How Do I Return To My Internship As A Product Manager?

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Hey folks, unfortunately I don't have my microphone and my normal setup and I'm at home. Um, my car is getting repaired right now. Something with the shifter. I actually tried recording this video in the car while it was getting weird. Um, the clip probably won't ever go out, but um, I just I don't have my mic so hopefully the audio is not too terrible. Um the topic today is from the comments and this was about someone asking about their internship that they finished up as a software engineer and they're planning they have an offer to go back and they were saying they want to see about switching into a PM type role which I thought was interesting. So figured we'd talk a little bit about that. I have a couple more videos I want to try and film right after. I'll keep these relatively short um because I want to get some things filmed before I go to Africa next week for two weeks, which is kind of crazy.

And so because we're never in my office, we'll do a little spin around. Those are all the co-pilot sessions going. I got my laptop server. I have the other laptop server. Um because what should be a server is actually just my gaming machine and did it all backwards. Anyway, um building lots of stuff. We'll talk about this internship. So, um I think this is interesting because uh I actually think if there is a time to experiment with this kind of thing between changing roles and stuff and trying things out or different companies like internships are so good for this kind of thing. And so I I think this is awesome. Like if someone's trying to figure out, do I like this or not? Can I try something? Internship, perfect time because it's like a fixed window where if you're like, oh man, like I hated doing this.

Great. It's like it's not that long. Tough it out, learn something, you know, still try to do good work and then for next time, you know, maybe that's not for you at this point in time. And so if I guess like it sounds like they already have the return offer. So, I'm going to try to structure my my response uh with respect to that. Given that they have the return offer, I think the most important thing is like if you're trying to go back as a PM, is that something that's even feasible? Like, I don't know the answer to that. And I don't mean feasible in terms of your capability. I mean, do they have an opening or need for a PM where you're going? Like, that kind of detail is left out of the of the the question. So my first thing to this person would be you should clarify that because if uh we're going down this path of like how would you set yourself up for that?

If they're like hey man like we don't even we don't even have that then like it's all for not at least in this case. So number one I would say clarify that. Uh number two while you're clarifying that I would take that opportunity to ask them like what does that look like? What things are they after? Um, you'll always hear me saying going back to level setting expectations. This would be the exact same concept because I'm just a dude on the internet with a camera that likes software engineering. Been doing it for a while, but I'm also not your manager, unless I am. Um, and I'm not this person hiring you back. So, you can you might love my advice, you might hate my advice, but the point is like the best person to clarify with is the person who you need to get sign off from.

So when you're getting that uh that sort of sign off, if it's a thing they do, try to understand what it is they're after. Okay, that's my my first kind of take on this. Um I think the next thing that I would frame up here is like PM can mean different things because there's a couple of acronyms that are PM and mean close but different roles that aren't software developer. There's a product manager and they there's a project manager. Some places these blend totally. Other places they're very separate. So I don't know in this person's case project management uh differences are generally speaking project management a lot more coordination between things. So uh dependencies, road maps, timing, unblocking things. So like if you think about software development sort of like a pipeline with dependencies, how do you keep this pipeline rolling? uh and figuring out who depends on what risk management stuff like that.

So lots of coordinating between different stakeholders. PM as in product manager is uh from my experience a different role that yes may have some overlap with that just like an engineering manager has overlap with project manager, product manager but a product manager is I would argue more of like a user proxy. So, uh, trying to figure out what it is that the user is after, right? A lot of the times users will express frustration, um, or if you're looking at trends for what's happening in the industry for your customer base. It's like looking at the direction that users are moving and trying to figure out how do we make a solution for them. Um, oftentimes you'll have users that will um, like it's almost like they give you the solution they want. They'll say like, "Hey, like go implement this." And it's like, well, what problem is is it that you're trying to have solved?

Because yes, you may get lucky and have a user that has is suggesting the perfect implementation. Great. Um, but the solutioning and the implementation is for, you know, the software development uh team to kind of go through. It's really important for the product manager to understand what the challenges are and then the the value that you want to deliver um as a business as a team whatever it is and then bringing that back to the development team to work through. So the the difference is really like a product manager would be representing um I'm calling it like a user proxy as in understanding what it is users want how to go uh understand like how to deliver value there or what value it is you you should be offering and then working and sort of like bridging the gap with the development team to understand like hey users have this kind of problem or there is this kind of opport opportunity, how do we go solve that for them?

And then working with engineers and other stakeholders to go actually implement a solution, project managers around the timeline, that kind of thing. So, with all that said, um I don't know exactly. I want to assume that this person meant like product manager. I'm I think I'm just making an assumption on that though. Um if that is the case, then I would say like um one of the most important things, I say this a lot, is communication. I think it would be especially true in a product manager role. I think it's important literally in every role. Um, but in a product manager role, you're going to be communicating between two very I'm going to say like generally speaking two very different groups of people. That's not always true. Um, but you're going to have people on one side that are your users. And I again, generally speaking, I like thinking about users as um this is going to sound I don't have a good way to say this.

Like I don't want my users to have to be intellectuals to use the things that I'm building. It's great if they are and it's great if we can add things in for the power user, that kind of thing, but um understanding like your user should not have to be a rocket surgeon to be able to operate the solution that you're creating. Unless of course that is their actual job and if you know any rocket surgeons I would love to hear more about that. So um understanding that you want to give solutions provide solutions to these users in a way that feels very streamlined right um and the other group of people generally speaking the engineers that you'd be working with are hyperfocused on technical implementation and so it's not like I said this is a generalization it's not that these things can't overlap maybe you're a product manager for building developer tools Um point is that you're going to often have to uh communicate between two very different groups of stakeholders.

So um something to keep in mind I would say if you're thinking like communication has not been a strong suit for you or you have challenges communicating with stakeholders think to your interactions that you had on your internship. What could you do better about that? Right? Um, there's probably I don't know off the top of my head, even though I'm by a computer, but I'm not going to go search for it. You could do the same thing. Um, I would go looking for different whether it's like videos on uh effective communication. You could chat with AI about different communication techniques. Um, but I think overall I would really encourage you to think about um the fact that different people communicate effectively different ways. And yeah, that's a very generic thing to say, but what I mean by that is that to you, communicating a thought might be very clear and obvious and maybe there's someone you work with regularly and your communication is very clear and obvious and that's great.

Um, if you try applying that exact same thing to another stakeholder, you may find that like why is it so frustrating to work with this person? They communicate differently, right? So, I would encourage you, as weird as this might sound, if you're ever noticing where you're like, man, when I'm working with this person, it's like something feels off when we're chatting through things, like take a step back and like literally have a conversation with them about like, hey, like I want like I want to make sure that I can help you, right? Um what is an effective way for me to communicate uh status to ask for status, right? like being transparent with them and then trying to understand like from their side what does effective look like? Um you can meet them in the middle, right? It doesn't mean you have to cave to everything they ask for.

Maybe it's unreasonable, but meeting them somewhere in the middle I think would be important. Um what else we got? Um yeah, like it's hard to like to practice these things, I guess. I mean, I'm sure there are ways to do it, but um it's your role as a product manager is a lot less about how do I go engineer the solution, right? It doesn't mean that you shouldn't be involved. It doesn't mean that having engineering skills are not valuable. I think having crossunctional skills is always super valuable. Makes communicating with other groups of people more effective. Um but sort of this understanding that there is literally groups of people the engineers that will be trying to solution things and so working with them effectively on coming up with those solutions and representing the user effectively I think is one of the most important things as a product manager.

So, um, to kind of bring this all back full circle before I keep, um, just repeating myself, uh, I would definitely clarify with the company. Um, so if you're hiring manager, whoever it is, if you already know you're going to a different team or the same team, I would just reach back out, clarify with them to see if that's an option. Um because I would hate for you to kind of go through this process and either not ask and then not act on it and then kind of go back to a software engineering role and that's not really what you wanted or to to put all this effort into trying to focus on being a PM and then realizing that's not really an option in the current role. Um again, not that it's ever wasted effort to go learning things and trying things out. That's not what my intention is to say here.

I just don't want you to have misaligned expectations and then feel disappointed. I think it's something that you can address early on and I hope that helps. So, thanks for watching. I hope uh for the person that asked this, you end up seeing this video and there was some use to it. If there was more specific questions that I didn't get to regarding this topic, just ask. You'll get another video. Take care.