Things to avoid as a Product Manager

I’ve read a lot of articles online, and everyone talked about how to be a good PM and what skills you need, but here I’m going to share & discuss “What things bad product managers do and how to avoid them”

• Bad PMs never communicate well with their engineering teams, and think they don’t know anything. They write a PRD and assume engineering understands it. They change engineering priorities based on the latest hot sales situation without going through the defined process.

They want light and ask for a candle when their engineers could have built a light bulb.

• Ineffective product managers tend to focus solely on their competitors’ actions, neglecting to develop their own product’s unique identity. This approach can hinder the growth and success of the product as it fails to differentiate itself in the market.
• Bad product managers often make excuses for their product’s shortcomings, such as blaming a lack of funding, the incompetence of the engineering manager, or the fact that competitors like Amazon have ten times as many engineers working on their product. These excuses can prevent the product manager from taking responsibility for the product’s performance and taking proactive steps to improve it.
• Bad product managers focus on how many features are to be built, rather than solving the main problem. They focus on their output rather than bringing a good outcome.
• They may struggle with prioritizing tasks effectively, leaving the engineering team to figure out the order of importance. However, when the product fails due to poor prioritization, the product managers distance themselves from the situation and remove themselves from the picture.
• They don’t understand the difference between opinions, hunches, and objective facts. Rather they think it’s not their job to fill in the gaps.
• Bad product managers tend to focus on vanity metrics rather than setting appropriate metrics to analyze the results of their products. This approach can result in a skewed understanding of the product’s success or failure, as vanity metrics are often superficial and do not provide an accurate reflection of the product’s performance.
• Bad product managers often fail to delve deep into the data and rely solely on their analysts to provide them with all the necessary data without proper communication and setting the right metrics.
• They may not prioritize talking to customers and instead focus on building what the management wants them to focus on. They may fail to put themselves in the user’s shoes to gain a better understanding of the problem and the user’s needs. This can result in a product that does not meet the customer’s expectations, leading to poor adoption and ultimately, failure in the market.

Funny but True

Obviously, if you avoid all these pointers then you’re going to be a Great product manager. Thanks for reading, some content is something I read online & some is from the learnings I had in my career.

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