How technicians transform to product managers

How technicians transform to product managers

 

I don't know if all companies hold meetings in this way. The length of time is used as a standard to measure the importance of meetings.

Zhou Yang was called for a meeting by Guo's sister. It started at half past nine and was not until, until he returned to the office with a gloomy face.

Put down his notebook, Zhou Yang stood in the middle of the Office and clap his hands. "Please pay attention. I have something to tell you. Please give me some suggestions ."

Seeing that it was just lunch time, I and Liu Yu and xiaojuan are deciding on how to join in for dinner at noon. As a result, we can only adjust our mood and put down our work, waiting for Zhou Yang to convey the spirit of the meeting.

"Boss, what is the meeting? Is it very important? Is it related to our product department ?" I can't wait to ask Zhou Yang.

Xiaojuan quickly opened the onenotes on the computer and prepared to start recording.

"Well, I'm not talking about the meeting. The meeting just now has nothing to do with our product department ." Said Zhou Yang. It doesn't matter to the product department. We immediately bow down and start surfing the Internet, waiting for lunch.

"But what I said is related to our product department. It is very important. I don't know how to solve it ." Zhou yanglai breathed a sigh of relief. I thought that when the incident was over, he would join Liu Yu and xiaojuan to invite him to treat the guests at noon.

Zhou Yang watched us turn our attention to him again, then sat down in the chair next to him and began to talk about it.

"Xiao Juan, do you know the brilliant son of the technology department ?"

Xiao Juan nodded. "Yes, that's the programmer. He is famous in the technology department. Hahaha ......", Liu Yu and I are very puzzled. If you know, you will know. Do you want to laugh like this.

Zhou Yang smiled and continued: "When I passed the technical department, I met him. He told me something very serious ......" Zhou Yang deliberately added the tone of the word "severe". We couldn't help but watch Zhou Yang nervously and want to know what it means.

"He said, he wanted to work as a product manager in the product department. Let me talk about it, alas !" Zhou Yang sighed and refused to speak.

"Finished ?" Liu Yu asked.

"Finished !"

I really want to throw him. I guess LIU Yu has the same idea as me at this moment. What is this? He is so nervous that I really don't know how he will cover his brothers in the future.

"I think ......" I deliberately stretched the tone.

Zhou Yang immediately looked at me and said, "Well, let's talk about your thoughts ."

"Now we should discuss what to eat at noon. I think the small hall was good yesterday. Do you want to go there today ."

When talking about lunch, Liu Yu and xiaojuan both came to the spirit and began to express their suggestions. Zhou Yang was stunned and looked at us.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I really want to be a product manager. Do you want to say that I agree or not? Please give us some suggestions. If you can solve this problem, we will treat you at noon today ." Zhou Yang began to pay a heavy reward.

Once we heard that Zhou Yang may treat us at noon, everyone's attention turned back to him.

Xiaojuan spoke first: "isn't it enough for you to let him come over? He treats you as an idol in the technology department, and you are very important to him, it would be good for us to come over."

Zhou Yang looked at xiaojuan and did not make a statement. He looked at me and Liu Yu again.

"I think you can make a decision. You are familiar with him, and we don't know him. Is it best to know if he is a product manager ." Liu Yu said.

Zhou Yang nodded and said, "Well, I just told him to consider whether he is suitable for serving as a product manager. As a result, he said ......"

"What did he say ?"

"He said that the product manager is not easy to do. Isn't it just about the product! What are the difficulties of those jobs? They are not just analyzing and analyzing requirements, writing product documents, and solving product problems. They don't have to learn these jobs. All the products in the company, which one is unfamiliar with him? As long as he passes, he can get started immediately ."

After hearing this, Liu Yu and I were not happy. nnd, what Liang Zai's creature said, was too hurtful and self-esteem. It seems that the product manager is a non-technical position, everyone can do the same thing.

Zhou Yang also saw the unhappiness between LIU Yu and me. He hurriedly said, "I am in this dilemma. If he is asked to come, it is difficult for him to get started in a short time according to his mentality, if he is not allowed to come, he will be rejected directly, and he will not be able to help his old brother. Who can give me a suggestion to reject him without affecting our relationship?"

No response.

"If anyone can come up with a solution, I will have dinner too !" Zhou Yang began to enjoy the money.

I don't think there is any response. It seems that the money will eventually be mine.

"In fact, this problem is a good solution. You can say this to him ." I started to act as a captain.

To be honest, the product manager gives more options for career transformation to colleagues in the technical department. Just like sales personnel, not everyone can do it. This is not about skill, but about personality characteristics, perseverance, thinking, and logic. People with strong logic may be more suitable for technical work, people with active personalities, strong communication desires, and preference to show themselves may be more suitable for market-level work. Therefore, understanding the characteristics of your own personality has some guiding significance for your career selection. This means that your personality determines fate.

Therefore, for those who have been engaged in technical work but now have the willingness to transform, we must first clarify that we are tired due to temporary work pressure, this kind of emotion has been going on for a long time, or even getting tired of technical work from the very beginning, just to make a living, just like when bubble first entered the workplace.

If it is the former, it is a kind of self-protection reaction of people to external pressure. It is normal that every job will produce this situation and it is temporary, when the pressure decreases, this reaction will naturally disappear.

But if it is the latter, you should think about whether your personality is not suitable for the current technical work. If so, you can proceed to the next step.

If you have determined that you are not suitable for technical work, it does not mean that you are suitable for product management. before determining the transformation goal, you must first understand the features of product management.

There are still great advantages for technicians to communicate with product managers. After all, in many technical companies, product managers may have the most contact with technical departments every day, communicate with the product manager you are familiar with and ask what is going on in product management, what are the characteristics and requirements of product management? Of course, what must be emphasized here, the product manager who communicates with you may not be able to really understand what the product management work is (including bubble, the longer the work time, the more I feel that I still have a long way to go from a real product manager.) Therefore, When I have time, I also need to learn more about what product management is, raise your questions. If you encounter a friend who has the same background as you but has a successful transformation, it would be better.

If you are sure you really want to transform into a product manager, then you have taken another step forward, but you have not yet entered the substantive stage, this only shows that you have such willingness and are clear about it. However, a successful transformation is not only about the change of job name, but also about your own thinking.

I have met many job changes, but my thinking has not changed. As a result, I still use inertial thinking to think about problems in my work. In the end, not only is my work not done well, in addition, the original work cannot be continued.

Therefore, at this time, although you are still in the technical position and waiting for the opportunity, you must make adjustments when thinking about the problem, especially when discussing product issues, you must not only focus on your vision and ideas on the technical level. You must think more about marketing and business aspects, and listen more to the product manager's speech on this product, his thinking is like anything. To put it bluntly, he wants to transform from a technical post to a product manager, not only to understand "Products", but also to "business ".

If the idea transformation is almost done, at least the thinking model and angle have passed, Can I submit a transfer application to the company?

Of course not. I did my work at 1.1 points, but I didn't want to come up with it. So, step 3 is done. If I don't do it, even if I put you in this position, still confused.

If we say that the previous work is paving the way, we will start from step 4 with specific operations.

First of all, the product management system must be completely different from the R & D management system. You need to learn about the product management system in the company through various channels. If you want to transform yourself into a product team, where can I start? Can I be a product manager directly or must I be a product assistant for a period of time? It is easy to understand the system.

It is difficult to understand the specific methods involved in product management. For technical personnel, the product manager and the documentation for their own interfaces may be more PRD, after analysis, we can see how to write the PRD, but what about other documents? If you do not have sufficient permissions, it is more difficult to get started.

This requires you to use some measures. The simplest and most effective method is to establish a good relationship with the company's product manager, or let the product manager provide suggestions on some product management methods through private relationships, you can learn it yourself.

If you have done almost all of these jobs, you have only one job that requires your own hands-on skills. You must strive for opportunities to communicate directly with users (customers.

This work seems a little difficult for technical transformation friends. After all, there are few opportunities for technical departments to communicate directly with customers, let alone face-to-face communication (even if many product managers do not have many such opportunities), there are still some ways to do this.

For example, sometimes the product manager will ask you a technical question about the product. If you follow the normal procedure, you usually report the problem to the product manager after obtaining the problem and solving it, the product manager provides feedback to the corresponding customers in person or through the marketing department.

However, if you have the willingness to transform, you have to do something in this process. You can ask yourself to communicate with the customer in person and spend some time on your own, you can talk to the customer over the phone, e-mails, and online forums, so that you can further train your thinking, and make yourself closer to the market and business, by accumulating more perceptual knowledge about the market, you can also improve your communication skills.

In short, it is one of the five steps:

Considerations for using methods in the target phase of the transformation phase

The first step is to understand whether you are really not suitable for technical work evaluation or to communicate with others. It is only a decision reference to test and communicate your personality characteristics, do not ignore subjective will

Step 2: fully understand the work of the product manager, and assess whether you are really interested in the work and put forward your thoughts and questions about the work of the product manager, more people communicate with each other and learn more about this information.

The third step is to switch jobs. The first step is to switch thinking, from understanding "Products" to understanding "business", and communicate with the company's product manager, understanding their work thinking, communication, and familiarity with the business is a long-term process.

Step 4: Understand the company's product management system architecture, understand the methods involved in the company's product management work, and communicate with colleagues in the product department. both soft and hard-working internal communication must understand the spirit, see the essence, instead of taking pictures.

Step 5: obtain first-hand market business information from practice, from "product" thinking to "business" thinking, more opportunities for communication with end users, more help product managers. You are not a product manager yet.

After I introduced this set of ideas and comments, Zhou Yang smiled and said, "I have done it, so I told Liang Zi, let him be an out-of-office product manager in the Technical Department, evaluate his abilities, and let him try to do some product management work after work. After a while, check whether he is willing to be a product manager."

After that, Zhou Yang got up and was about to go out. We were in a hurry to stop him: "boss, it's been 20 minutes since lunch. Where are we going to eat? Are you sure you want to treat me !"

Zhou Yang gritted his head and said with a smile, "well, it should be my treat, right, but Liang Zi just said that he had to talk to me about the product department at noon, and asked me to give him a reply at noon. No way. I have to go to lunch with him. Otherwise, remember first."

While we were stunned, he said that he rushed out of our encirclement and shouted angrily.

"Forget it, let's solve it by ourselves. We're hungry for hypoglycemia ." Liu Yu said he was walking out.

After xiaojuan and I followed him, I asked xiaojuan: "just now, Zhou Yang said that Liangzi should be an out-of-the-box product manager and do some product management work. Do Liang Zi have such great energy, our technical department is very busy!"

"Don't worry, he is so energetic that he can do what he wants ." Xiaojuan said for sure, and then asked us, "do you know why we call him alive ?"

We shook our heads.

"When you have the chance to see it, you will know, hahaha !" Then xiaojuan smiled again.

Liu Yu and I wondered at the same time why xiaojuan smiled. But as Xiao Juan laughed, I thought, I'm afraid this guy with a nickname is really different!

 

Apao say:

It seems that product managers are becoming more and more attractive now, and more friends in other positions are considering this position when considering career transformation.

You see, eyoung's product management has just sprouted, and a guy named Liang Zi in the R & D center wants to come over.

Now, there are two main sources of product managers: market and R & D.

Why did bubble talk about the transformation of the market position, but simply put it out of R & D?

This is because, in a bubble's view, market transformation has much more advantages than R & D transformation. After all, the product manager is a marketing position.

R & D transformation involves many technology-based enterprises. Their biggest advantage is that they have a certain technical background, which is usually required by technology-based enterprises.

However, after all, this is only one of the advantages, and it cannot even be said to be a key advantage. Therefore, for a friend who wants to transform from a technical post to a product manager, bubble has summarized five steps.

1) Check if you are not suitable for technical work.

2) fully understand the work of the product manager and assess whether you are really interested in this job.

3) to switch jobs, you must first switch your thinking, from understanding "Products" to understanding "business ".

4) understand the company's product management system architecture and the methods involved in the company's product management work.

5) Get the first-hand market business information from practice and switch from "product" thinking to "business" thinking.

For us, transferring to the post should be a matter of caution. There should be no emotional factors in it. We must think about it before making a final decision.

This may be because product managers are gradually gaining popularity and provide an opportunity for many friends who are not satisfied with their current positions. However, we still need to emphasize that no matter which position you want to transform from, being calm and objective is always the first priority. Otherwise, this opportunity may become a risk.

No, I have to talk to Zhou Yang about it. Don't be so impulsive.

 

This article is from yes! Product Manager.

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