A few weeks ago I was invited by Ashwini Vasanth, a Staff Engineer at Nutanix, to participate on the Through the Corporate Glass podcast. This podcast focuses on corporate career choices from various angles. I happily agreed and we had a fun conversation about my career in product management. The conversation went long, so she divided it into two episodes. You can listen directly here, but I recommend subscribing to the podcast in your listening app of choice to hear more episodes. Click below to listen now. I hope you enjoy them.

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: UNDER THE HOOD (EP. 1)

What drives and motivates product managers? What skills do you need? What’s involved? Ashwini and I discuss these questions and more in episode one. Listen now to hear our discussion including the following topics.

• What is it that customers are actually looking for? What addresses a real pain point for them?
• How does a PM connect what they’ve heard back into their company to get the right impact and outcome?
• What’s the difference between defining what to build vs how to build it?
• What’s the right time to use intuition or gut feel? When do you use direct customer discovery?
• How much expertise do you need to have in order to be a PM? What else can you do to fit the role?
• Are you the CEO, or are you like the CEO?
• How did I get into product management? How can wedding web sites lead you to a job in PM?
• What would I advise you to do in order to start in product management?

Episode page on Through the Corporate Glass: Product Management: Under the Hood

Continue to episode two where we talk about breaking into product roles and additional product topics. 

ABOUT LUKE

Luke Congdon is a career product manager living and working in Silicon Valley since 2000. His areas of focus include enterprise software, virtualization, and cloud computing. He has built and brought numerous products to market including start-up MVPs and billion-dollar product lines. Luke currently lives in San Francisco. To contact, connect via luke@lukecongdon.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukecongdon/.