Lenny Rachitsky recommends a curated set of books for product builders, organized by the skill or job a reader wants to improve, such as communication, strategy, management, and sales. He limits himself to three books…
Lenny Rachitsky lays out a practical playbook for interviewing product managers: a multi-stage funnel with screens, a full-day loop, and panel debriefs. He covers which skills to test, sample questions, how to design…
The essay argues that mid-career professionals tend to believe the ceiling of mastery in their craft sits just slightly above their current level, a belief that feels humble but quietly limits growth. This assumption…
This guest-authored guide by Jason Shah, head of product at Alchemy, explains how the product manager role changes at web3 startups. The author argues that PMs there are more versatile, more art than science given…
Lenny Rachitsky shares five strategies from his own early career for people in their 20s deciding on roles, quitting jobs, and new ventures. He argues against over-optimizing for resume checkboxes, follows interests…
Marty Cagan offers a curated starting path for aspiring product managers who are overwhelmed by contradictory online advice. He argues that the product manager role is about ensuring what gets built is both valuable and…
“This post is part of the So You Want To Be a Product Manager series. There are a ton of great articles about what you might get asked in a product manager interview. I refer you here, here, and here. I've also written about what I always ask during”
Teresa Torres interviews Oded Korczyn, who moved into his first formal product management role at AfterCollege despite never having held one. Oded draws on his anthropology background and startup experience, where he…
This piece is a curated index of the author's earlier posts on breaking into product management. Its premise is that people arrive at product roles from many backgrounds, so there is no single path, and the most common…
A Q&A post offering advice for someone becoming a startup's first product manager. Drawing on interviews with people who held that role at well-known companies, it covers when to make the first PM hire and what the job…
Lenny answers a reader who lacks a technical background and struggles to follow engineers and make trade-off decisions. He lays out a three-step path: learn core concepts like how software systems, APIs, and databases…
Teresa Torres interviews Colin Murphy, a former account manager who moved toward product management and shares lessons from his job search. His core argument is that career switchers must actively sell their applicable…
Teresa Torres argues that a product manager job search should start with self-assessment rather than a list of who is hiring. Companies differ in what they need: technical products favor engineers, market-creating…
Lenny Rachitsky recommends a curated set of product management courses, split into five for senior PMs and five for up-and-coming PMs, plus honorable mentions. He limits picks to live, cohort-based courses that have run…
Teresa Torres argues that hiring for product management should hinge on demonstrated ability rather than credentials. As a hiring manager and consultant, she says she cares about none of the usual gatekeepers, such as…
Teresa Torres addresses the catch-22 of landing a first product role when employers want experience. Her core argument is that aspiring PMs can manufacture credible experience through self-directed side projects, even…
Teresa Torres argues that aspiring product managers can break the 'chicken and egg' problem of needing experience to get a PM job by starting their own side project right away. She notes there is no shortage of unsolved…
Lenny Rachitsky shares high-level structures from 20+ large companies' product management career ladders, including titles by level, evaluated competencies, and where IC and manager tracks split. He argues career…
Marty Cagan argues that engineers often make excellent product managers because they understand what is technically possible, and that the move from engineering to product management requires specific mindset and skill…
Julie Zhuo's short essay, titled "I am an idiot," reflects on intellectual humility in an era when AI systems can seem to know more than we do. The piece is framed as personal notes rather than a formal argument, using…
Marty Cagan argues that product management is demanding and that product managers inevitably face rough days, which matter more because their teams watch how they react. He offers a set of practical habits for breaking…
Julie Zhuo argues that the expertise that made you valuable, such as a specialized craft or deep procedural skill, may be the very thing AI erodes first, leaving some professionals more exposed than others. The source…
Lenny Rachitsky compiles 25 high-signal interview questions gathered from roughly 150 podcast guests, grouped by theme: handling hard situations, how candidates think, how they build and drive impact, who they are as…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that promotions, while common career targets, can be a poor north star because they are largely outside an individual's control and often tied to salary and status rather than…