☕️I’ve had many coffee chats with product managers across companies, and they all say the same things about their work, but it didn’t fully click until I started as a product management intern. Here’s what they’ve shared that I’m starting to better understand now:
👩🏽💻No day looks the same: As a product management intern, my day-to-day tasks vary depending on where we are on the product we’re working on. In the beginning, it was a lot of research and creating team documents. Now, further in the process, I’m focusing on stakeholder communication and working closely with the engineering team to ensure we’re on track.
👩🏽💻Written communication skills are important: I work with many busy people who don’t have time to learn every little thing about the product or attend meetings to discuss it. Creating concise summaries is crucial for communicating with busy stakeholders!
👩🏽💻It’s beneficial to have a technical background: While I’m not coding, having a background in computer science and software engineering has allowed me to better empathize with my engineering team and brainstorm solutions alongside them. This has been especially helpful since we’re working on a product for enterprise engineers!
👩🏽💻 Product managers wear many hats: Throughout the internship, I’ve had my hands in user research, defining technical architecture, product design, determining business value, and more. As a PM, you need to understand many fields and be ready to utilize your diverse skillset at any time.
👩🏽💻 Being curious is the best trait to have: As technology advances and you switch products, you need to be able to learn quickly and leverage that knowledge to push innovation. Throughout my internship, I’ve been working with generative AI and cloud technologies, and it’s definitely been a great learning experience!