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13 Dec, 21 tweets, 7 min read
A thread of resources for aspiring & new Product Managers:

(should also be useful for Eng, Design, Data Science, Mktg, Ops folks who want to get better at PM work or want to build more empathy for your PM friends ☺️)

(oh, and pls also share *your* favorite resources below)

👇🏾
1/
Product Management - Start Here by @cagan
(hard to go wrong if you start with Marty Cagan’s work)

svpg.com/product-manage…
2/
Tips for Breaking into PM by @sriramk
(I’ve recommended this thread in my DMs more often than any other thread, by a pretty wide margin)

3/
Top 100 Product Management Resources by @sachinrekhi
(well-categorized index so you can focus on whatever’s most useful right now)

sachinrekhi.com/top-resources-…
4/
Brief interruption.

It’s important to understand your preferred learning style and go all in on that learning style (vs. struggling / procrastinating as you force a non-preferred learning style)

5/
Podcast:
Build with @maggiecrowley

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bui…
6/
Other podcasts I like as a PM

7/
Twitter is an invaluable resource for product people, much better than LinkedIn content.

Use it, and tell your PM friends to use it too.

But whom to follow?

Check out this list:
productschool.com/blog/product-m…

(fellow PMs, please reply below with other lists/accounts you like)
8/
Consider following PM communities such as @TheProductfolks @womenpm

(fellow PMs, please do share more PM communities below)
9/
Top 3 books for entry level PMs:
Inspired
Getting Things Done
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

10/
Also check out Escaping the Build Trap @lissijean

amazon.com/Escaping-Build…
11/
I’m a fan of product/UI/strategy teardowns as a way to "learn-by-doing".

One teardowns resource I’ve recommended for a while is useronboard.com

There are a few out there (fellow PMs, please share more teardown resources below).
12/
Lastly:

Be sure you want to be a PM. It’s a great role. I love it.

But PM isn’t the “step up” that ppl think it is.

There are other paths to success.

So choose it for the right reasons & be open to cutting your losses if you find out it isn’t for you

All the best!
❤️👍🏾
What other great resources did I miss?

Please reply to this tweet to share with the community.

🙏🏾
Back to the top of this thread:
Most of my regular content is for senior product folks & leaders, though I get a lot of pings from early career folks, so I'm glad folks are finding this thread useful.

Some really great resources being shared by others here. Do take a look at them.

A few additional footnotes:
Important to understand what Prod Mgmt is really. It isn't uncommon for people to spend years as a PM without understanding the essence of the role, what PM success looks like, and the main skills & mindsets. Better to understand these fundamentals early.
If you prefer watching videos, you might like this talk with my journey as a PM & some lessons learned along the way:
A thread covering the necessary PM skills at each level
This mega-thread is catered to aspiring PM leaders, but the 3 Essential Senses of a PM & the concept of 10-30-50 PMs is relevant for PMs at all stages. Start here to learn more:
This is a pretty comprehensive guide on switching to PM, from @lennysan

lennyrachitsky.com/p/how-to-get-i…

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More from @shreyas

Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
12 Dec
Product Wars.

Some say: understand users, have a strategy, take the time to build an amazing & delightful product

Others say: just build, ship quick & often, experiment, assess user reactions, learn, repeat

Both camps have evidence.

So what’s really going on?

Like a tweet👇🏾
(A)
Neither approach is as successful as advertised.

It’s just classic survivorship bias.

The successful ones try to dissect the elements of the approach that made their product or company successful, tweet about it, write books about it. And they do this with high confidence.
(B)
It depends on the type & stage of product.

An approach that works for a late-stage product can fail miserably for an early-stage product.

An approach that works for a b2b product can fail miserably for a consumer product.
Read 9 tweets
Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
7 Dec
The 10 Commandments of Product Management:
1/
 Thou shall focus on The User.
2/
 Thou shall not optimize for product outputs. Thou shall optimize for business outcomes.
Read 22 tweets
Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
5 Dec
You (at a project status meeting):
Project ABC's status is Yellow
Need [X] more resources to get it back on track.

Your Manager’s Manager (YMM):
We need to zoom out first
I would like to see a doc [or slides] with our strategy, roadmap & resourcing requests for Project ABC.

👇🏾
You:
OK, I have to deal with Acme Inc this week but can get that to you by next Friday

YMM:
Hmm… we really need this sooner.
Can you share by Monday instead?

You: (🤔this must be important for YMM, so I should do what’s being asked)
OK, will do

👇🏾
[On Monday]

You: (📨in email to YMM, cc’ing your manager)

Dear YMM, here’s the document you requested in last week's status meeting. Please let me know your feedback. I am happy to meet and discuss this further so we can proceed with the revised plan for Project ABC.

👇🏾
Read 7 tweets
Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
4 Dec
A surprisingly high % of stupid arguments & fights on Twitter are rooted in a tiny number of fairly obvious fallacies.

Stupid arguments & the fallacies that feed them, a thread:
Fallacy 1/

Just because it’s true that all squares are rectangles, you argued that all rectangles must be squares. (And you did it with so much swagger.)
Example of Fallacy 1

X says: Successful people aren’t afraid of hard work.

Y argues: That’s BS. I work 90 hours a week at Tech Co and am still stuck in this dead-end job.
Read 16 tweets
Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
3 Dec
Most interview frameworks (and most work environments in general) tend to favor the verbally charismatic.

Verbal charisma is IME the #1 reason that otherwise-smart companies hire leaders who end up being quite incompetent on the job (and get fired in 6-18 months).
Since a bunch of folks asked about ways to identify such cases during the interview process, here's a thread with archetypes & concrete ways to detect each one:
Besides this, one skill I've tried to build over the years is to separate the message as much as possible from the messenger.

This helps me evaluate the quality of what is said (most important) independently from how it is said (fairly important) & who says it (least important).
Read 5 tweets
Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
3 Dec
This is well said.

Exceptional product people understand it and use it in their work.
Also +1 this framing
Relevant framework (with examples, including Amazon, Netflix, YouTube)
Read 5 tweets

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