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?

- 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.

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!

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

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

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.

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...

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

perhaps try to find what you can pull from the responsibilities of other project managers to demonstrate your positive impact on the project for the next performance review

It's okay to go slow at first. You have to walk before you can run.

Even though you have experience in the domain, don't rush in and start trying to change everything, first understand why it is the way it is.

Gain your engineers' trust through active listening, kindness, empathy, and engagement on critical topics. Don't be afraid to say "let me do that for you" in the early days. It's both a learning opportunity and a trust building technique.

Meet every stakeholder and peer you can. Ask them about themselves, the company, and their perspective on the opportunities for your product. Set up regular 1:1s with key stakeholders.

Understand what your teams and your mgmt wants from you. They may conflict. If they do, see if you can figure out a way to address both needs. If you can't, you'll need to figure out a way to manage one group's needs while meeting the other's.

Ask for feedback from the engineers you work with and your peers, especially on your first couple of initiatives but I find it's worth doing all the time. If you don't get any meaningful feedback just assume you've done a good job and keep going.

When you use a product for the first time, write down your feedback as you go through it. Identify what you think is confusing or frustrating, but also what you think it working well. Take screenshots or videos as necessary to further illustrate your perspective. Most of the people who work on the product already have probably internalized these faults and no longer see them the way you will with fresh eyes. Discuss your findings with the team.

You'll want to speak with as many customers/users as possible, but unless you're already an expert in the product, not right away. Gain basic competency in the product, develop a hypothesis about what you think needs to be done, and then go speak to users. You'll quickly find out if you're on the right or wrong path.

One thing I've learned is that many founders actually suck at talking to users in a way that gives them actionable information. If that's you, and perhaps why you're not a founder any more (not saying this is you), then quickly learn how to do interviews well. There are plenty of books and videos on this topic.

Celebrate your team's wins and understand that you are there to help your teams win, not the other way around.

Understand that PMs are judged on outcomes not inputs. No body cares if you worked really hard on something or if you cruised into it. The results will speak for you.

Be prepared to say "no" a lot. That's one of the primary jobs of a PM, but be wary of saying it a lot right away. If you're unsure of something in the early days get council from your team or mgmt.

Your teams want you in the problem space, not the solution space. Unless you have some keen insight on a solution or are part of a solution brainstorming session, don't tread into the engineer's domain. Conversely though, embrace engineers that want to get a deeper understanding of the problem space.

Look for leverage points. That is, look for opportunities with low effort and high impact. I've been able to make seemingly big strides in a product early on just by identifying the right leverage points.

I can keep going but I'll stop for now. I hope this helps you on your journey. Best of luck!

How are you a senior PM if this is your first PM role?