Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?

[LifeIsBio]

Inspired by this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42656184

I'm starting a new job in a few days as a senior PM at a ~1000 person company, but I've never been a PM before. My career path has been: PhD -> Engineer -> Founder.

My time as a founder has given me some unique perspective on products in my space, but I'm less experienced with the day-to-day of a PM in a medium sized company. My exposure has been second hand watching the PMs while I was an engineer. Any advice on how to help ensure things kick off well?

[aneeqdhk]

- understand as much about the product as possible, primarily from a user point of view

- meet as many different verticals as possible and understand how they work

- speak with all other senior PMs and tech leads and understand their workflows

You're going to be working with multiple teams and stakeholders and it's crucial you have a mental map of how everyone's workflow is. You also will have an 'outsiders' view for the first 30-90 days as you look at the product with fresh eyes. Use this to drive insights for the product if applicable.

Lastly, don't ever stop customer meetings. It may not be on the agenda for other Senior PMs, but don't let that stop you. Customer meetings will keep your insights fresh and valid.

[Prunkton]

Since you may not have seen it in your previous career: be aware of politics in companies (that size). Especially when you are interacting with other departments, PMs and positions generally above yours.

I'm not saying its the most important thing or specific to the first days. But getting the dynamics early on will benefit you, your project and the people involved.

Also more specific to day one: have fun and be excited :) good luck!

[benhoff]

Communication books can be useful. I've heard good things about nonviolent communication and, while I've not finished it, crucial conversations has been useful

[lnsru]

Good advice. First step is to identify your enemies. I also would call it “understand dynamics”. Because somebody wanted promotion into your senior position. Somebody just does not like you or someone wants to do things differently. It’s fine. Just know the obstacles before planing the journey.

[fhd2]

Probably a bit against the grain, but I don't think you need to try and act like you are an experienced PM. No amount of blog posts or books will quickly get you to that level, only experience will. They were well aware of your background when they hired you. Perhaps they hired you _because_ of it? At a company that size, PMs are often just corporate animals playing politics a good chunk of their time. You'll probably have to become more similar to them over time, but for now, you might just have a honeymoon period where you can add your own flavour to how the product you're assigned to should be run, and make it more successful.

As a founder, you probably already have a lot of the skill set that's needed for that. If you listen to people and apply your intuition, I bet you'll do well.

Sure, understand what the role is generally about, what the expectations are and all that. But I don't think it's a problem that you didn't hold it before, no need to make it one. PMs are in my experience a slightly different job at each company anyway. The most important thing with your background is probably to develop an eye and tactics for the games other PMs and middle managers play.

[cloudking]

This is not just first day advice, but more general advice for new PMs:

Talk to your users relentlessly, find out how they use and don't use your product. Get a deep understanding of their workflows and user journeys in the product.

Trim the fat (shift focus) and solve problems they have that the product doesn't solve yet or solve well.

Reduce the steps in their critical user journeys. For example, if it's something they do every day, going from 5 clicks to 3 clicks adds up over time and improves satisfaction.

Dive into metrics and implement quantitative metrics where they don't exist. Survey users for qualitative metrics.

Bring data (metrics, market research, customer quotes etc) to executive meetings to back up your ideas, data speaks louder than your words.

Basically, if your product is in the market you don't need to always guess what to build, your users will guide you. That's not to say you can't innovate too, but a large part of being a PM is bringing the user experience and their frustrations to your team to action.

[mellosouls]

You should clarify what you mean by PM; product and project management are different things. I assume its one of those rather than Programme Management or Prime Minister...

ps. a cheatsheet for a famous general management-onboarding book The First 90 Days; while it doesn't specifically address your question a lot of it will apply:

https://sourcesofinsight.com/doing-the-first-90-days/

[cpfohl]

This is true. Although, I’m not sure how many medium size companies have their own Prime Ministers.

Your first few weeks at any company in any role, though, are well spent meeting people and learning the product really well.

I also like to get or sit in on a sales demo and an onboarding call.

[pluc]

Ask for sales to give you the same demo they give customers.

Ask the engineering team for a demo.

Ask the founder/execs for a demo.

Ask tech support for a rundown of the most frequent issues.

Each of those will show you what each silo think is important.

[remus]

Also, ask customers for a demo to understand how they use the product and what they think is important.

[simonw]

Befriend someone in the customer support function ASAP. Ask to see their notes, in particular notes they share with other customer support people.

I once got shown a customer support tips shared spreadsheet that was more valuable documentation than anything else in the entire company.

[Lionga]

Love that "senior" PMs need to have exactly zero years experience as PM to be a senior PM.

[codingdave]

I had the same thought, but if it is a 1000 person company, that is large enough that the seniority level of their title is just as likely to be based on the compensation band of their HR structure as much as having any relevance to their actual skills.

[mewpmewp2]

Depends how rest of his career experience has been. He was an engineer and he has been a founder. If the product is technical it very well makes sense for me that he is well beyond junior or mid level depending on overall experience.

[louthy]

Founder is ‘PM on steroids’

[jph]

I maintain a repo of topics for new PMs, plus one-page explanations, in web page format and also as a free ebook. Constructive feedback welcome.

https://github.com/sixarm/project-management-guide

This guide doesn't tell you what to do; it give you much of the lingo and a bunch of framework choices that you can use, or perhaps that the existing teammates are already using.

[peterprescott]

This is for Project Management, but I think OP is a Product Manager...

[metahikari]

I don't know if it will help, but I wrote a series of three blogs about this topic roughly 10 years ago. Very much informed by my experiences as a brand new PM: https://learntopm.com/2019/11/11/your-first-30-days-in-a-new...

[daniel_iversen]

There’s probably advice and books and other things that PMs here and elsewhere can give you, but also get a network together with the other senior PMs and head of product/CTO I reckon and see what’s working and what’s not. Bit of a “listening tour” (and even outside product; what does sales and support think about the product, and about working with the product). One is not a substitute for the other and I’m sure there are some institutional aspects in the company that’ll influence how you manage the product and it’s roadmap. Our ex-PM Jackie who was/is very good also wrote a book specifically for this, that helped build Asana :-) Cracking the PM Career: The Skills, Frameworks, and Practices to Become a Great Product Manager https://amzn.asia/d/3CP2Jex

[argiacomi]

Great book. A couple of others I’ve also found super helpful:

- The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter (https://a.co/d/dRDXQtg)

- Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (https://a.co/d/aw73ped)

I’ve also found some good stuff in Lenny Rachitsky’s Podcast/Blog (https://www.lennyrachitsky.com)

[raymondgh]

Depending on the culture of the company, the product management function will come with a range of expectations from the powers that be — figure those out asap. Figure out the big personalities, the values of the company, and obviously start talking to their customers on week 1 and every week (day?) thereafter.

As a senior PM, you probably need to pay a lot more attention to your executive stakeholders than a junior PM who might focus instead on lower level cross functional needs, developer focus, design, etc. I would also suggest that after you’re comfortable with your onboarding that you embrace high visibility and even fight for it if anyone discourages you or devalues your communication efforts. Good luck!

[globalise83]

Probably spend a lot of time working out who your company's customers are, what problem they want you to solve and how the company is currently performing at doing that. This can be done together with different people, for example the customers themselves, your sales team, your PM team, customer support team, operations, executives, etc. so that you build up a bit of a network internally. This should give you some good background knowledge for developing your product strategy.

[haakonhr]

I have never worked as a pure PM, but I have worked with several. I would say that the most important thing is to build trust with your team and to be ready to adapt to the existing process. From there on you can start introducing small changes towards a better working mode, but do not get caught up in process over outcome. Remember why you are there.

[mattacular]

Interesting (but perhaps not surprising) none of the top comments mention meeting or learning how to work with the people who build, operate, and maintain the software product that they're managing.

Understanding the dynamic (ie. inherent tension) between engineering and product/business is a really important part of a software job no matter what your role is.

[fullstackwife]

As a junior PM should have a mentor from within the company. Should this be your first step to find a mentor?

[zachwills]

From the perspective of an engineer- do a listening tour. Learn as much as you can. Shadow meetings. From there you’ll start to see where you can have an impact.

[3ple_alpha]

Depends if the project started with you or was ongoing. If it is the latter, defer to pre-existing coworkers to an extent at first.

[weinzierl]

I came from the technical side and did the PMI PMP and PMP ACP. I know people are rightfully critical of certifications here, and certifications alone never teach you the thing they certify, but for me it was worth it.

I learned a lot of lingo I was unfamiliar with and the broad and comprehensive treatment of the field gave much more confidence. Being forced to deal with all the topics in PM, at least to some degree, was very eye opening for someone like me, whose experience was restricted to only certain aspects of it.

And not the least, it gives you access to people in similar positions in other organizations and industries for exchange and to learn from.

EDIT: If you meant PM as product manager this is probably not for you. I was curious how common PM for product manager is and searched HN for the abbreviation. Most commonly on HN it stands for - surprise, surprise - prime minister.