Role of a Product Manager
The role of a Product Manager varies enormously by individual and organization, however there are some nuances about what makes a great Product Manager at PostHog and what you can expect from them.
Why do we have Product Managers?
Product development at PostHog is engineering-led. All projects and features have an engineering owner who is the "informed captain" and makes the final call on everything they build. Product Managers ensure these owners have the company, industry and customer context they need to make great decisions, whilst also challenging them to move faster and think bigger.
How do they act?
- Accelerating - They're always looking for opportunities push the team to ship faster, with greater impact and quality.
- Empowering - They empower others to make great decisions and elevate their ambition through context and coaching.
- Thoughtful - They carefully consider the implications and motivations of product decisions and tailor their approach to get the most out of every team member.
What do they do?
Strategy
- Direction - Align the team and company on the most impactful and exciting direction.
- Goals & Metrics - Set ambitious company and team goals to validate our progress.
- New Opportunities - Find new, impactful and exciting opportunities for the team and company to capitalize on.
Execution
- Context - Gather and summarize customer, company and industry context into clear actionable opinions which inform product decisions.
- Unblock - Identify and remove bottlenecks to enable fast calls on the toughest product decisions.
- Challenge - Challenge the team to think bigger, solve the most impactful problems and stretch their own skills.
- Fill Gaps - If we don't have a role for something but it needs to be done to ship a great product, do it.
- Communicate - Over-communicate, over-transparently.