The 8 inconvenient truths of product management
My favourite part. Putting my sarcasm hat on now. Welcome to the part nobody puts in the job description. Product management is exciting, but it’s also frustrating, humbling, and, at times, downright unfair. Despite all that, I love it. Let’s get into it.
1. Your success is heavily dependent on others
You might think that your sharp strategic thinking, flawless prioritization, and next-level problem-solving will define your success as a product manager. In reality, your success and perceived competency as a PM are almost entirely dependent on your cross-functional partners. Your engineers, designers, data scientists, sales, and customer support folks will dictate how smoothly (or chaotically) things go. If they can’t trust you, don’t like you, can’t buy into your ideas, and/or don’t feel motivated, your job becomes 100x harder. PMs don’t build products; teams do. Your role is to create alignment, remove obstacles, and make sure everyone is moving in the same direction.
2. Frameworks won’t save you
Ah yes, the holy grail of product strategy: frameworks. RICE, Double Diamond, AARRR, HEART, CROISSANT—whatever fancy acronym someone cooked up in their lab, (I came up with CROISSANT). They’re great starting points, but let’s be honest, they won’t magically solve your problems. Product work is never clean. It’s messy, unpredictable, and full of trade-offs. A framework is just a structured way to think about a problem—not a solution itself. If you over-rely on them, you’ll end up making decisions that look good on paper but don’t actually work in reality. What do I suggest then? I say, keep using framework haha. All these frameworks get developed retroactively after going through a specific problem. Build your own framework that works for your team and your problem space. If you can’t think of anything, start with writing down all the constants and/or assumptions. Really think about this concept called ceteris paribus (you can ask chatgpt what this is). Then, start come up with detailed hypothesis. Lastly, write down multiple attributes that can validate your own hypothesis. If you do this exercise, utilization of existing frameworks will get better.
3. You’re not the CEO
There’s an old myth that PMs are “mini-CEOs.” Yea….no. Unlike CEO, you don’t have hiring or firing power, you don’t control budgets, and most of your decisions require convincing, not commanding. Your authority is borrowed, not inherent. The moment you start acting like a CEO—making unilateral calls, disregarding input, or thinking the product revolves around you—you’ll lose the team’s trust. Instead, focus on influencing without authority and getting people to align through clear reasoning, not top-down mandates. I’ll be covering a bit more about this later.
4. You will never have perfect data
A lot of PMs fall into the trap of waiting for perfect data before making a decision. The problem? Perfect data doesn’t exist. You’ll never have 100% certainty that an idea will work. At some point, you have to rely on product sense—a combination of experience, intuition, and user curiosity. The best PMs know how to make high-confidence bets with incomplete information. If you’re waiting for data to remove all risk, you’ll end up paralyzed, and someone else will make the decision for you. Don’t forget, you are accountable for the result. You feel like you don’t have product sense? Start by asking yourself, would I pay a lot of money to use this feature?
5. Stakeholder management is like dating
Managing stakeholders is more of an art than a science. Some need constant reassurance, some only care about outcomes, and some just want to be included in the conversation. Oh and people change their minds. Understanding their motivations and communication styles is the key. It’s kind of like dating—you have to build trust by showing genuine curiosity to get to know them, actively listen when they speak, and know how to gently say no. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself getting ghosted (left out of key conversations) or stuck in a toxic relationship (constant misalignment, blaming game, and frustration). Good PMs learn to navigate these dynamics while keeping the relationship healthy and productive.
6. If you hate ambiguity, this job might not be for you
Product management is constant ambiguity. No one hands you a perfectly defined problem with a step-by-step solution. If you need clarity and structure to feel comfortable, this role might not be the best fit—and that’s okay. Not everyone enjoys navigating uncertainty, making trade-offs, and dealing with moving targets. If the idea of working through messy, undefined problems excites you, great. If it gives you stress hives, that’s a sign you might be happier in a more structured role, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
7. Credit usually goes to the team, blame goes to you
Here’s a fun one: when things go wrong, you get the blame. When things go right, you should give credit to others. It’s unfair, but it’s also part of the job. If a launch flops, stakeholders will ask, ‘What went wrong with product management?’ If it succeeds, people will say, ‘Engineering did an amazing job! UX is top notch!’ Personally, I think good PMs don’t really get caught up in chasing credit. Instead, they focus on creating an environment where the team succeeds—because when the team shines, the PM shines too (even if it’s behind the scenes).
8. Having a bit of technical skills or design background doesn’t make you the expert
Having some technical knowledge is very helpful, but knowing a bit about coding doesn’t mean you should tell engineers how to build. Knowing design principles doesn’t mean you should tell designers how to design. A little surface level knowledge can be dangerous if it leads you to overstep. Your job is to ask the right questions, have a challenging conversation, provide clear direction, support with decision making, define what success looks like, and never dictate the execution. Engineers and designers will respect you more if you acknowledge what you don’t know rather than trying to act like an expert in their domain.
I’ll be sharing the most realistic “How to get hired as a PM” guide starting tomorrow.