Why Product Management Can Be Exhausting
As a product Management, I need to understand why it's the nature of the beast that some days the job will crush you, so that I can live to fight another day.
It’s 2 AM. You can’t sleep.
You’re spiraling emotionally. You don’t know if you’re cut out for the challenge at hand.
You browse the internet, impulsively reading Reddit thread after Reddit thread of people wanting to quit Product Management.
The crisis was spawned by events earlier that day. You got punched in the metaphorical face.
Your company’s biggest client is pissed. They want functionality that doesn’t exist yet and are threatening to walk if it doesn’t get done. You are the owner of the product drawing their er.
Your head of CS and Sales are screaming their heads off in a meeting with you, your boss, and your boss’s boss. We’re going to lose this client if you don’t deliver here!
What they are asking for, however, is a seemingly impossible task for the timeline the client demands. When you brief your engineering lead on the ask, they spit their coffee
You want what? How Fast? That’s like, a half year’s worth of development.
Vibes are awful.
The events have left you feeling utterly defeated.
The impossibleness of the task is what have you up in the middle of the night questioning if you made a mistake becoming a product manager.
It’s what has you Googling Should I Quit Product Management reading up on the struggles of others.
Perhaps you are in that exact moment now.
I have a message for the PMs when they are in such a respondent state.
This is a normal part of the job.
All Product Managers experience this at some point.
The Work will move on.
Why this Happens in Product
At technology companies, Product Management exists at the center of all other business units. It forces you as a PM to get involved in all operational concerns regarding your product.
This gives product managers the opportunity for glory. A successful product launch can catapult you to new heights. You become a Golden Boy. You’re rewarded with more trust, resources, and money. You earn the respect of your engineers. Executives start asking for your strategic opinions. The high of winning is intoxicating.
But there’s a shadow side to personal success afforded by product work.
When things go wrong at a tech company, everyone starts looking for someone or something to blame.
The easiest something is the product - as it cannot be argued back.
Upset clients tend to lash out like angry children. Whatever the background for their negative emotions, there comes a trigger point where they raise hell.
Clients do this via antagonistic emails, with a laundry list of Unacceptable outcomes. Logistically, the easiest way to do this is in a screenshot of a UI. Clients send something unambiguously off, and go “See this is wrong, and here’s everything about your tool, your company, and you personally”.
When these types of emails are sent, everyone collectively freaks out.
If it’s a major customer of your company, even top executives join in on the freakout.
No product has an approval rating of 100%. Achieve enough scale, and eventually, someone important will get upset.
When these clients are irate, the product manager gets dragged into many contentious meetings. In these meetings, change is demanded! If the client is important (AKA expensive) the product org is then forced to dedicate all capacity to fix the issue.
It does not matter if the original fault lies with non-product issue. Needy clients need to see their issues addressed in product UI. It does not matter if it’s not the most efficient way to do so.
The more you succeed in product management, the more products you become responsible for.
This makes it inevitable that you will one day be forced to join a tense meeting with a bunch of angry executives who demand immediate action.
These meetings will kill your vibe.
The best product managers, however, all know what must be done when faced with such situations.
You weather the storm, make changes where you must, and move on.
For those reading this text at 4 AM stressing out - know every PM before you have been where you are now.
How to Work through a Soul-Crushing Product Crisis
It’s in a crisis where you can observe who are the Product Leaders with the battle scars to back it up.
They are calm, resolute, and seemingly unaffected by the noise going on around them.
Whilst everyone else screams, they listen. They want to know all the information and all the dynamics that resulted in an angry client before proposing anything.
They listen intently, asking pointed questions, and do not dwell longer than necessary on what went wrong. After gathering information, they come up with a plan.
The seasoned Product Manager can talk other executives off a cliff by swiftly determining the next actionable step.
The seasoned PM gets everyone on the call to buy into the actionable plan.
The seasoned PM makes sure everyone knows what their contribution is to the plan, and when they need it done.
The key to the seasoned PMs success in these scenarios?
They are not sure their plan will work.
No one can forecast the problems of the future. No one knows this fact more intimately than the seasoned PM.
What’s key in contentious situations is to come up with explicit steps for everyone to follow to prevent acting reactively and disjointed. An individual needs to point the boat in the right direction. A product manager that does this becomes a product leader.
When you find yourself in an impossible situation - you need to focus. Identify what steps can maximize your chance for success and pursue those steps with vigor.
Nothing is guaranteed. But a plausible plan is better than none.
The benefit of this approach is in its persuasion toward the client. Forecasting and meeting the delivery of small “Steps” in the direction of what the angry client hopes demonstrates competency.
Refactoring an entire product doesn’t happen overnight. But a single, key feature, can be coded and deployed in a week.
Seeing a change in a production environment goes a long way towards mending ill will. Done most effectively, you blend the angry client into the process in a custom User Acceptance Testing (UAT) plan.
The more fixes deployed, the more the client feels progress. It makes the feeling of success override the previous antipathy.
The focus of this strategy is to build a small, ever-growing chain of wins to re-establish goodwill.
A crisis itself is not what defines a team and its character.
The response to a crisis is where character is made.
Pivot to Product is a newsletter written by Product Managers, for both existing and aspiring PMs who are looking to build the future of tech.
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What you need to remember when in the fog of war
When in a crisis, what’s most important is to pick yourself up off the ground and plan your next steps.
Product Management is defined by action. Others will follow if you lead the way.
Blood runs hot when there are angry clients and millions of dollars at stake. The real professionals are the ones who can take the negative feedback in stride.
The truly great PMs bring a stoic approach to their work. They do not want to get too high off success - lest it takes their focus away from what’s needed to be done next
They do not get too low in defeat. They know there’s always another sprint to plan. Your fate can change with any release.
Product Management is a long-term game. So long as you’re willing to fight another day, you will eventually win.
When in a crisis, remember:
You only lose if you give up.
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