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…
“Listen to this episode on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts So many of us chase promotions as if they’re the ultimate career milestone—but are they really the best goal? In this conversation, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres unpack why promotions can be a tricky (and sometimes misleading) target, what to”
Lenny Rachitsky, working with a labor-data firm, ranks roughly 50 companies by how much they accelerate the post-departure careers of their former product managers, using promotion, leadership, CPO, first-PM, and…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader moving from a solo startup PM role to a large company, arguing that communication, influence, and data-driven decision-making matter most in that shift. He also notes the shared core of…
Teresa Torres argues that job seekers should evaluate a prospective employer's continuous discovery habits before accepting a role, since most companies are still early in adopting them. Drawing on interviews with…
Teresa Torres argues that product managers and hiring managers often chase breadth, trying to be good at everything and ending up mediocre. She proposes a three-tiered approach: build foundational attributes that make…
Melissa Perri argues that product leaders should deliberately invest in "the product of you" and plan their career path toward product leadership. Beyond building core skills, aspiring leaders need to decide what kind…
Marty Cagan continues his coaching series by describing how managers can help product managers close specific skill gaps identified in an earlier assessment. He covers product knowledge (users, data, industry, business…
Lenny answers a new PM's question about how to judge day-to-day performance by proposing three priority-ordered checks: whether the team delivers business impact, whether the individual contributes to strategy and team…
Marty Cagan argues that great product managers are rare but identifiable, and that the best way to find them is to screen for a specific set of traits and skills. He stresses that traits like product passion, customer…
Torres argues that job seekers should treat themselves as a product, defining a few clear value propositions that differentiate them, much as successful products focus on a specific use case. She shows how to map those…
Marty Cagan and Bob Baxley argue that in the Generative AI era, strong product managers and product designers become more essential, not less, but only when those roles are defined by their specific, demanding skill…
Marty Cagan argues that when looking for a product job, the most important factor is not the company's name but the manager you would report to. Before leaving a current feature-team role, he suggests first trying to…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a question from a newly minted product manager by describing five common early-career pitfalls: acting as a coordinator, a dictator, a dreamer, a feature factory, and a shield failing to filter…
Marty Cagan lays out the product operating model, in which a product manager sits on a small cross-functional team alongside a designer, a tech lead and engineers, and is accountable for solving customer problems that…
Marty Cagan, after noticing that more than half of the 'rock star' product managers he knows are women despite women being a small share of the field, offers personal, non-statistical theories about why. He argues that…
This interview-style post profiles Zaz Harris, a software engineer who moved into a product management role at her own company after her supervisors noticed her interest in product work and needed to fill a gap. The…
Teresa Torres proposes a draft list of seven foundational traits that underlie strong product management, arguing that developing these core abilities would fuel progress across the many specific skills PMs need. She…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that individual contributors can build real leadership skills before receiving a title. They suggest first clarifying what leadership means in your own organization, since official…
Marty Cagan argues that many feature-team product managers and delivery-team product owners are actually doing project management or backlog administration, and that companies are beginning to recognize this. He calls…
Teresa Torres shares the four opening questions she uses when screening candidates for product management roles, drawn from her consulting work recruiting PMs and designers. The questions probe a candidate's mental…
Teeba Alkhudairi, a product manager, used continuous discovery skills during her job search by mapping each target company's revenue model into business outcomes, then breaking those into product outcomes and…
Marty Cagan uses the question of whether a product manager is the 'CEO of the product' as a revealing interview prompt. He finds candidates typically fall into three groups: those drawn to the power and influence, those…