What is product management?

Product management is the art of identifying customer needs, defining product vision, and working with cross-functional teams to build solutions that deliver value to both users and the business.

At its core, product management is about solving problems and making decisions. Product managers are responsible for determining what gets built, why it matters, and how success will be measured. They act as the voice of the customer within the organization while balancing technical constraints, business objectives, and market opportunities.

The job has evolved significantly over the years. In 2025, it's become more data driven and technology enabled than ever before. Product managers now leverage AI tools, analytics platforms, and automation to make faster, more informed decisions.

One thing to note is that not all companies have a formal product manager job title. At early-stage startups, it's usually the CEO who handles product management. At other companies, CTOs, sales leaders, or domain experts in a specific niche often step into the product management function.

What does a product manager do?

Product managers wear many hats, and day-to-day responsibilities can vary significantly depending on company size, industry, and product maturity. Here are the core responsibilities:

Illustration of a product manager finding the right path to success

  1. Define product strategy and roadmap: Product managers set the vision and direction for their product. They create roadmaps that align with business goals and prioritize features based on impact and feasibility.
  2. Conduct user research and gather insights: Understanding customers is fundamental. PMs run user interviews, analyze feedback, study usage data, and conduct competitive research to identify opportunities and validate assumptions.
  3. Collaborate with cross-functional teams: PMs work closely with engineering, design, marketing, sales, and customer support. They ensure everyone is aligned on goals and facilitate communication across departments.
  4. Make prioritization decisions: With limited resources and unlimited ideas, PMs must constantly make tough calls about what to build next. This involves weighing user needs, business value, technical complexity, and strategic importance. Often there are significant tradeoffs when balancing user and business needs, and product managers sit at the pivotal position in making these decisions.
  5. Define success metrics and track performance: PMs establish KPIs, monitor product analytics, and use data to measure success and identify areas for improvement.
  6. Manage the product development process: From writing requirements and user stories to running sprint planning and reviewing releases, PMs guide products from concept to launch and beyond.
  7. Communicate with stakeholders: PMs regularly present to executives, update cross-functional partners, and ensure transparency around product progress and decisions.

Not all PMs code, but I do. I focus primarily on the growth function as a Growth PM, where I code automation systems, build internal dashboards, create data enrichment pipelines, and develop automated follow-up campaigns—all in addition to the general PM responsibilities listed above.

Abstractly, I define the role as the function that ensures we're solving the right problem at the right time, and that the proposed solution actually solves that problem.

How can you become a product manager in 2025?

Breaking into product management requires a combination of skills, experience, and strategic positioning. Here's a practical roadmap:

1. Build foundational skills

Start by developing the core competencies that every PM needs:

  • Analytical thinking: Learn to work with data, interpret metrics, and make data-informed decisions
  • Technical literacy: While you don't need to code, understanding how software works is essential
  • Communication: Practice writing clear documents, giving presentations, and facilitating discussions
  • Strategic thinking: Learn frameworks like SWOT analysis, OKRs, and Jobs-to-be-Done

Once you have the basics down, I'd recommend specializing and becoming good in one of these functions:

  1. Engineering - Technical understanding and system design
  2. Design - User experience, interface design, and user research
  3. Data / Analytics - Advanced analytics, experimentation, and data modeling

While product management is a generalist role, it's best to be an expert in one of the above functions. This allows you to be multidisciplinary while building a portfolio around one specific area of expertise that makes you stand out.

My strong suit is engineering + analytics. If you've been following me for a while, you've seen me ship side projects, and this has helped me land interviews and other PM gigs.

2. Gain relevant experience

You don't need to be a PM to develop PM skills:

  • Take on product-like projects in your current role
  • Volunteer to own features or initiatives end-to-end
  • Start a side project and manage it from idea to execution

A side project can be as simple as launching a newsletter and growing it to a few hundred active readers, or as complex as building your own product and getting people to use or even pay for it. The key is demonstrating end-to-end ownership and impact.

3. Leverage your unique background

Product managers come from diverse backgrounds—engineering, design, marketing, consulting, and more. Your previous experience is an asset. Engineers understand technical tradeoffs, designers bring user empathy, marketers understand positioning and go-to-market strategy. Frame your background as your superpower. This is where that earlier specialization advice comes into play.

4. Build a product portfolio

Create tangible evidence of your product thinking:

  • Write product case studies analyzing products you admire
  • Document a product you built or contributed to
  • Create mockups and specs for a product idea
  • Share product insights on LinkedIn or a personal blog

5. Network strategically

Connect with PMs in your target companies or industries:

  • Attend product meetups and conferences
  • Join online PM communities
  • Chat with folks to learn from people already in the role
  • Find a mentor in product management

6. Target the right opportunities

Your entry point matters:

  • Internal transfers: Easiest if you're already at a company with a PM org
  • Associate PM programs: Many tech companies offer APM roles for early-career talent
  • Startups: Smaller companies are often more flexible about backgrounds
  • Adjacent roles: Consider Product Analyst, Product Operations, or Technical PM roles as stepping stones

7. Ace the interview process

PM interviews typically include:

  • Product sense: "How would you improve product?"
  • Analytical: "Estimate the market size for..."
  • Technical: System design or technical architecture questions
  • Behavioral: "Tell me about a time when..."
  • Execution: "How would you prioritize these features?"

A few books I'd recommend are Decode and Conquer and Cracking the PM Interview—both are focused on preparing for PM roles and provide excellent frameworks.

Practice these interview types and develop structured frameworks for answering them. However, don't force every response into a framework—this can sound robotic and unnatural. Use frameworks as mental scaffolding, but let your authentic experiences and thinking shine through.

How to use AI in your product management job

Here are a few practical things I've found AI to be helpful for:

  1. LLMs for research and documentation: LLMs can help you identify patterns in customer conversations and synthesize insights from multiple sources. They're also great for competitive analysis, documentation, and data analysis. I'm more of a fan of ChatGPT when it comes to documentation and Claude for data analysis.

One technique I use: when doing bulk data analysis, I run Python scripts and feed the output into Claude Code. Claude then helps optimize the script iteratively to uncover the specific insights I'm looking for. This creates a powerful feedback loop between computation and analysis.

  1. Prototyping and wireframing: V0 can help with prototyping, but I stick to Claude Code to build wireframes on top of code rather than designing in Figma. I find code to be more flexible in getting the output I want. Or maybe I just have skill issues when it comes to Figma
  2. Meeting notes: Huge fan of Granola for taking meeting notes and keeping track of all conversations.
  3. Automation and data pipelines: I build automations and data pipelines with Zapier, Clay, and HubSpot, which helps me create a perfect profile of customers and build context-aware automation pipelines for each stage of the sales/product funnel.

Important considerations

While AI is a powerful tool, remember to:

  • Always validate AI-generated insights with your own judgment
  • Maintain the human connection with customers and teammates
  • Use AI to augment, not replace, critical thinking

The PMs who thrive in 2025 are those who embrace AI as a productivity multiplier while maintaining the human skills of empathy, judgment, and strategic vision.

Final thoughts

Breaking into product management is challenging but achievable with the right approach. Focus on building a strong foundation in the fundamentals, develop deep expertise in one area (engineering, design, or data), and leverage your unique background as your competitive advantage.

Interestingly, you might already be doing product management at your organization without a formal title. If that's the case, it's just a change of titles. The title doesn't matter if you enjoy the work—if you're already doing this work, congrats, you're a product manager. But if you want to break into a proper product manager function, I'd recommend building your foundations right.

Job hunting is a different problem of its own. Maybe I'll write about it sometime later.