I'm the academic head of this new program on the School of Computer Science side of things. Happy to answer any questions you might have about this program (though it will have to be in the morning since it's about 1am on the east coast and well past my bedtime) And no, I didn't plant this link. :)
One of the key strengths of our Master's of Product Management program is that it combines elements of computer science, user experience design, and business skills (including strategy and management). We also have a significant component devoted to communication and leadership skills, based on interactive workshops and personal mentoring.
On a personal note, this notion of marrying business skills with UX design and computer science has been a long-term goal of mine. I'm a techie at heart (I got my PhD from Berkeley CS), but I feel that having strong skills in user experience or CS only helps so much if you don't have decision-making authority. And to get to those decision-making positions, you need to be able to manage technical teams well, understand how a product fits within the existing market, and know about best practices in prototyping and evaluating user interfaces so that your product has a compelling user experience.
$65k is way too expensive to charge for this. Just how greedy is CMU to charge this much? Furthermore Product m
Managers are not CEOs, the departments which align to deliver the product don't report to them, nor do they control what resources are allocated or have budgetary control.
PM's have to negotiate and gain consensus on what is to be built and contend with resources available. In software you can be at the mercy of the development manager and what they want to build, can sometimes be at odds with what you want built. Other times you may have a dev lead who just decides that like as they are building it, they will code what they damn well please, and ignore your architecture team (if you are fortunate to have one).
Those are just some of the things a Product Manager learns to deal with to get their product built and shipped.
~12yr PM here - curious how you teach interactions with Eng, Design and other disciplines (at Facebook, we call this 'Leadership and Drive').
This has always been the toughest area for me to teach and I'm wondering if you can give some detail on how you approach this in your component that you mentioned (interactive workshops/personal mentoring).
Doesn't it seem like a better idea to apply for a startup accelerator like YC or 500 startups and get paid to get real-world product experience vs paying to get theoretical product experience?
I imagine a number of interested folks might ask "I'm considering a masters in CS or maybe this new PM one; why should I choose one over the other?". How will you answer them?
While I have been working in tech industry as backend engineer for 3 years (startups including) I don't have an undergrad degree in CS/Software (I have an M.Sc in Physics). Would that disqualify a candidate like me from being admitted?
What advantage would this course give over an M.B.A?
What kind of recognition do you think this degree would get in the industry being that it is a new program?
I've heard from other academics (though from universities with less prestige) that there is an effort to expand programs to accept foreign students that would otherwise be turned away either due to space constraints or poor program fit. The way it was described to me was they didn't want to dilute their CS or MBA programs but still wanted to accept the foreign students. They are seeing a demand for masters degrees from both sides: demand for classroom space by foreign applicants and demand for entry level employees with master's degrees by employers.
Curious if Carnegie Mellon is following the same train of thought.
I wish I could've done this as my undergrad. There don't seem to be enough people who realise how important this cross section of skills is because each one feeds back in the others, whether that be positively or negatively.
As someone who did his undergrad at CMU - and loved it - it's great to see this. I studied Information Systems with a minor in Design, and it set me up for an awesome string of startup jobs where I could blend my various interests and skill sets.
CMU is an incredibly unique school that has world-class programs in business, computer science, and design. They are especially perfect for this kind of multidisciplinary program.
Im wondering what the difference is between this new program and the Msc. Business Informatics programs already available (at least at European universities, Im getting mine at Utrecht University). From what Im reading they sound very similar, with the outlined key strengths in your post being virtually the same.
Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions here.
As a product management discipline lead, I interview product management candidates.
For some stupid reason someone in HR still puts "MBA preferred" on the posting... but I have yet to meet anyone without hands-on experience that I want to hire. I don't care if you have an MBA, I don't care if you have a college degree... what I want to know is can you do the work?
If I ask about the SLDC, what I want to hear is that they know enough to keep everything balanced -- that they aren't going to get all flustered and just try and shoehorn devs and QA and content and UX designers into something you read out of a textbook but have never really implemented.
A PM should be a shit shield, they should be comfortable saying, "No," to stupid suggestions from people up the food chain -- this leads to success of people down the food chain. An MBA doesn't prepare them for that. They will have to be able to put themselves in other peoples' shoes... lead by example. (My ideal candidate has a few years Dev or QA experience... I can go with UX even... but they have to have done some real delivery work prior to being a PM in order to not suck at it -- my opinion.)
Anyway, long way of saying, "Undergrads, save your money. Go learn how to code, get a job doing that, then make the transition a few years in once you actually know how things work. At that point, if you want to go to school -- cool, you may find it useful to augment what you already learned on the job."
I can't speak to the cost but it sounds like they are trying to fill a validated market need. I disagree that just working for a startup for a year will give you the same experience.
> I disagree that just working for a startup for a year will give you the same experience.
Why? Actually working on delivering a product seems like far better experience than any educational program, internship or not. Since most people go to school with the end goal of getting a job, it seems far better to skip school if you have the option. What are they going to teach you that you can't learn on the job?
I'd much rather a manager have real experience in the role of the people he's managing than come straight out of school with a pretense of expertise.
Key problem: At least in the tech world, companies maintain a 10:1 (or even 100:1) engineer:product manager ratio. In my experience it is extremely difficult to land even a non-senior PM role, while companies will hire engineers dozens at a time. You think companies are overly picky about their engineering candidates? Hooo boy! Do a few PM interviews and get back to me.
I think a specialized degree in Product Management is great though! Had this been available when I decided to do a very expensive MBA program, I would have chosen it instead in a heartbeat! This program is half the time commitment and half the cost of my MBA--no brainer.
Graduate student at Cornell Tech, amazing program to learn graduate level machine learning and cs topics with a deep dive into product/startup development. I am in the 2 year program, and the program is top notch for only being 5 years old. Ping me at [email protected] if you have any interests or questions :)
A good friend is one of the organizers of the Cornell Tech program and he pulled together a ton of great PM's and Eng's from NYC to get feedback and idea when designing the program. Glad to hear that the program is going well :D
pay 65k for just this, spend another 65k throughout that period on other living/study expenses, then work at 35k for
5 years because they need somebody with experience:)
"Tuition for the Master of Science in Product Management program is charged at a flat rate of $65,000 for the 12-month program. This cost covers tuition only. It does not include university fees, summer electives or other miscellaneous expenses."
It's very funny that "Get rich quick! Buy my DVD and come to my training course to learn how" scammers are thought of in a negative light but when you are a university and charge more money it becomes noble endeavor.
As a resident of a country where education of all levels is basically free, this always sounds so unreal to me. I would never even think about it, how would you make that kind of money back in a reasonable amount of time to be worth it ?
It's a great deal. Way more cheaper than some fly-by-night coding "academy" which charge 35K$ for 4 months. Also they offer a real degree, from a good US university accepted as a valid qualification by governments & corporations world-wide.
I'm a mobile senior software engineer at a startup.
How can I jump into product management? I founded a startup previously so I can say I have a strong product vision, and I can just feel intuitively that it's the position i'd be good at.
I'm reluctant to put 65k to make the move though. Anyone else made the move Senior software dev -> PM, if yes, how did you go about it?
Does your startup have PMs and is looking for more? If so I would just ask if there is an option to switch. This is how I did it years ago. Shadowed one of the PMs for a bit and then slowly took over more responsibility.
Getting that first bit of experience seems hard for a product manager. Most places will only hire people with experience as a product manager, and for those who will hire someone without prior experience, they seem to prefer MBAs. This at least seems like a path to product management that isn't a MBA.
A lot of people who aren't technical see the Product Manager role as something they can do in tech. This leads to a lot of poorly qualified people applying for positions, and HR responding by trying to have them self-screen out, "Must have 3-5 years..." (The number of Product Managers with some sort of fluff History / Political Science / Sociology degree is pretty high... some get in, but you have to sift through a lot of Philosophy degrees to find a good one.)
Instead of going right for the Product Manger role, people should aim for some sort of delivery internship. And from there a Business Analyst role, Software Engineering role, UX Designer role, Quality Assurance Engineering role... anything hands-on. This sets them up to be good at Product Management -- better than the kids who come straight out of school anyway.
There's a good amount of "inflation of self-worth" (for lack of a better word) around people coming out of college right now. It's true that college costs a lot, but virtually everyone has a degree. AND we all know that there's massive grade inflation going on -- so it's hard to take a college degree seriously. Also hard not to have one... not an ideal situation, to be sure. (There's a lot of role inflation too... people now are "senior" with a year or two experience? Come on.)
Anyway, requirements are inflated to screen people with 0 experience out. If you have done well for a few years at a staff role, nobody is going to care that you don't specifically have N years as a product manager. But it's a HUGE risk taking someone out of college and giving them a leadership position. Better for them, and the company that hires them, if they spend a little time in the trenches.
This sounds more promising than getting a "decorated" MBA degree from an overrated "top league" school. It makes sense to hire a person whose managerial skills are forged in technical training.
Spend the $65k on starting your own thing for a year. You learn similar things and if you're lucky you end up with a successful business or at least a positive ROI.
Right now Harvard has the best course in the US.
Stanford and Berkeley are a joke.
The best path into PM is still doing something hands-on in that area. If it is enterprise, then start in consulting or pre-sales. Consumer is pure chance.
Not Indian and I find this comment terribly offensive. What does race have to do with wanting to better oneself? Who cares what race the model in the photograph is?!
Or get a MBA for 1/5 the price from literally anywhere and be able to do whatever you want with it, including being a PM/Director but also just about anything else.
[+] [-] jasonhong|9 years ago|reply
I'm the academic head of this new program on the School of Computer Science side of things. Happy to answer any questions you might have about this program (though it will have to be in the morning since it's about 1am on the east coast and well past my bedtime) And no, I didn't plant this link. :)
One of the key strengths of our Master's of Product Management program is that it combines elements of computer science, user experience design, and business skills (including strategy and management). We also have a significant component devoted to communication and leadership skills, based on interactive workshops and personal mentoring.
On a personal note, this notion of marrying business skills with UX design and computer science has been a long-term goal of mine. I'm a techie at heart (I got my PhD from Berkeley CS), but I feel that having strong skills in user experience or CS only helps so much if you don't have decision-making authority. And to get to those decision-making positions, you need to be able to manage technical teams well, understand how a product fits within the existing market, and know about best practices in prototyping and evaluating user interfaces so that your product has a compelling user experience.
[+] [-] IOT_Apprentice|9 years ago|reply
PM's have to negotiate and gain consensus on what is to be built and contend with resources available. In software you can be at the mercy of the development manager and what they want to build, can sometimes be at odds with what you want built. Other times you may have a dev lead who just decides that like as they are building it, they will code what they damn well please, and ignore your architecture team (if you are fortunate to have one).
Those are just some of the things a Product Manager learns to deal with to get their product built and shipped.
[+] [-] bdickason|9 years ago|reply
This has always been the toughest area for me to teach and I'm wondering if you can give some detail on how you approach this in your component that you mentioned (interactive workshops/personal mentoring).
[+] [-] joeblau|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boulos|9 years ago|reply
I imagine a number of interested folks might ask "I'm considering a masters in CS or maybe this new PM one; why should I choose one over the other?". How will you answer them?
[+] [-] garganshum|9 years ago|reply
I have a few questions.
While I have been working in tech industry as backend engineer for 3 years (startups including) I don't have an undergrad degree in CS/Software (I have an M.Sc in Physics). Would that disqualify a candidate like me from being admitted?
What advantage would this course give over an M.B.A?
What kind of recognition do you think this degree would get in the industry being that it is a new program?
[+] [-] yanslookup|9 years ago|reply
Curious if Carnegie Mellon is following the same train of thought.
[+] [-] Tracist|9 years ago|reply
gl with everything!
[+] [-] exogeny|9 years ago|reply
CMU is an incredibly unique school that has world-class programs in business, computer science, and design. They are especially perfect for this kind of multidisciplinary program.
[+] [-] FridgeParade|9 years ago|reply
Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions here.
[+] [-] billylo|8 years ago|reply
Would love to attend, but we don't fit in the mold of regular applicants for this program (as described in the FAQ)
[+] [-] dbg31415|9 years ago|reply
For some stupid reason someone in HR still puts "MBA preferred" on the posting... but I have yet to meet anyone without hands-on experience that I want to hire. I don't care if you have an MBA, I don't care if you have a college degree... what I want to know is can you do the work?
If I ask about the SLDC, what I want to hear is that they know enough to keep everything balanced -- that they aren't going to get all flustered and just try and shoehorn devs and QA and content and UX designers into something you read out of a textbook but have never really implemented.
A PM should be a shit shield, they should be comfortable saying, "No," to stupid suggestions from people up the food chain -- this leads to success of people down the food chain. An MBA doesn't prepare them for that. They will have to be able to put themselves in other peoples' shoes... lead by example. (My ideal candidate has a few years Dev or QA experience... I can go with UX even... but they have to have done some real delivery work prior to being a PM in order to not suck at it -- my opinion.)
Anyway, long way of saying, "Undergrads, save your money. Go learn how to code, get a job doing that, then make the transition a few years in once you actually know how things work. At that point, if you want to go to school -- cool, you may find it useful to augment what you already learned on the job."
[+] [-] bluetwo|9 years ago|reply
I predict a near 100% placement rate.
[+] [-] Judgmentality|9 years ago|reply
Why? Actually working on delivering a product seems like far better experience than any educational program, internship or not. Since most people go to school with the end goal of getting a job, it seems far better to skip school if you have the option. What are they going to teach you that you can't learn on the job?
I'd much rather a manager have real experience in the role of the people he's managing than come straight out of school with a pretense of expertise.
[+] [-] ryandrake|9 years ago|reply
Key problem: At least in the tech world, companies maintain a 10:1 (or even 100:1) engineer:product manager ratio. In my experience it is extremely difficult to land even a non-senior PM role, while companies will hire engineers dozens at a time. You think companies are overly picky about their engineering candidates? Hooo boy! Do a few PM interviews and get back to me.
I think a specialized degree in Product Management is great though! Had this been available when I decided to do a very expensive MBA program, I would have chosen it instead in a heartbeat! This program is half the time commitment and half the cost of my MBA--no brainer.
[+] [-] oculusthrift|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mendeza|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdickason|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WhiteSource1|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allenleee|9 years ago|reply
Just dive into a startup then learn.
3mons in a startup > 1y in Master's Degree in Product Management
Save your money please.
[+] [-] elvirs|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nedwin|9 years ago|reply
*Josh Elman + David Cancel for starters.
[+] [-] hodder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhawalhs|9 years ago|reply
Ouch.
[+] [-] gravypod|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kayoone|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkmurakami|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aub3bhat|9 years ago|reply
Note: Not affiliated with CMU.
[+] [-] Heraclite|9 years ago|reply
How can I jump into product management? I founded a startup previously so I can say I have a strong product vision, and I can just feel intuitively that it's the position i'd be good at.
I'm reluctant to put 65k to make the move though. Anyone else made the move Senior software dev -> PM, if yes, how did you go about it?
[+] [-] stereobit|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diiaann|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbg31415|9 years ago|reply
Instead of going right for the Product Manger role, people should aim for some sort of delivery internship. And from there a Business Analyst role, Software Engineering role, UX Designer role, Quality Assurance Engineering role... anything hands-on. This sets them up to be good at Product Management -- better than the kids who come straight out of school anyway.
There's a good amount of "inflation of self-worth" (for lack of a better word) around people coming out of college right now. It's true that college costs a lot, but virtually everyone has a degree. AND we all know that there's massive grade inflation going on -- so it's hard to take a college degree seriously. Also hard not to have one... not an ideal situation, to be sure. (There's a lot of role inflation too... people now are "senior" with a year or two experience? Come on.)
Anyway, requirements are inflated to screen people with 0 experience out. If you have done well for a few years at a staff role, nobody is going to care that you don't specifically have N years as a product manager. But it's a HUGE risk taking someone out of college and giving them a leadership position. Better for them, and the company that hires them, if they spend a little time in the trenches.
[+] [-] CodeSheikh|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jasonhong|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pinaceae|9 years ago|reply
Right now Harvard has the best course in the US. Stanford and Berkeley are a joke.
The best path into PM is still doing something hands-on in that area. If it is enterprise, then start in consulting or pre-sales. Consumer is pure chance.
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