How to Learn Product: Series Kickoff
Product is not a degree you can get in school and is typically learned best by “doing.” It is a hard area to break into, though, because you have to have product experience to get a role, however, you can’t get product experience before your role. And it can get lonelier the higher up you go — knowing what is best for running product teams is always a challenge.
This is why our next series is focused on ‘how to learn product.’ We heard your questions and we want answers just like you. This series you can expect to go back to school (kind of). We will cover topics ranging from what makes a good product manager to how to actually break into the space.
If you have specific questions you want to make sure we address on this series or another upcoming one, join our growing community at betterproduct.community.
LISTEN NOWEpisode Transcription
Christian Beck:
Hey, Anna, I've got a question for you.
Anna Eaglin:
What's up?
Christian Beck:
How would you say one learns product?
Anna Eaglin:
Well, since there's no formal education really organized around product management, I think pretty much everybody learns on the job. I mean, that's how I learned. I started out my career in UX and learned a lot of really great things from a lot of really smart product managers. And that's kind of how I picked things up. But yeah, it seems like that's starting to change though.
Christian Beck:
Yeah. I mean, you mentioned that it's best to learn on the job. It's really kind of a hard area to break into, and you have to have product experience in some way. So, I think, one of the challenges you have in product is that without a degree in it, even if you had a degree, you can't really be an excellent product manager without some experience on some side of the product. And, I think, once you kind of start to learn product, it can be kind of lonely at the top. There's not a lot of other places to go learn products. Like when you're a designer, you typically have a team of designers. You don't always have that as a product manager, so running product teams is always a challenge.
Anna Eaglin:
For all those reasons and more, our next series is How to Learn Product. We've heard your questions so, in this series, we're going back to school. We cover topics ranging from what makes a good product manager to how to actually break into the space.
Christian Beck:
We've got some great episodes and guests lined up. You'll learn product from, drum roll, please.
Anna Eaglin:
Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, the CEO of Product School. [inaudible 00:01:30] School is really one of those platforms that aims to be a place where people can come and learn product management, I think it's filling an awesome gap in the market, and we had a really great conversation with Carlos about that. Carlos really digs into some of the most important skills a product manager needs to have.
Christian Beck:
Oh, what are they?
Anna Eaglin:
You'll have to tune in next week to find out.
Next in the series is Paige Conrad, a senior product manager at Honey.
Christian Beck:
Honey is probably best described as that Google extension that helps you save money, whether you try to or not.
Anna Eaglin:
It is one of the best things that has ever come out on the internet. I'm going to put a stake in the ground right now.
Christian Beck:
Yeah, I feel old sometimes because it recommends deals to me and I don't really understand what's going on. Clearly, I'm not a shopper in the family. But I do know what Honey does, and it does save money.
Anna Eaglin:
Paige gives our community insights on how to get into the product space.
Christian Beck:
Then, Cam and Yonas of Parlor.io build on what Paige shares by talking about their own path to product, while highlighting the trends product managers ...
Anna Eaglin:
Or aspiring ones ...
Christian Beck:
Need to know.
Anna Eaglin:
We'll also do a feature digging into products that have been created to help product teams. As product people, we are starting to see we solve our own problems with, well, products.
Christian Beck:
I feel like we've said the word product a record number of times in this episode.
Anna Eaglin:
I think that's very true.
Christian Beck:
Will one of our loyal listeners do a count, and then compare it to other podcasts, and see if we broke the record?
Anna Eaglin:
Finally, we'll wrap the series featuring Erin Shannon, founder and CPO of [Rent-y 00:02:51]. She shares how her experience in product management at Shopify prepared her for starting her own tech company.
Christian Beck:
So, how do you learn product? We started this episode by saying you can't really learn it, but the episodes that are going to follow are, hopefully, meant to help you actually learn it. So, we hope you listen to this series. And, if you haven't already, head on over to betterproduct.community to get access to this content and connect with other like-minded product people, who are also on a mission to design, create, and build better product.
And I also want to give a plug for the Better Product community because we've been getting a lot of articles written from the community that cover topics that we're also covering on the podcast. So, we're trying to hit these topics from a lot of different angles. Some people like to listen, and some people like to read. In any case, I'm Christian.
Anna Eaglin:
And I'm Anna. See you next week for How to Learn Product.
