Product managers own the vision and roadmap for their team. Amazon values customer obsession, and many new ideas will come from figuring out what customers want and need. This can be from talking to customers directly or by looking at data that’s available via SQL. Amazon is very data driven, so PMs need to have strong analytical skills.
When a PM comes up with an idea, he puts together a business case in a memo, also called a narrative. This document will cover the details of the recommendation and analysis that supports it, especially including numbers about the impact and rationale. Amazon focuses on documents instead of presentations for new proposals because documents force the author to be precise and show clear thinking.
After initial rounds of revisions and redlines, the proposal is then shared with upper management in a meeting that starts with everyone silently reading the document at the same time. This process might seem strange at first, but it guarantees that everyone has time to read the details of the proposal and gets everyone focused. After everyone has read the document, people ask questions about it.
The proposal may then go through a few more rounds; the key is precision in drawing a line from inputs to expected outcomes. After the proposal has the green light, the team starts building it. Many
teams follow an Agile process, where the PM is the product owner and is responsible for writing user stories and the team’s backlog.
When products are ready for launch, the PM works with the marketing team and prepares for a hand off to the Operations team that will run the program on an ongoing basis.
Yahoo
Yahoo has a strong legacy: at one point, “Yahoo” was synonymous with “The Internet” for many people. The company has gone through a series of transitions in the last several years, but in 2012, Marissa Mayer was appointed as CEO, and she brought renewed energy and passion into the company. Web traffic is up, many recent product announcements and launches have been well received, and you can see a clear change in perception both internally and externally.
PMs who work at Yahoo love the excitement of having such a clear challenge. They’re now focused on getting back into the hearts and minds of users by putting their needs first. With a former product manager at the helm, Yahoo is strongly product driven and looking to build products that users love.
Who they recruit
PMs at Yahoo generally have a CS degree, although it’s not required. Yahoo looks for talent with strong engineering background demonstrated through academic achievements and/or work experience at a top-tier software company.
Today, Yahoo has a great mix of PMs: some have been at Yahoo for a long time, others have joined recently from other tech companies, and still others are fresh out of college. While each Yahoo PM possesses a different background and experience, they all have one common goal of bringing Yahoo products and its experiences to the next level.
Yahoo started the Associate Product Manager (APM) Program with a goal of hiring talented new graduates. It’s a two-year rotational program with regular training presentations from people across the company and a global business trip in the middle. Two things that make the Yahoo APM program stand out are that APMs learn which team they’re on before they start working and that the organizers are focusing on getting all of the APMs into big, challenging roles.
What they do
Teams at Yahoo are often organized into a trio of engineer, product manager, and designer, with one person serving as the group lead. The group lead is oftentimes a product manager.
The product manager is responsible for setting the overall direction and strategy for products, making sure the user experience is solid and developing long-term growth. This includes the user-experience and long-term monetization plans, and teams are no longer pressured to look for short-term revenue wins.
Yahoo has a strong culture of collaboration, and ideas come from every corner of the company.
Getting the mobile experience right for Yahoo’s core products is a key driver of the company’s efforts.
Most Yahoo PMs are very technical, and PMs are well respected within the company. PMs are involved in the full spectrum of the product life cycle; they run experiments, work closely with cross-functional teams, and oversee the entire launch process. There is an official review process for product launches that helps keep the quality bar of the products high before they are made available to
users.
Teams at Yahoo are moving a lot faster, and many are picking up Agile processes. Many teams work in short iterations. Instead of long, detailed specs, PMs now might just write a one-sentence user story, and the engineers will make decisions and get it out.
Twitter is a rapidly growing company working on the future of communication. Since Twitter is growing so fast in terms of users and headcount, the organization is constantly changing and evolving.
This growth also opens a lot of opportunities for people to move around and grow their roles.
Who they recruit
Twitter hires people who are passionate about Twitter. They look for people who love the product, the company, or the mission.
Twitter hires for two related roles: product manager (PM) and technical program manager (TPM).
Product managers usually work on customer-facing teams. Technical program managers usually work on platform or infrastructure initiatives, often across multiple teams. The PM role includes more product design, while the TPM role involves more project management.
For the technical program manager role, Twitter looks for people with a technical background and experience in software delivery. In addition, they look for a “get things done” mentality and excellent communication skills. Many TPMs come with program management experience, but many also come from backgrounds such as consulting, engineering management, or technical architecture.
For the product manager role, Twitter looks for people with a single-minded focus on the user and who are flexible enough to handle the fast pace. Because Twitter has relatively few PMs per engineer, they usually hire more experienced candidates who can keep up with the work.
What they do
Product managers at Twitter wear a bunch of hats. Teams are made up of product, engineering, and design. PMs are involved in concepts and roadmapping as well as finding bugs, prioritizing features, executing on current projects, and thinking about the future. The PM serves as the interface between the feature area and the rest of the company.
The technical program manager role is relatively new at Twitter and in some ways is still being defined. There are several different types of TPMs, and Twitter is building career paths for all of them.
Some TPMs are responsible for release management: shepherding the web and mobile releases, making sure the builds get in, running the dogfooding process (where Twitter employees try out the new builds), and making sure bugs get fixed.
Other TPMs manage broad programs across many teams with hundreds of people including external people across companies. Other TPMs are thought leaders on cross-team topics like the Agile process. Still other TPMs are embedded in a single platform or infrastructure team.
Ideas at Twitter come from all over the company: management, PMs, engineers, designers, and people in other roles like user services. One way Twitter supports this is with a quarterly hack week where people can work on whatever they want as long as it’s related to Twitter. Many great ideas come out of hack week, and people can use the time to build buzz around their ideas.
Planning at Twitter happens quarterly, and teams are responsible for their own goals (called “gulls,”
since Twitter likes to name things after birds). During implementation, teams constantly dogfood (try new features out internally) and present what they’re working on through weekly meetings.
The company runs many A/B tests and is data driven. However, it is also careful about being too data driven. Teams use the metrics to understand how things are performing against success metrics and then make changes as necessary, but they still make sure they move quickly and keep the spirit of the product intact.
Startups
Startups can be great places for PMs to make an impact and have a part in shaping their own role.
More so than at larger companies, product managers at startups really have to wear a lot of hats and find scrappy ways to get things done.
One of the best ways to get signal on the culture at a startup is to look at where the founders, PMs, and early employees came from. Since product management doesn’t have a single, well-known definition, teams generally bring along the definition that they learned from their past companies. A company founded by ex-Apple employees will tend to have elements of Apple’s culture, while one founded by ex-Google employees will tend to be more similar to Google.
Once you’re ready to learn more about a startup, it can also make a lot of sense to reach out and try to get coffee with someone on the product team. At a startup, all of the employees are often involved in recruiting, so they’ll generally be happy to chat. Plus, they work at a startup, so they probably need that coffee!
Who they recruit
Startups vary a lot in the profile and skills they look for. In general, they’re more likely to look for people with experience shipping software and less likely to consider new graduates unless the company already has a large PM team.
For startups, culture fit and passion for the company are really important. While a big company might be satisfied that your reason for wanting to join the company is “I want to work with a great team and have a big impact,” that’s not going to fly at a startup. They’ll want to hear a much more specific story about why you’re interested in their space.