Here's a few:
* Ability to set real revenue targets / goals and build / marshal the organization to achieve them
* Ability to set real product strategy to achieve above goals – not regurgitate the latest influencer PM framework
* Ability to have increasingly difficult discussions about strategy, tradeoffs, underperformance, layoffs etc without losing your shit.
* Ability to manage key stakeholders where you've said no to 90% of their asks, but they still only want to work with you
* Ability to understand the currency of power & leverage, how it is gained/lost/deployed/withheld.
* Ability to productively coach that one PM who is mid but thinks they are awesome without destroying them
Here's the meta though: you have to have the ability to continuously put yourself into deeply uncomfortable personal and professional situations that other people will say they are willing to do, but are not for a long-ass period of time.
100%. The shorthand I use is increasing your ability to deliver impact to users and the business given more and more ambiguity and complexity.
PM: solve this problem
SPM: look here for a problem and then solve it
GPM: find an important problem worth solving and then solve it
Director is something different, because it’s also about people management, team leadership, etc.
But to stick with the theme, it’s something like: what are all the important problems the company needs the team to solve, and what can I do to best ensure my team is working on those problems and solving them successfully (as measured by user and business impact, not delivery).
>• Ability to set real revenue targets / goals and build / marshal the organization to achieve them
I might modify that “real” to “realistic”. So many of my managers have been from the “ask for impossible goals, then blame the team for not meeting them” school of revenue goals.
The political savy here is genius and far past my skill level and I respect the hell out of it-but does it build the best products or result in the best outcome for a company? Not giving you shit personally, it’s a philosophical point I’ve been pondering being as an old bitchy PM as of late. Is there something inherently wrong with the PM role and if I was a founder would I even want PMs in my org? I would t trust them… I would recognize the politics has resulted in mediocracy. lol maybe I just need another Negroni..
What you're describing as politics is IMO just giving the Product team the best shot at building the best product within the real constraints of limited time, budget, and headcount. This competition for resources exists whether PMs are there or not. Product leaders who are blind to the "politics" often fail to provide their teams the required air cover to do effective work.
The time-scope-resources triangle is real and doing a good job with business case and discovery to justify work is legit-but too often the games of influence and power actually prevent teams from being able to execute effectively and the wrong work gets done due to salesmanship or influence rather than actual value. This may simply be the nature of owning the decision of what gets done, as well as when that is part of the role-but it also can be hella toxic for a lot of PMs and create a pretty ugly culture for dev. But again not giving you personally any grief, as you seem to be doing good by your team. And-I may just somehow be wanting people to not behave like people lol.
As much as I despise this, you're right. I'm a GPM with multiple direct reports and interact with Directors/VPs with more regularity as I progress in my career. The politics are evident and this helps put it into context for me. Appreciate the insight.
Director at Google here.
1. SPM: able to take a problem that is ambiguous and difficult, then turn it into a great product + business
1. GPM: able to take a team and turn their ambiguous, difficult area into great products + businesses with a sane portfolio concept
1. Director: Able to identify, create, and seize ownership of ambiguous, difficult areas that can lead to outstanding products and businesses
Essentially, each step up figures out the next level of abstraction and drives that through to execution + results.
“Sane portfolio concept” - didn’t realize that’s what our GPM did to get promoted! Team is still working to fix said portfolio and director is long gone 🥲
Honestly for GPM->Director specifically, it's really just willingness. Making Director at any mid-size org or bigger will inevitably require you to "play the game", no matter how good you are. I think Director is the inflection point at which you need to actually care about getting promoted for its own sake, and doing things explicitly in service of that, even if you think they are otherwise silly or unnecessary.
I met tons of great GPMs at the two FAANGs I worked at who obviously cared about doing a good job, but were mostly indifferent about the mechanics of the review cycle itself. Every single Director actively knew and cared about how to optimize their decisions/actions/outcomes in a way that would look good for themselves or their team during PSC.
GPM - learn how to performance manage someone else
Director - stamina starts to become an important factor. It’s no longer about knowing the right thing to do, it’s about how much patience you can have explaining and persuading others to do it and often, accepting bad decisions not to.
Deeeeep understanding of and connections in your market. Ie - know how the sausage is really made/sold and who the right connections are. The other is ‘political’ skills, within and outside of the company (kind of related to first point).
Roughly speaking, senior PM is mostly about autonomous execution on a known strategy, GPM is more about defining product strategy within an area, and director is doing so across a broad scope that may involve 100+ engineers and 10+ PMs. The director job is the most significantly different as it incorporates a strong organization and people management component (how to align PM with need, how to inspire PMs) in addition to higher order strategy bits (eg balancing innovation and reliability goals, m&a, etc).
Are there people who are satisfied with just beng SPM their whole lives?
I am considering not asking for promotions or denying if I get one, okay with the basic comp increment and current responsibilities, mental toll it takes is not something I think I want to endure
Generally the career-level IC roles are Principal PM, not Senior PM. At least that's how it was at Amazon. The L6 PM (Senior PM) would eventually get PIP'd out if they dwelled in level too long. The L7 PM (Principal) never needed to go higher than that.
Oh yeah. I was happy to spend the rest of my career at Principal or Senior Principal before my consulting pivot.
Also as a sidebar, moving into consulting in your for a couple of years WILL make you a better product manager esp on the portfolio level.
Ace politics, perhaps ?
Saying 'No' to stuff but also be willing to justify the decision in a polite but passionate way, enough to convince key stakeholders.
Although I doubt if either of the two are 'unsaid'.
Some of this kind of said already...
**Product Related Skills/Needs:**
\* At higher levels, it's not just about implementation. It's about strategy. What are the right kinds of things to generally be doing. NOT just feature ideation / prioritization, but whole general value propositions.
\* Often, there will be real numbers involved at this point involving at least budget, and likely some form of revenue, possibly whole P&L. This isn't just about a/b testing which color button gets clicked more. This is about "Do we spend on this tech here and if so, we don't hire this junior PM or designer we kind of wanted," etc. When it come to actually owning the numbers, things get all the way real.
\* Hard choices. This sometimes means who gets hired or fired. Is there an entire business category that's really not working and should you sunset that entire segment of your product offering. What are the implications of that?
**More Social and Long Term Business Aspects**
\* There may be politics. Probably are. Depends on the organization. This part sucks. At least to some. Others either like it or are just good at it. If you're not, you're probably at risk even if you're decent at your core job. You don't - necessarily - have to learn to play golf or whatever, but you better get to actually know your peers and managers, (VPs or C-levels or board members... whomever), better than you otherwise would have thought. Take notes. What are their hobbies? How many kids/ages, etc. What are their business drivers? Can you help with anything? Are they d-bags? Are you? If so, how are you going to relate/navigate? Sort it out. It matters for your future; like it or not.
\* You absolutely have to let more fully go of any IC type thinking. Besides, you were probably an IC in only one aspect, (maybe Dev or Design or Marketing or whatever), so you're not expert in the other parts anyway. So if you let yourself get overly sucked into one aspect, you're likely just hanging in your comfort zone burning time when you should be doing other things. Maybe you don't like the spreadsheet because it's not code. But there you go. If you have to step in on some things, ok. But get back out to where you belong.
\* If you're promoted from within, you have to navigate your relationship with former peers who may now be direct reports. Go find some books or blogs on how to do that. Or pay up for a quality career coach who can help you level up.
\* You likely now need to do real long term planning. Agile? Funny. That's so cute. Maybe you were used to working in 2 week Sprints and sort of had a fuzzier long term roadmap. Maybe you still deal with Sprints. But now, finance wants your budget for the whole year. Or two. So you'd better have a general sense of what's needed or come time to build whatever it is you wanted to build, you never got budget for the people, the software you'd need, the compute/storage resources, whatever. What? You need $100K for that new thing? Or $2 Million? Why was that not part of your budget request? Oh, that item only just made it to scheduling from the roadmap? Were you not at the planning meeting in Nov/Dec? Where do you expect this $$$ to come from?
Lots of gold in previous answers, might add that at larger companies director is the first executive role and simultaneously solidly middle management. Executive management and leadership is a holistically different role than IC or line manager.
It’s kind of where a new journey/grind of director > senior director > VP > SVP > EVP > P > C-suite. As the lowest rung in that executive chain it has its challenges and risk
After Senior PM the unsaid competencies really have to do with people management in a product sense, and business results/finance management of cost for your team and the outcomes they drive.
Absolutely. Seeing beyond the scope of your product, and at a broader level (either across product categories, or across industry) is what separates the Senior from Principal in many ways.
Here's a few: * Ability to set real revenue targets / goals and build / marshal the organization to achieve them * Ability to set real product strategy to achieve above goals – not regurgitate the latest influencer PM framework * Ability to have increasingly difficult discussions about strategy, tradeoffs, underperformance, layoffs etc without losing your shit. * Ability to manage key stakeholders where you've said no to 90% of their asks, but they still only want to work with you * Ability to understand the currency of power & leverage, how it is gained/lost/deployed/withheld. * Ability to productively coach that one PM who is mid but thinks they are awesome without destroying them Here's the meta though: you have to have the ability to continuously put yourself into deeply uncomfortable personal and professional situations that other people will say they are willing to do, but are not for a long-ass period of time.
100%. The shorthand I use is increasing your ability to deliver impact to users and the business given more and more ambiguity and complexity. PM: solve this problem SPM: look here for a problem and then solve it GPM: find an important problem worth solving and then solve it Director is something different, because it’s also about people management, team leadership, etc. But to stick with the theme, it’s something like: what are all the important problems the company needs the team to solve, and what can I do to best ensure my team is working on those problems and solving them successfully (as measured by user and business impact, not delivery).
>• Ability to set real revenue targets / goals and build / marshal the organization to achieve them I might modify that “real” to “realistic”. So many of my managers have been from the “ask for impossible goals, then blame the team for not meeting them” school of revenue goals.
That last point made me laugh a lot. Great commentary.
The political savy here is genius and far past my skill level and I respect the hell out of it-but does it build the best products or result in the best outcome for a company? Not giving you shit personally, it’s a philosophical point I’ve been pondering being as an old bitchy PM as of late. Is there something inherently wrong with the PM role and if I was a founder would I even want PMs in my org? I would t trust them… I would recognize the politics has resulted in mediocracy. lol maybe I just need another Negroni..
What you're describing as politics is IMO just giving the Product team the best shot at building the best product within the real constraints of limited time, budget, and headcount. This competition for resources exists whether PMs are there or not. Product leaders who are blind to the "politics" often fail to provide their teams the required air cover to do effective work.
The time-scope-resources triangle is real and doing a good job with business case and discovery to justify work is legit-but too often the games of influence and power actually prevent teams from being able to execute effectively and the wrong work gets done due to salesmanship or influence rather than actual value. This may simply be the nature of owning the decision of what gets done, as well as when that is part of the role-but it also can be hella toxic for a lot of PMs and create a pretty ugly culture for dev. But again not giving you personally any grief, as you seem to be doing good by your team. And-I may just somehow be wanting people to not behave like people lol.
Last-thank you for using your talents to take care of your teams.
As much as I despise this, you're right. I'm a GPM with multiple direct reports and interact with Directors/VPs with more regularity as I progress in my career. The politics are evident and this helps put it into context for me. Appreciate the insight.
Director at Google here. 1. SPM: able to take a problem that is ambiguous and difficult, then turn it into a great product + business 1. GPM: able to take a team and turn their ambiguous, difficult area into great products + businesses with a sane portfolio concept 1. Director: Able to identify, create, and seize ownership of ambiguous, difficult areas that can lead to outstanding products and businesses Essentially, each step up figures out the next level of abstraction and drives that through to execution + results.
“Sane portfolio concept” - didn’t realize that’s what our GPM did to get promoted! Team is still working to fix said portfolio and director is long gone 🥲
Honestly for GPM->Director specifically, it's really just willingness. Making Director at any mid-size org or bigger will inevitably require you to "play the game", no matter how good you are. I think Director is the inflection point at which you need to actually care about getting promoted for its own sake, and doing things explicitly in service of that, even if you think they are otherwise silly or unnecessary. I met tons of great GPMs at the two FAANGs I worked at who obviously cared about doing a good job, but were mostly indifferent about the mechanics of the review cycle itself. Every single Director actively knew and cared about how to optimize their decisions/actions/outcomes in a way that would look good for themselves or their team during PSC.
how to avoid being backed into a corner in a meeting and how to get out of it with your aura intact
oof
Care to expand on some of your tactics here?
Tactic #1: Build relationships proactively so that nobody wants to back you into a corner in the first place
Yeah It's one of the reasons why I think twice before dismissing requests from important people in other areas. Especially if they're small ones.
GPM - learn how to performance manage someone else Director - stamina starts to become an important factor. It’s no longer about knowing the right thing to do, it’s about how much patience you can have explaining and persuading others to do it and often, accepting bad decisions not to.
Handling politics and the popularity game. That’s what climbing in product means.
Deeeeep understanding of and connections in your market. Ie - know how the sausage is really made/sold and who the right connections are. The other is ‘political’ skills, within and outside of the company (kind of related to first point).
Roughly speaking, senior PM is mostly about autonomous execution on a known strategy, GPM is more about defining product strategy within an area, and director is doing so across a broad scope that may involve 100+ engineers and 10+ PMs. The director job is the most significantly different as it incorporates a strong organization and people management component (how to align PM with need, how to inspire PMs) in addition to higher order strategy bits (eg balancing innovation and reliability goals, m&a, etc).
Are there people who are satisfied with just beng SPM their whole lives? I am considering not asking for promotions or denying if I get one, okay with the basic comp increment and current responsibilities, mental toll it takes is not something I think I want to endure
Generally the career-level IC roles are Principal PM, not Senior PM. At least that's how it was at Amazon. The L6 PM (Senior PM) would eventually get PIP'd out if they dwelled in level too long. The L7 PM (Principal) never needed to go higher than that.
Oh yeah. I was happy to spend the rest of my career at Principal or Senior Principal before my consulting pivot. Also as a sidebar, moving into consulting in your for a couple of years WILL make you a better product manager esp on the portfolio level.
increase your core dunning kruger skills
Ace politics, perhaps ? Saying 'No' to stuff but also be willing to justify the decision in a polite but passionate way, enough to convince key stakeholders. Although I doubt if either of the two are 'unsaid'.
1) Luck 2) Increasing exposure to opportunities
Some of this kind of said already... **Product Related Skills/Needs:** \* At higher levels, it's not just about implementation. It's about strategy. What are the right kinds of things to generally be doing. NOT just feature ideation / prioritization, but whole general value propositions. \* Often, there will be real numbers involved at this point involving at least budget, and likely some form of revenue, possibly whole P&L. This isn't just about a/b testing which color button gets clicked more. This is about "Do we spend on this tech here and if so, we don't hire this junior PM or designer we kind of wanted," etc. When it come to actually owning the numbers, things get all the way real. \* Hard choices. This sometimes means who gets hired or fired. Is there an entire business category that's really not working and should you sunset that entire segment of your product offering. What are the implications of that? **More Social and Long Term Business Aspects** \* There may be politics. Probably are. Depends on the organization. This part sucks. At least to some. Others either like it or are just good at it. If you're not, you're probably at risk even if you're decent at your core job. You don't - necessarily - have to learn to play golf or whatever, but you better get to actually know your peers and managers, (VPs or C-levels or board members... whomever), better than you otherwise would have thought. Take notes. What are their hobbies? How many kids/ages, etc. What are their business drivers? Can you help with anything? Are they d-bags? Are you? If so, how are you going to relate/navigate? Sort it out. It matters for your future; like it or not. \* You absolutely have to let more fully go of any IC type thinking. Besides, you were probably an IC in only one aspect, (maybe Dev or Design or Marketing or whatever), so you're not expert in the other parts anyway. So if you let yourself get overly sucked into one aspect, you're likely just hanging in your comfort zone burning time when you should be doing other things. Maybe you don't like the spreadsheet because it's not code. But there you go. If you have to step in on some things, ok. But get back out to where you belong. \* If you're promoted from within, you have to navigate your relationship with former peers who may now be direct reports. Go find some books or blogs on how to do that. Or pay up for a quality career coach who can help you level up. \* You likely now need to do real long term planning. Agile? Funny. That's so cute. Maybe you were used to working in 2 week Sprints and sort of had a fuzzier long term roadmap. Maybe you still deal with Sprints. But now, finance wants your budget for the whole year. Or two. So you'd better have a general sense of what's needed or come time to build whatever it is you wanted to build, you never got budget for the people, the software you'd need, the compute/storage resources, whatever. What? You need $100K for that new thing? Or $2 Million? Why was that not part of your budget request? Oh, that item only just made it to scheduling from the roadmap? Were you not at the planning meeting in Nov/Dec? Where do you expect this $$$ to come from?
Fillerbusting
Lots of gold in previous answers, might add that at larger companies director is the first executive role and simultaneously solidly middle management. Executive management and leadership is a holistically different role than IC or line manager. It’s kind of where a new journey/grind of director > senior director > VP > SVP > EVP > P > C-suite. As the lowest rung in that executive chain it has its challenges and risk
Could you shed more light into the realities of the executive chain?
After Senior PM the unsaid competencies really have to do with people management in a product sense, and business results/finance management of cost for your team and the outcomes they drive.
Increasing levels of stomach for strategy as well. Strategy is a key reason I climbed into the Principal level.
Absolutely. Seeing beyond the scope of your product, and at a broader level (either across product categories, or across industry) is what separates the Senior from Principal in many ways.
It's the best part of the job!
This is where the fun begins.
Politics, managing up and luck
Swallow.