Hacker News Reader

Comment by kenlo | Hacker News Reader

It's great you ask yourself the question. And share it. What do you know about _product_ management?

Have you ever fallen in love with a problem? How good are you in describing your customer's job?

If you had to reverse-engineer the offering of your past jobs, how would you describe the value they created for users? What would they lose if they stop using them?

View on HN

Having interacted with product managers in large corporates, I feel like that's only 1/3 of the work. 2/3 is navigating the corpo BS.

Having been a product manager, I would say a big part of the job is "having the responsibility for a goal with zero power to achieve it" and then having to go influence people to get resources, time, etc to work on something. Lots of politics and corporate red tape to deal with.

Yeah. I'm been tempted to move into product management because I care a lot more about the business side than your average dev. Then I need to constantly remind myself of what I've observed ^_^

What kind of job did you switch to after being a PM, if you don't mind me asking?

I've been contracting myself as a one man team (dev + PM) and also starting my own business.

While being a PM, I realized I really miss the technical stuff but I also care about the business stuff too much to be a dev in a company. I'm hoping I can make solo entrepreneurship work so I can play both roles.

I'm not sure there is a corporate career path I'd find satisfying at this point.

Hmmm, interesting, didn't know you could do that. I'd love to be in a situation where I can convince founders of what to build.

I'm trying solo entrepreneurship as well but it's not working so far. Would be nice to follow your journey if you have a profile to share.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com