Hello everyone and welcome to a new week of learning. Hope you had a great weekend of rest and depending on your appetite, finished or not finished watching squid game.
One of the questions I have been asked most by folks trying to enter product management is how technical should a product manager be. Do they need to code, do they need to architect, do they need to know particle physics? It is definitely one of the most debated questions with polarising opinions on both ends. If you ask me honestly, I have never found an inability to code to be a hindrance in my ability to do product management well. I believe both are different skill sets and while having knowledge definitely helps, I believe a close collaboration with engineering and being empathetic to not only customers but also internal stakeholders goes a long way in bridging the gap for non technical PMs.
Having said that, I do believe that while coding isn’t necessary - knowledge of how basic technical terms definitely helps in communication with engineering counterparts. Now before I proceed, I must clarify that I cannot code and definitely dont consider myself a technical PM (I can write sql but that is pretty much it). What has definitely helped me is research around some basic terms and spending time with our engineering leads to understand our internal systems and challenges better. So in a nutshell - it boils down to irritating levels of googling and asking questions, even at the risk of sounding dumb.
I will try and share a few basic concepts this week. A lot of it you may already know, though it wont harm you more than squid game to revisit a few of these. Apart from this, do definitely try and sync with your engineering counterparts or even your technical friends to understand things in detail if you are curious. So lets dive in!