Google has a lot of products, and the product management role can vary a lot across teams. While product design thinking and analytical skills are important in all of the roles, the balance will vary a lot across products like Google Search, Adwords, Gmail, Android, YouTube, Google Plus, and Google Maps.
The Search team tends to be very research driven, with engineers taking the lead on inventing new algorithms. For advertiser-facing teams, PMs gather customer requirements and communicate those needs to the rest of the team. On teams like Google Plus, designers are central to the team, while developer-facing teams might not have a designer at all.
PMs at Google work independently. PMs join a team, and it’s up to the individual PMs and their teams to decide what they’re going to build. Often, a PM’s first project at Google is to figure out what they should be working on.
Many products have only one PM, and for those that have more, the work is usually cleanly partitioned so that each PM owns a full area. In the day-to-day work as a Google PM, you’ll work most closely with your engineering team and designer. Many new ideas come from PMs, engineers, and designers drawing ideas on whiteboards and then quickly building prototypes.
Google strongly values analytical skills in its PMs, since data analysis can be a big part of a PM’s job. PMs frequently look through the usage logs to come up with ideas for new projects in the Search and Ads divisions. Once a team has built something, Google makes it easy to try it out in front of a
tiny percentage of users. Then the data starts rolling in, and the PM analyzes the data (or works with data analysts) to see if the changes were an improvement.
A big part of the PM job at Google is getting projects in shape for launch. Since even small changes will be seen by many millions of users, it’s important to get all of the pieces right, including the UI and algorithms. A project must also meet security, legal, and infrastructure requirements. Many projects go through multiple rounds of iteration before getting a final approval.
Innovation
To encourage innovation, Google has a program called “20% time.” This is a policy where engineers and PMs can spend 20% of their time on a company-related side project. To start a 20% project, you don’t need any approval; you just start working on it. There are internal sites where you can post your project and try to recruit other people to join you. Many big products at Google such as Gmail, Google News, and Orkut started in someone’s 20% time.
All of this innovation and freedom can make Google a PM’s dream. If you have a project you’re passionate about, not only do you get the time and freedom to work on it, but you’re also surrounded by brilliant engineers who have extra time to help out!
Microsoft
Microsoft originated the PM role in the 1980s when they realized that they needed someone between the marketing and engineering teams who focused on making the product usable for customers.
At Microsoft, the program manager role is unique in scope and influence. A PM serves as a business analyst, a project manager, and a creative force. Microsoft also has one of the highest PM-to-developer ratios. These combine to make the Microsoft PM role a very hands-on position. Teams are frequently PM-driven, with the program manager making every user-facing decision.
As one of the older tech companies, Microsoft has developed a strong focus on career growth.
They’ve learned that employees want to see their careers progressing and have built a system where people can grow not only by becoming team leads, but also by becoming responsible for larger products and more product strategy. Microsoft is a company where many employees expect to spend their whole career.
Who they recruit
Microsoft looks for program managers who are big-picture thinkers, who can solve problems, and who can get stuff done.
Uche from Microsoft says, “We wants people with inquisitive minds. People who look at things from multiple perspectives. As a PM, you’ll wear many hats, so how you think is more important than any particular technical skill.”
Microsoft has two roles related to program management that are usually filled by people with MBAs:
product managers and product planners. Product managers at Microsoft are on the marketing team, identifying market opportunities and developing strategies for moving on those opportunities, focused on the current release. Product planners are looking further ahead, identifying market and technology trends to come up with new product scenarios.
What they do
On Microsoft products, the vision and strategy often come from the top and work their way down.
For example, the VP in charge of Microsoft Office will work with the group program managers to create and share a vision document with the main areas of focus for the next release. The people in charge of each Office product will define the vision for their product so it falls in line with the overall Office vision. Then each of the team leads uses the Office vision and the product vision to develop visions for their feature areas.
The result is that the product strategy at Microsoft within a division is very cohesive. The teams feel like they’re working together towards the same goal, and it’s rare to find two teams that are working on competing features. As your career advances at Microsoft, you pick up larger and larger pieces of the strategy.
The top-down vision makes it hard to make big changes in direction in the middle of a launch cycle.
Even if the idea is great, it’s hard to find developers with spare time to build it. On the other hand,
you’re generally working on features that everyone agrees are important. This means that you can spend your energy trying to build something great instead of convincing management to let you launch the great thing you built.
As a new PM at Microsoft, you’ll be put in charge of feature areas that work with the team’s vision, and you will be given a lot of freedom and responsibility to make those parts of the product great. As you prove yourself on your early teams, you’re given more and more responsibility.
The core feature team at Microsoft includes a developer, a program manager, and a tester. Recently, some teams are bringing a designer into the core feature team. Together the core feature team, led by the PM, decides what to build. On many teams, the PM starts by writing a one-page “spec”—a high-level description of the goals and use cases.
After reviewing the one-page spec with other program managers on the product, the PM may expand the one-page spec into a detailed spec that describes exactly how the feature will work, from high-level flows down to the text of the error messages. The PM might also work with a designer or may do all of the interaction design herself. This is team dependent though.
Once the spec is reviewed and implementation starts, dogfooding (trying early builds of the software internally) becomes very important. Especially on teams with slow ship cycles, PMs at Microsoft gather feedback from other people at the company. As that feedback comes in, the PM prioritizes the bugs and new feature ideas.
Outside of the core feature work, PMs will also take on some team-wide or cross-team responsibilities. One example is running the project management schedule for the product or running a pre-launch triage process to decide which bugs to fix or which features to implement.
As Microsoft adjusts to its new reorganization as a devices and services company, the spec-heavy process is being replaced with a more agile and iterative approach on many teams. Teams are starting to launch faster and more frequently. A/B testing is becoming more prominent.
Apple
Apple has a top-down, siloed structure. The product direction is tightly controlled by the executive team and designers, while the rest of the company executes that vision like a well-oiled machine. At Apple, engineering project managers and engineering program managers (EPMs) are the leaders of the product who keep that machine running.
Who they recruit
Apple looks for people who live and breathe Apple products. While many companies take pride in supporting a healthy work/life balance, Apple looks for people so passionate about the end product that it is their life.
For the EPM role, they’re generally looking for someone with a strong background in science and math (so that he can “figure things out”) and with a good demeanor (so that he comes across appropriately confident). Also, they want someone who’s technically fluent enough to be part of the discussion, but who won’t necessarily try to do any of the engineers’ job for them.
Since Apple has many hardware projects, they hire for hardware EPMs and system EPMs, in addition to software EPMs. Software EPMs generally have a background in computer science, while hardware EPMs may have a background in another engineering field like electrical engineering or mechanical engineering.
EPMs at Apple come from all levels of experience, from new college graduates to people with 15 years of industry experience. Most EPMs come to Apple from engineering school or engineering roles rather than from business/management degrees, MBAs, or former EPM positions at other companies.
Apple also has a product marketing manager role, which they sometimes call product manager. For product marketing manager, they look for people with a background in business or marketing. MBA graduates are often hired into this role.
What they do
Early ideas at Apple can come from the top down or from the bottom up and are shaped over a series of reviews with the executive team or senior management, driven by EPMs. Product managers do customer research and look at market trends to identify strategic areas for the next release. Once the product is approved, the EPM leads the engineering teams to build the product, creating development schedules, facilitating cross-functional communication, and spearheading issues as they arise.
Products at Apple involve coordination across many teams, and the EPMs are the hub of that communication, making sure things are running on schedule and solving problems when they’re not.
For example, building a hardware device involves coordinating work across mechanical design teams, electrical design teams, external contract manufacturers, and operations teams.
A typical day for an EPM in Cupertino involves a lot of communication: presenting the team’s progress, learning about the status of other teams, and reviewing the current status with executives.
Throughout these discussions, the EPM is responsible for surfacing issues and finding ways to resolve them.
For software EPMs, a big part of the day is testing the daily builds, finding blocking issues, and making sure they get fixed in a timely manner.
System EPMs focus on delivering the whole product. They plan and lead prototype builds that dozens of Apple engineers travel overseas for. In addition to being the face of the Apple engineering team at contract manufacturers, the system EPM is responsible for cooperatively driving failure analysis to closure, reconciling development hardware demands, and removing obstacles that block prototype builds. The system EPM is the leader of the project within Apple and pulls together other EPMs and engineers to deliver a product.
Hardware EPMs focus on the hardware deliverables for a product, including circuit boards and flexes. They work hand in hand with electrical engineering teams, product design teams, silicon teams, and external vendors. Day to day, they are involved in silicon planning and supply-chain management, and they are often tasked with reaching consensus on difficult cross-functional design decisions.
Facebook is a scrappy, engineering-focused company. There are relatively few product managers;
many teams start without a product manager, only bringing one in after the need is obvious. Even when a team has more than one PM, the areas will be big enough that each person is working independently.
Who they recruit
Facebook has a unique set of PMs.
Facebook looks for highly technical and entrepreneurial PMs. At Facebook, all product managers are expected to code (or at least learn the basics) and go through Facebook Bootcamp, a six-week program where PMs and engineers learn the tools and fix bugs. This fits into the do-it-yourself culture; PMs will often code up initial prototypes of their product on their own.
When Facebook acquires a company for the purpose of recruiting its employees, it’s referred to as acqui-hiring. When acqui-hiring a team, Facebook looks for small teams, usually fewer than 10 people, composed mostly of engineers. Often, the founder or CEO of the company will be brought on as a product manager.
New graduates and people without product management experience join the rotational Product Manager Program. This is a one-year program consisting of 3 four-month rotations on different teams.
What they do
At Facebook, there are some planned company initiatives, but many ideas spring up from watching how people use the site and the problems they hit. PMs will notice an area that needs attention and put together a storyboard and proposal for what they want to build, including the expected outcome.
Because PMs have so much freedom, it’s important to know how to position your ideas into the framework of the company and show how they fit into the overall mission.
Then, the team will build a prototype to test in a small market and see if the expected outcome happens. If all goes well, things go into motion. The PM will review the proposal with Mark Zuckerberg (whom everyone calls “Zuck”) or the division head to get approval. Then the team brings in designers and turns the feature on internally to start getting feedback from other people at Facebook.
During development, the product manager iterates through product reviews. There’s not much project management overhead, but PMs can watch the logs to see new code as soon as the engineers check it in. When everything is ready, the PM coordinates a rollout plan and works with marketing for the launch.
Amazon
Amazon’s culture is guided by their 14 Leadership Principles (see: Amazon Leadership Principles).
While many companies may have their own set of principles, Amazon’s Leadership Principles play a real role both in hiring and in day-to-day work. In meetings, people will cite leadership principles to help resolve decisions, and interviewers will look for these qualities in candidates.
Who they recruit
Amazon has a lot going on. There are new initiatives being started, technical operational programs that are ongoing, and non-technical operational programs. There are teams that focus on audiences as diverse as consumers, publishers, and developers. Because of this, there are many different roles that relate to product and program management.
Product managers are the product owners. They focus on the vision of a product. Amazon prefers MBAs for the product manager role and will hire people right out of business school. Unlike many other companies, Amazon does not require PMs to have a technical background.
Technical program managers are responsible for the day-to-day execution of technical projects.
TPMs need a strong technical background and can come directly out of school or by transferring from an engineering role. TPMs work closely with engineers.
Program managers are responsible for the project management of non-technical projects, such as those on Operations. Program managers can come from any background, but skill with SQL is a plus.
Amazon looks for program managers who are smart, fast, and can work under pressure. Program managers are responsible for running and improving the team’s processes.