The Age Old Question - How Technical does a Product Manager need to be?
As a product manager, how technical must I be in order to land and succeed in the role?
One question every aspiring Product Manager asks me is how technical do I need to be?
In reality, this is two questions in one.
What are the minimum required technical skills/knowledge in order to fulfill the duties of the role?
What technical skills give you an unfair advantage over your peers to make you a great product manager?
Like everything in the product, the degree of technicality required varies role to role. Its dependent on the number of variables about the specific product role. I addressed some of these variables on the official P2P website. Click the link below to read further into:
I addressed some of these variables on the official P2P website. Click the link below to read further into:
How a product’s users determine how technical a PM must be
How the company size, and org structure, inform technical requirements
Where Technical Skills Set You Apart
One of the many quirky aspects of Product Management is - there exists singular define list of job requirements. There is a lot more grey to it than other careers in technology.
A quality Product Manager is a supreme generalist, with some knowledge on many wide array of topics, but a specialist of none.
I’d lump many technical skills into this buck. All serve to help you further your career, be more effective, and make more money.
That said, you can very well have a wildly successful career as a PM having never written one line of code (Though I recommend against it).
The reasons why? Technical skills allow you to move quicker - and using time efficiently is essential in the product.
Every day I get asked feasibility questions that involve knowledge of some element of our technology stack. Without an understanding of system architecture, I become beholden to my engineering counterparts.
Taking it a step further, there are regular tools and access available to PMs where the only barrier to entry is technical knowledge of how to use them. It’s situations where I can either do something myself, or it’s considered a waste of my team’s engineering resources.
Technology companies regularly use tools that require technical controls. Data Visualisation, Product Analytics, and Workflow Management tools all function like this. There may be some out-of-the-box controllers using a well-designed UI. To maximize the utility of the tool requires the input of a code script for maximum flexibility.
For the paid P2P Premium Subscribers, here’s a list of all instances in my career so far where some technical skill allowed me to get ahead.
The rest of this article is for the P2P Premium Subscribers. For the price of a Netflix subscription, you get inside access to what I, and the PMs I work with, do daily to get ahead.
Go paid to get our most In-Depth insights into what goes into the making of a Great Product Manager.
If you are new to the concept of Product and are just getting your feet wet, consider using P2P services for a consult with a veteran Product Manager. It’s the quickest path to learning how to pivot to a career in Product Management.
Got a product resume you need to up-level? I’ll review your resume, then talk tactics on a call.
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