Product management requires loving the grind, not just the glory

I say this often actually, to folks who are thinking about going into product management. 'That's awesome. Just be really, really sure about what you're signing up for.' It's kind of the same as, I think a lot of people want to become a manager. But just so you know, being a manager is like, 'Hey, you're doing performance reviews a lot. And you're in one-on-ones a lot.' You have to really love that kind of work.

Already start product management, doing product management before you're a product manager. Open up your favorite apps. What are the top 10 problems you see?

I strongly advocate for product ops leaders to have done that role, to have actually had hands-on product experience building and understanding customer problems and feeling that pain, because you very quickly realize where to place your efforts and where your team's efforts should go.

At Palantir, "forward deployed engineers" are software engineers who work on-site at customer locations rather than in traditional office settings.

They were extremely careful about only making people PMs who had first proven themselves out as forward deployed engineers. You basically could not become a PM any other way.

Get into this role if you're comfortable letting go of things and moving on to something that is well worth your time. The company's going to change. Our process is going to need to be tweaked.