

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/KimZetter/status...06510940577883

[Byrthnoth]

I have complicated feelings about project/product managers. Good ones are useful, but rare.

If I was to make a counterargument to the general pro-sentiment:
1. These roles exist because engineers hate communicating. Your job is to communicate with engineers. The engineers will probably spend their time with you explaining technical details for you to communicate up/out. You will then hopefully get the details right when communicating with others. It is a lot of relationship management with prickly people that probably could do your job better than you if they didn't hate doing your job.
2. Regardless what people say, the best PMs understand their technical system. This may be a non-coding role, but it is definitely not a non-technical role unless you are going to try and skate through being a discussion facilitation guru, which is the least useful breed of PM.
3. There is a general "maybe we need fewer managers" push going on in tech at the moment and I worry it will also hit PMs.
4. Because the role does not require specific qualifications or expertise, your experience in the role is the only thing you really have to go on. When you move companies, you need to have something (metrics?) that shows your abilities and you cannot burn bridges.

Good luck with the career change and I hope it works out, but just a few things to watch out for.

[mallister]

Good PMs, please come work for kaiser. Ours are completely out of their depth and are an active hindrance to getting anything done.

[jelkwaz]

I have complicated feelings about project/product managers. Good ones are useful, but rare.

If I was to make a counterargument to the general pro-sentiment:

These are definitely all valid points, but I feel they honestly apply more to project management as a discipline than product management. I'll reply from the perspective of a senior product manager.

1. These roles exist because engineers hate communicating. Your job is to communicate with engineers. The engineers will probably spend their time with you explaining technical details for you to communicate up/out. You will then hopefully get the details right when communicating with others. It is a lot of relationship management with prickly people that probably could do your job better than you if they didn't hate doing your job.

From a product management perspective specifically to say that the roles "exist because engineers hate communicating" I kind of feel like is a bit disingenuous. The real goal of a product manager is to be that empathetic link between the people designing products/solutions/software and the market/end user. While I'm definitely not saying that this is the case 100% of the time my experience is that the engineering teams I have worked with almost always trend towards inside-out thinking when developing solutions. The goal of product management should be to take market information/end user information about problems they are having, and then trying to use that to figure out what solutions need to be developed from the perspective of the actual end user.

2. Regardless what people say, the best PMs understand their technical system. This may be a non-coding role, but it is definitely not a non-technical role unless you are going to try and skate through being a discussion facilitation guru, which is the least useful breed of PM.

I don't disagree with this as far the more you know about your system from a technical perspective the more effective you will be, but I think that it's not necessary to have that knowledge when you first start. As long as you are diligent you can definitely acquire that knowledge while performing the role.

I 100% agree that when I interact with PMs that don't actually know anything technical about their solutions, especially ones in senior PM roles, that that is frustrating and not super useful.

3. There is a general "maybe we need fewer managers" push going on in tech at the moment and I worry it will also hit PMs.

Maybe it's just the sector that I work in, but I find the opposite to be true to be honest. There is a marked increase in the number of technical managers/product manager roles that are trying to be filled from what I have seen.

4. Because the role does not require specific qualifications or expertise, your experience in the role is the only thing you really have to go on. When you move companies, you need to have something (metrics?) that shows your abilities and you cannot burn bridges.

Absolutely agree with this. The whole time you're in a role like this you definitely want to be keeping track of metrics/kpi's and how you have helped a team improve. This is the main thing that potential employers have cared about when I've interviewed.

[Guitarman]

Good PMs, please come work for kaiser. Ours are completely out of their depth and are an active hindrance to getting anything done.

"raises hand" OH OH ME ME IM SOO GOOD.

Seriously though, I've had a app in with kaiser for a strategic position for over a month and a half with no movement. That place's recruiters are sloooow.

[Byrthnoth]

"raises hand" OH OH ME ME IM SOO GOOD.

Seriously though, I've had a app in with kaiser for a strategic position for over a month and a half with no movement. That place's recruiters are sloooow.

Did you apply with a recommendation? If not, I know a guy at Kaiser that wants good PMs.

[Byrthnoth]

The PMs I know complain frequently that they were hired to do product management and ended up doing some projects management and vice versa. Pure product or project management roles are rare even in big tech. That is why I lump them.

[mallister]

Kaiser is notoriously slow.

[Guitarman]

Did you apply with a recommendation? If not, I know a guy at Kaiser that wants good PMs.

I didn't, no. I applied for a strategic role, I didn't see a PM spot open. I've done 8.5 years of hybrid project management + strategic consulting, so kind of a grey area for a lot of recruiters. Working on a handful of certs to try to get my foot in the door into pure PM. I can do it. Very easily. Worked UPS and did the job unofficially there, lead the development of the GPS tracking products that logistics uses these days, but telling that story? Whew. Takes talking to someone directly.

[jelkwaz]

You've already checked the most important box once you actually get to the point of talking with someone though: having a story to tell. That's awesome.

[Guitarman]

Thanks man. Hard to not come off as a bit overly stressed, i've been out of work since march 1 and I had NO idea it was so bad out there. Since I was 16 years old ive won awards, recognition, you name it. I have a trail of commendations for being way above average and it means nothing in this market. Fighting for scraps or anyone willing to reach out their hand to get me in a door. It's wild.

[Zetanio]

The end of your first point is the most engineer bullshit ever lol. They could do the job if their EQ wasn't set to "communication void" and they weren't unapproachable outside of their band of technical know-how.

I agree with the rest of your points. I think PM roles are gonna cap out at some point *in the tech/fintech/finance sectors* soon but they're now starting to be integrated across wayyyy more industries as standard practice rightly or wrongly. Honestly, I think waterfall is still pretty much the best option for 75% of businesses that exist but people see shiny shareholder value and chase it.