Ask Lemmy

I am a product manager.

It's a great job for someone who cannot focus, since it's not really one job.

• Communication skills: You need to both gather information from customers, and sell your ideas inside the organization (as well as to customers)
• Technical skills: You need to be able to explain your ideas to engineering teams and understand the limitations / opportunities afforded by the technology you work with
• Business skills: You need to understand the business your product exists in, and ensure that your product serves the needs of your own employers needs (like, supports processes, works well with other products and services). In a B2B context, you also need to understand your customers business.
• Management skills: You most likely need to set goals for other people and design how other people work around your product. This will include areas like HR management, process design, legal etc.

Each of these areas is a discipline onto itself. In my case for example, technical skills involves working with mechanical, electrical and software engineers.

Needless to say, you don't get to be very good at any of this. And you shouldn't either. A great product manager is enough of an expert in all of the areas to recognize problems, and set the framework for solving it, but will allow the experts to do their jobs. Focusing too much on technical expertise will make the PM too much of an engineer.