Snippet 9: My Favorite Product Management Resources

If you want to break into product management, this list of resources is a great place to start. 28 Product Roles included too!

Apr 15, 2024

Hey folks,

I’ve recently had a few people ask me about how I prepared for my Product Management interviews and how I prepared for the role before starting my job. I wanted to list out some of the resources that I’ve found most helpful for learning how to interview as well as building a stronger understanding of and foundation for being a product manager.

First a little bit on me:

I’m currently a deeply technical PM within Microsoft’s Networking division under their cloud computing platform, Azure.
Very unrelated to my current role, I studied business as an undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business (I studied analytics and energy policy). I did not take a computer science class successfully until I was interviewing for my PM internship in my junior year of college. This internship would convert to my current full time role at Microsoft.
This role is something anyone can do; it’s just a matter of building the proper skillset. Since I didn’t have a technical background, I instead built experiences to prepare me for the skills PMs use everyday, knowing I could pick up the technical as I went. I helped build programs to address student job needs (leadership, collaboration, and needfinding), took classes focused on breaking down customer data (data fluency, learning to ask the right questions), and put these skills together in internships that allowed me to get different aspects of working in big tech as a product manager before taking on the role at Microsoft (Marketing Ops at Okta, PM Internship at Travelers Insurance).

This journey can be hard to approach alone. If you’re looking for guidance through the process or someone who will be your dedicated coach on how to break in, look no further. I provide the following services:

Individualized, wholistic guidance and coaching through the PM interview and application process, helping you focus on what matters to prepare and removing uncertainty.
1:1 PM Practice Interviews for any company of your choice for expert feedback and guidance on what to and not to do.
Interview guides and templates to make your application process easier and clearer as to what you need to prepare for.

If that sounds interesting to you, check out my offerings doc below and reach out to me via email (nontechnicalpm@gmail.com) or text me at (+1-475-221-1445).

See My Offerings

Now that you know a little more about me and my background, I’ll share my top 5 PM learning resources:

[Book] Cracking the PM Interview

The name says it all. This is one of the best places to go to learn not just how to recruit for product manager roles but also see what successful resumes, interview answers, and strategies look like. There are also some great interviews with some more senior PMs on strategies to be successful not just in the interview but in the job as well. Personally, this was my Bible when I was recruiting. The author has also written Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the Tech Career, and (the one I’ve been digging into recently) Cracking the PM Career.

[Book] Swipe to Unlock

If you don’t come from a technical background (similar to myself), this book is a life saver. It goes over nearly all the fundamental software technologies (not much on GenAI but there’s a lot of great stuff out there these days like this article) we rely on today and how companies build strategies around them. If API is a word that sounds French to you (or even if it isn’t), it’s a great primer on a breadth of key technologies and business strategies.

[Book] Decode and Conquer

Although I personally didn’t read this book too much, Lewis Lin’s CIRCLES Method is an incredibly helpful framework to build much of your approach to answering product management interview questions. His thoughts on user stories are also incredibly helpful and the graphics throughout the book paint a more tangible picture for how you may want to approach different interview questions.

How to solve Product Design Questions in PM interviews ? | by Gunjan Gupta | Medium | Medium

[Newsletter] Lenny’s Newsletter

Once you’ve gotten a chance to practice your skills, I highly recommend reading through Lenny Rachitsky’s (started a startup acquired by AirBNB, 600k+ subs) newsletter. He gives well thought out advice on building product/strategy and interviews a multitude of important product people in his podcast. It’s a great way to build on the foundations you’ve learned from product management interviews to see how the practice of PM is different than the theory and how to build frameworks and strategies to succeed. His newsletter is one inspiration for me and I’ve included some of my favorite posts from him below:
- How to know if you've got product-market fit
- Choosing Your North Star Metric
- Getting better at product strategy (Unfortunately, this is now, behind a pay wall)

[Newsletter] Axios CodeBook

Although more policy and government focused, these issues will (in some way) often impact the work you’re doing to improve your product. Be it an email hack forcing your team to build out more security features or a DOJ ruling pushing for greater privacy, being ahead of the curve or understanding where the market and your company is at has been especially helpful for me in knowing how to address different interview questions or understand what areas my team will be working on.

One resource I do wish I had though was…

My Newsletter - Frank Thoughts

When I was working through the Uber APM Interview process or other PM interviews that required me to write specs, I struggled to find guidance on what the company was looking for from my response nor were any of the explanations at a level I could understand. None of the resources I’ve mentioned above were able to tangibly address this struggle in addition to often being written from a place that fails to fully explain things at a level that someone new to product could understand.
I wanted to change that. I create content that provides truly tactical examples and case studies of how to put skills often mentioned at a high level in other PM blogs to use AND in context to allow you to better succeed in your interviews and career.
If that sounds helpful to you:

Product Roles

Here are some different product roles (i.e. Product Manager, Product Analyst, Product Marketing Manager, Program Manager, Product Design, etc.) I’ve found that were recently posted! You can find my last post with jobs here.

I’ve helped 80+ people learn and land interviews and roles at companies like Microsoft, Duolingo, Palo Alto Networks, PayPal, US News, and many more.

If you’re looking for guidance of any form in this process, please feel free to reach out to me at +1 (475) 221-1445 or nontechnicalpm@gmail.com after reviewing my product offerings in the link below:

I Want To Break Into Product!