A Product Manager’s best friend: Blogs & Twitter
So while I think there’s a lack of practical, straightforward advice for young product managers who aren’t working somewhere with a strong product program, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some great resources out there. You’re going to need to do a lot of reading. You’ll find yourself going back and re-reading the same posts for years. I have a bunch of favorites, which is why I was able to whip this post together real fast.
Here’s a list of people you should follow on both Twitter and LinkedIn (you can follow people on LinkedIn without ‘connecting’), as well as links to some of my favorite content from them.
Great Follows
Jason Evanish (@evanish) of Get Lighthouse, KISSMetrics
- Blog: https://jasonevanish.com/.
- His 100-tweet thread on Product Management is fantastic.
Gokul Rajaram (@gokulr) of Square, Facebook, Google.
- Blog: https://medium.com/@gokulrajaram.
- Check out ‘Gokul’s SPADE Toolkit: How to implement Square’s famous decision-making framework‘
Sachin Rekhi (@sachinrekhi) of Notejoy
- Blog: https://www.sachinrekhi.com/.
- Start on ‘A Look Back at a Decade of SachinRekhi.com‘
Myk Pono (@mykpono)
- Blog: https://www.mykpono.com/.
- His Marketing Playbook collection is great.
Marty Cagan (@cagan) of SVPG
- Blog: https://svpg.com/articles/. So many incredible posts but two of my favorites are, ‘Behind Every Great Product‘ and ‘Top 10 Reasons for a Weak Product.’
- Book: Inspired. This is THE #1 book to read when first getting started with your career. Definitely buy the book, but here are some highlights in the meantime.
Ken Norton (@kennethn) of Google Ventures
Adam Nash (@adamnash) of Dropbox, Wealthfront, Greylock…
- Blog: https://adamnash.blog/
Jackie Bavaro (@jackiebo) from Asana
- Blog: https://medium.com/@jackiebo. I especially enjoy her 3 part series, ‘How to Hire Great Product Managers.’ Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
- Book: Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology
Brandon Chu (@brandonmchu) from Shopify
- Blog: https://blackboxofpm.com/. One of my favorites is, ‘Product Management Mental Models for Everyone.’
Maggie Crowley (@maggiecrowley) from Drift
- Podcast: Build. One of my favorite episodes was, “What’s a 1 Pager?” After listening, enjoy leveraging this.
Dan Olsen (@danolsen)
- Blog: https://dan-olsen.com/blog/.
- Awesome Presentation: How to Create Products for Growth.
ProductHired (@producthired) & Nicholas Ivanecky (@ivantr0n)
- Their curated list of product management resources is far more exhaustive than this post.
The Product Folks (@theproductfolks)
- Epic curated list of resources: The Ultimate Product Management Guide
Other Great Content
- Intercom: Lessons learned from scaling a product team
- Ben Horowitz of a16z: Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager
- How Spotify Builds Products
- Folding Burritos Blog, especially this post of Prioritization techniques
‘A Product Manager’s Best Friend‘ is a series aimed at demystifying the role for young product managers. I’m Jared, a PM who has worked in a wide range of environments (fintech & adtech, seed-stage startup to large publicly traded tech & financial services companies, remote and colocated, etc.). I’ve found that there’s a need for practical, straightforward content for PM’s not fortunate enough to find themselves in powerhouses with top-notch product programs like Google & Facebook. Click here for more posts, and please reach out with suggestions or feedback.