Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash
15 Signs you might be a Product Manager
A light-hearted look at the tell-tale signs that you work in product.
1.) You have given up trying to explain your job to friends and family
2.) And you die a little inside when someone calls you a project manager 😖
3.) There have been times when this was your idea of a ‘light schedule’
4.) But in reality you spend most of your days trying book a slot in everyone else’s calendar that works for an upcoming meeting
Ok, that’s an exaggeration! This Saturday at 4am works, right? 😇
5.) You Googled this more than once pre-pandemic…
© Google
With the number of post-it notes you’ve written, you’re probably down 20 IQ points, at least.
6.) You can name the authors of at least 3 of these classic books:
Answers at the end of the article!
7.) You un-ironically use a Kanban board to organise your personal life 🤓
© Trello
8.) You sometimes create fake tasks in Asana for the joy of seeing the unicorn when you complete them 🦄
© Asana Celebrations Revamped
Whoosh! Never gets old 😎😎
9.) When you forget to pick up groceries on the way home, you don’t apologise to your family, you simply explain that it was de-prioritised…
…but they shouldn’t worry, it’s in the backlog and will be considered again for next quarter, promise! 😇.
10.) You know at least 20 nice ways to say ‘No’ without saying ‘No’
Top hits include:
- “Which OKR does it align with?” 🤔
- “Let’s take that offline.” 🚫
- “Can we get some more data around that proposal?” 🤓
- “What problem are we really trying to solve here?” 🕵️♀️
- “Is there a manual workaround?” 🔨
11.) You also come with some other catchphrases
Forget Barbie and Action Man, Convertia is the action figure our kids need! 😊
12.) You just silently judged me for using Comic Sans MS above 😏
13.) Another day in the office is just another opportunity to AB test your outfit choices to optimise for compliments
Woohoo! That’s a statistically significant uplift in self-esteem 🥲.
14.) You spend your life talking about goals and MVPs but you don't know your Ronaldos from your Rooneys ⚽🤷.
15.) You shamelessly overuse gifs and memes to spice up your slides and emails
Conclusion
So, product managers, how many of these signs did you tick off? And can you think of other tell-tale signs we missed? Let us know in the comments below!
Answers to question 6) The Lean Startup — Eric Ries, Inspired— Marty Cagan, Sprint — Jake Knapp, The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz, Don’t Make Me Think — Steve Krug.