• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

TechGuide

  • Degrees
    • Analytics
      • Analytics Associate
      • Online Bachelor's in Data Analytics
      • Online Bachelor's in Data Science
      • Data Analytics Master's
      • Data Science Master's
      • Business Analytics Master's
      • Online Master's in Business Analytics
      • Online Data Analytics Master's
      • Online Master's in Data Science
      • Data Science PhD
      • Data Analytics PhD
      • Business Analytics PhD
    • Computer Science
      • CS Associate
      • IT Associate
      • Computer Science Bachelor's
      • Artifical Intelligence Master's
      • Computer Science Master's
      • Machine Learning Master's
      • Software Engineering Master's
      • Online Associate Degree in Computer Science
      • Online Bachelor's in Computer Science
      • Artificial Intelligence Online Master's
      • Online Master's in Computer Science
      • IT PhD
    • Design
      • Graphic Design Associate
      • Graphic Design Bachelor's
      • Graphic Design Master's
      • Instructional Design Master's
      • Integrated Design Master's
      • UX Design Master's
      • Online Graphic Design Degree
      • Online Video Game Design
      • Online Master's in Instructional Design
    • Engineering
      • Civil Engineering Master's
      • Aerospace Engineering Master's
      • Electrical Engineering Master's
      • Engineering Management Master's
      • Industrial Engineering Master's
      • Mechanical Engineering Master's
      • Robotics Master's
    • Fintech
      • Fintech Associate
      • Fintech Bachelor's
      • Blockchain Master's
      • Fintech Master's
    • MBA
      • Business Analytics
      • Business Intelligence
      • Data Analytics
      • Data Science
      • Digital Marketing
      • Fintech
      • Information Technology
  • Careers
    • Analytics
      • Business Analyst
      • Business Intelligence
      • Data Analyst
      • Data Architect
      • Data Engineer
      • Data Scientist
      • Data Specialist
      • Sports Data Analyst
    • Computer Science
      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Cloud Computing
      • Computer Programmer
      • Computer Scientist
      • Front-End Developer
      • Full Stack Developer
      • Machine Learning
      • Software Developer
      • Software Engineer
      • Video Game Developer
      • Web Developer
    • Design
      • Data-Driven Designer
      • Graphic Designer
      • Instructional Design
      • Multimedia Artist
      • Product Designer
      • UX Designer
      • Video Game Designer
    • Engineering
      • Aerospace Engineer
      • Civil Engineer
      • Computational Science
      • DevOps Engineer
      • Electrical Engineer
      • Engineering Manager
      • Industrial Engineer
      • Mechanical Engineer
      • Robotics Engineer
    • Fintech
      • Fintech App Developer
      • Blockchain Developer
      • Compliance Expert
      • Cryptocurrency Analyst
      • Financial Analyst
      • Innovation Analyst
      • Investment Analyst
      • Investment Banker
      • Product Manager
      • Quantitative Analyst
      • Tech Sales
    • Marketing
      • Content Marketing
      • Content Strategist
      • Marketing Analyst
      • Social Media Manager
  • Certifications
    • Analytics
      • Business Analyst
      • Data Analytics
      • Data Science
      • Digital Marketing
    • Computer Science
      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Cloud Computing
      • Computer Coding
      • Cybersecurity
      • Information Technology
    • Design
      • Instructional Design
      • UX Design
    • Engineering
      • Engineering
      • Industrial Engineering
      • Project Management PMP
      • Systems Engineering
    • Fintech
      • Blockchain
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Fintech
      • Procurement
  • Bootcamps
    • Analytics
      • Business Analytics
      • Data Analytics
      • Data Science
      • Digital Marketing
    • Computer Science
      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Coding
      • Front-End Development
      • Full-Stack Development
      • Information Technology
      • Machine Learning
      • Software Development
    • Design
      • UX Design
    • Engineering
      • Project Management
      • Software Engineering
    • Fintech
      • Blockchain
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Fintech
  • Resources
    • Courses
      • Blockchain
      • Coding
      • Computer Science
      • Data Analytics
      • Data Science
      • Digital Marketing
      • Fintech
      • Project Management (PMP)
      • UX Design
    • Jobs
      • Business Analyst
      • Computer Programming
      • Data Analytics
      • Data Science and Data Scientist
      • Electrical Engineer
      • Graphic Designer
      • Instructional Designer
      • Mechanical Engineering
      • Web Developer
    • Guides
      • Tech Career Mini Course
      • A Career with Numbers
      • K-12 STEM Resources
      • Internships in Tech
      • Best Tech Scholarships
      • A Veteran’s Guide to a Job in Tech
      • Women in Tech
  • Podcast
Home   >   Careers   >   Product Manager

How to Become a Product Manager

Justin Paulsen – Last updated: May 28, 2024

WRITER

Justin Paulsen started his own content development company in 2009, researching and writing for clients in the evenings while working full-time management jobs during the day.

On This Page
  • Degree Options
  • Career Paths
  • Job And Salary Outlook
  • What Do They Do?
  • Opportunities
  • FAQs
  • Resources

This guide is all about becoming a product manager, including information about product manager degrees and product manager job descriptions.

Developing modern products, particularly technological and digital products, is a process of endless iteration and adaptation. Product managers operate at the broadest strategic level of this product cycle, from the original incarnation to eventual retirement. 

Executives turn to product managers to align a product’s strategic vision with the many relevant stakeholders. In contrast, functional experts and project managers look to a product manager to make tactical decisions throughout the development process.

A helpful way to view this role is like the main gear in a giant machine, where many smaller gears connect and unite. Successful product managers have a knack for lateral thinking and quick decision-making.

From a more academic standpoint, product managers are typically a cross between business strategy and some specific set of relevant technical skills.

Are the degree programs that prepare students for such an organizational role? How can someone become a product manager, anyway?

Product Manager Degree Options

The simple answer is that many universities offer programs that craft a cocktail of courses from both business management and the school of IT. While one could also simply double-major in business and IT, a custom-tailored product management degree is available at most well-known business schools. 

Degrees exist primarily at the bachelor’s level and master’s levels, supplemented by a slew of online bootcamps and shorter-term options primarily targeted at career professionals. The primary distinction between these two routes will be the depth of the content covered, the academic rigor of the program, and (of course) the cost. 

University bachelor’s degrees are best suited for folks with no real professional experience yet, and thus a longer journey ahead when it comes to skill development. Both master’s level programs and online certification bootcamps cater to a similar crowd of professionals.

Most of them seek to translate their experience and hard-earned field knowledge into a certification that proves their mettle to future employers.

MBA programs, in particular, provide strong concentrations specifically catered to the aspiring product manager, recruiting a mix of tech experts and tech-savvy business managers into a collaborative and hands-on learning environment.

This is a great opportunity to swap skills, learn from one another’s experiences, and network for new career opportunities.

Here are a few starting points for any aspiring product managers among our readership:

  • Product management certificate program at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management
  • Product management certificate program at Berkeley
  • The Carnegie Mellon MSPM program, which is a master’s level degree provided by both the Tepper School of Business and the School of Computer Science
  • New York University’s MBA, with a concentration in Tech Product Management 

Of course, the training is only half the battle. The next step in any burgeoning product management career is finding a good product to sink your teeth into.

Product Management Career Paths

Like many complex technical skills, product managers often need to work their way up within a product team to gain the hands-on knowledge and skills to succeed.

The reason this is so important goes back to the analogy of product managers being a central gear in an organizational structure, which requires that they get to know a variety of different teams, stakeholders, executives, and customers. There’s no shortcut to gaining this sort of organizational knowledge, and the best plan is to start small and humble.

This means the best entry point is an Associate Product Manager, which could potentially start a professional down a path towards VP of Product or Chief Product Officer (with plenty of steps in between). Even at this level, this is a management position.

That means most companies will be looking for two to three years of meaningful technical or managerial experience. This could also include roles within a product team, conducting customer analyses on the business side, or defining product requirements on the technical side.

Of course, many strong applicants could supplement some of this experience with professional certifications in key areas within the field. Certifications are often highly specific and customized for a particular skill, such as Business Analysis or AGILE management from the Product Management Institute (PMI).

The Association of International Product Marketing & Management (AIPMM) offers a similar lineup of both general and concentrated certifications. Keep in mind that passing stringent exams proving one’s knowledge of the field is required to attain these certifications, so expect to do your homework. In the end, your work should pay off.

Product Management Jobs and Salaries

Considering that at least a bachelor’s degree is typically required, and even an MBA is preferred, there’s no question that quite a bit of time and money will be invested in this particular career path.

Fortunately, the pay can be pretty high even at the lower levels of the product management hierarchy. General product managers can expect a median salary as low as $94k/year according to Payscale, $116,933/year according to Indeed, or even $157,000/year according to Glassdoor.

One key factor that impacts pay rates is the location of the job. Big cities come with big expenses and (hopefully) big salaries, while more rural regions tend to have more modest wages and living expenses.

Location can also impact the ease of finding a job (although remote opportunities are on the rise), as most roles at this level will be at an organization’s headquarters. That means big cities are the primary target for job hunters looking to start a new journey in this field. Of course, there are benefits to this as well.

Considering the strategic and high-level nature of product management responsibilities and proximity to the executive team, there is plenty of room for upward mobility.

After all, product managers must work across a huge variety of workgroups and departments while intimating themselves with the core wants, needs, and behaviors of various customer groups.

It’s an excellent vantage point for future executive-level success, assuming the product manager has the skills and disposition to capitalize on it.

Assuming the pros outweigh the cons, the final question is, what exactly does the product manager do day-to-day? What responsibilities are likely to pop up in a typical job ad?

What Does a Product Manager Do?

The job title itself implies the management of some product, conjuring up images of consumer goods. While this is a possibility, the most common placement for a product manager is within the digital experience.

A simple example would be a company like Netflix, where the product is the digital transmission of an entertainment service (called a ‘platform’). Let’s walk through what a product manager might do in this context, using three general frames: the customers, the technical teams, and the business teams.

The first responsibility of a product manager is captured in the commandment know thy customer! Simply put, a product manager will be contemplating every touchpoint between Netflix’s offering and the customers being catered to.

This can include the signup process, the browsing experience, the content selection, the pricing, different geographic and cultural tastes, and the seemingly infinite tiny features of convenience constantly being iterated on to improve every one of these aspects of the product.

Product as an experience like this has a nearly infinite potential for incremental improvement, which brings us neatly along to the second set of responsibilities.

A good product manager will work closely with software developers, visual designers, and other functional experts at Netflix to iterate and improve the platform based on customer preferences (revealed or stated).

The balancing act is between the feasibility of the technical demands from a software perspective and the value added to the customer base for each new product iteration. It is the role of the product manager to make these difficult decisions and be able to do so from a wide variety of perspectives.

The third responsibility of the product manager is collaborating with executives on the strategic level, in particular the chief technology officer (CTO) and chief marketing officer (CMO).

As the product manager occupies that critical space between tech development and customer experience, they are uniquely positioned to contextualize executive-level decisions for upper-management teams.

The keyword here will be distillation, where the product manager sifts and filters through vast streams of information, data, and considerations, ultimately presenting clear and compelling evidence to the executive management team (brevity being in high demand).

Linking up these three core stakeholder groups, a product manager is tasked with building win/win compromises between executive strategic vision, functional feasibility of product development, and the ever-evolving demands of a given customer base.

Be prepared to be pulled in a few directions at once if you decide product management is the path!

The Product Management Opportunity

If all of those responsibilities haven’t scared you off yet, the only thing left to do is take the first step.

Assuming all of the education and certification work has been taken care of, the next question is what work opportunities are in reasonable proximity to where you live now (or places you would be willing to relocate).

At the time of writing this article, there are nearly 50,000 job postings on Indeed alone, with a whopping 16,000 offering fully remote opportunities.

A great strategy here as a newcomer to the profession would be to find an Associate-level product manager role that can be done remotely. This gives any new professional plenty of time to learn the ropes and determine if they might be willing to relocate on-site as they move up the ladder.

As product management encompasses such a broad scope of responsibilities, finding an experienced product manager who needs an extra pair of hands is an excellent way to keep food on the table while procuring that all-important mentorship and hands-on experience.

What are you waiting for? Product managers are known for their decisiveness, after all!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the primary responsibilities of a product manager?

Product Managers oversee the development and launch of products, collaborating with cross-functional teams to define product strategy, prioritize features, and ensure successful product delivery aligned with market needs.

What skills are crucial for a product manager?

Key skills include strategic thinking, market research, communication, project management, data analysis, leadership, and a deep understanding of user experience and product development processes.

How does a product manager contribute to a company’s success?

Product Managers drive product vision, market fit, and customer satisfaction by defining product roadmaps, gathering and analyzing feedback, and aligning product strategies with business goals.

In which industries do product managers typically work?

Product Managers are found in diverse industries such as technology, software development, consumer goods, healthcare, and finance, overseeing a wide range of products and services.

Is there a growing demand for product managers?

Yes, the demand for skilled Product Managers remains high as companies increasingly emphasize innovation and user-centric product development to stay competitive in the market.

Related Resources

  • How to Become a Product Designer
  • What is Human-Centered Design?
  • A Guide to Non-Technical Fintech Jobs
  • Engineering Manager Degree Programs
  • What is UX Design? Why User Experience Matters

Primary Sidebar

Justin Paulsen – Last updated: May 28, 2024

WRITER

Justin Paulsen started his own content development company in 2009, researching and writing for clients in the evenings while working full-time management jobs during the day.

ON THIS PAGE

  • Degree Options
  • Career Paths
  • Job And Salary Outlook
  • What Do They Do?
  • Opportunities
  • FAQs
  • Resources

Follow us

About Us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Copyright © 2025 | TechGuide | All Rights Reserved