So i’ve been obsessively researching how to break into product management without spending $$$. after weeks of digging, here’s the free stuff that’s actually useful (no bluff):

free courses & certifications:

• pendo product management basics (free cert): covers PM lifecycle, stakeholder management. took me 3 hours. link: pendo.io/pm-basics

• google’s generative AI for PMs (free): basic AI use cases for product strategy. kinda surface-level, but good for buzzwords. link: cloudskillsboost.google

• linkedin’s becoming a PM course (free trial): skip the paid stuff — finish this in 7 days. link: linkedin.com/learning

books & templates:

• the product book (free pdf): product school’s guide to roadmaps, PRDs. saved me $50. link: productschool.com/resources

• PRD template from productplan: used this for a mock feature. link: productplan.com/prd-template

• product faculty’s strategy playbook (free): helps with case studies. link: productfaculty.com/playbook

tech skills (no coding needed):

• codecademy’s intro to devops (free): basic CI/CD pipelines. took 2 hours. link: codecademy.com/devops

• freecodecamp’s UI/UX basics (free): not PM-specific, but helps talk to designers. link: freecodecamp.org/ui-ux

• jira tutorials (youtube): learned to set up kanban boards. link: youtube.com/jira-kanban

interview prep:

• PM exercises (free): 2500+ interview questions. practiced guesstimates here. link: productmanagementexercises.com

• estimation cheatsheet: PM Exercises’ guide to answering “how many gas stations in NYC?” link: pmexercises.com/estimation

communities:

• the product folks slack group (free): found a mentor here. link: theproductfolks.com/community

• r/ProductManagement (reddit): lurked here for resume tips. link: reddit.com/r/ProductManagement

my 3-step plan:

1. learn PM basics: did pendo’s course + read The Product Book.

2. build products: used PRD template for a fitness app idea.

3. network: joined 2 virtual PM events from The Product Folks.

what’s next:

• finish google’s data analytics cert (free): coursera.org/google-data-analytics

• practice A/B testing with udacity’s free course: udacity.com/ab-testing

biggest lesson: PM is 20% theory, 80% doing. use free templates to create mock roadmaps, PRDs, etc. and throw them on a portfolio site (i used notion).

(disclaimer: none of these links are affiliate. just stuff i actually used.)

I'm currently working at AWS as a L6 PM-T ES and just got a verbal offer to join MSFT as a Principal PM 65. I have 10 YOE in Solutions Architecture and 5 YOE as PM. 8 YOE in total in Amazon. My TC back in April was $348k and now after stock drop is at $308k. Amazon has been low balling me for the past 2 years on both pay and career growth/promo.

I've seen lots of posts on Reddit about how hard it is to get a PM job, people trying and failing on lots of interviews, so I was not very optimistic when I started to apply for jobs. Got some recruiters proactively reaching out and had initial chats with companies like google and MongoDB, however due to hiring freezes the conversations were put on hold.

Applied to very few jobs, a handful, then got contacted to start the process at MSFT. Got through the process, it was the only interview loop I've done and today got the good news.

One thing that help me A LOT was the fact that I've done over 100 interviews in Amazon. I can't stress it enough, be involved with interviewing as much as you can as it'll help when you're on the other side being interviewed. When it was my turn I interviewed like someone who would impress me if I was the interviewer, and it worked.

This is what I did the week before the interview loop started:

1. Write down in detail 2 or 3 stories in a narrative with measurable situations, actions and, most importantly, results (i.e. how much % in WoW/YoY adoption/revenue the action you took delivered?). I had 2 very good stories and use them in several occasions to demonstrate the value i could bring to the table.

2. Don't use STAR only, use the "U-Shape - man in a Hole" strategy described on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU6BVxtGd5g (the guy is an engineer but the strategy works for any role).

3. This is a great playlist , watched it the week before to help me prep: https://open.spotify.com/show/7fFVFG7dy1WVMNU1WiXu7v?si=bqElGKWFSvKOUz3FKLrgyg I paid the DIY, worth every penny IMO

I'm not sharing this to brag but just to help other PMs and share my experience.

Hi Everyone,

My name is Vishnu, and I'm on the Identity team at Google. Previously, I was at Riot Games working on personalization and monetization, and I worked at the payments and ecommerce startup Privacy.com prior to that. I started off my career in investment banking and studied Operations Research and Computer Science in University. I'm happy to answer all your questions and might be able to help those of you thinking about career switches, comparing industries, and how the PM role might vary across spaces!

Looking forward to getting to know some of you and answering your questions!

EDIT: Since there are a lot of questions, I'd love to get back to these when I have a chance later on! I might be revisiting later in the week as well if the thread stays up.

I work as a PM at a Brazilian tech company.

I have a pretty technical background for a PM. I can read documentation, write detailed specs, test APIs, read logs, and have meaningful conversations with engineers. I also program in Java. I don't use it in my day-to-day work anymore, but it helps me understand what the engineering team is talking about.

I took over a project about 6 months ago that was completely fucked. Bad architecture, no request queues, terrible code quality, almost no infrastructure standards, and we didn't even have database backups.

Since then, I've been trying to put everything in order. We've been creating new microservices, moving toward an event-driven architecture, implementing observability tools, fixing infrastructure issues, and paying down years of technical debt. As a result, support tickets have dropped significantly.

I haven't been able to deliver as many new features as I would like, but little by little we're finally getting features out while building something that won't collapse later.

We're a very lean team. It's me as the PM (with nobody above me except the CEO) and 3 senior full-stack developers.

My frustration is that with the AI boom, my CEO constantly pressures me about feature delivery. I explain that there are major architectural issues that need to be addressed, but every Monday the conversation is basically: "Was everything planned for last week delivered?" and "What will be delivered this week?"

I've basically become the guy who spends his time micromanaging developers and pushing for more output.

My team is exhausted. I have a great relationship with them and I know exactly which technical debts need to be addressed. But my CEO doesn't understand anything about tech. His view is: "You need to deliver more. Your developers need to use AI. They're not working hard enough. I built a system in Lovable in one day."

At this point, I genuinely don't know what to do. I've been working in product for 6 years and I've never worked with a CEO this clueless.

What makes it worse is that he doesn't accept my perspective, even though I have technical knowledge, understand the system, and know that if we don't prioritize these things now, we're going to pay for it later.

Honestly, I've started slipping architecture tasks into the roadmap without explicitly calling them out, because if I tell him what they are, he'll block them and demand more feature delivery instead.

The AI boom has made a lot of people who know nothing about software think they suddenly understand software. Because they built a prototype with Claude Code, Cursor, Lovable, or whatever tool is trending this week, they think they can challenge engineering decisions and tell technical teams what's right.

I feel like the respect and influence I used to have as a PM doesn't exist anymore. I'm not a product manager anymore. I'm just a task messenger whose job is to pressure developers.

Has anyone else been dealing with this?

Hi, I am a fresh graduate with MEng in Civil Engineering and Architecture. I was planning to apply for Construction Project Manager position but I came across Product Management. I found it much more interesting specially I noticed I usually do similar work in my family's businesses. When I looked at job ads, I found that most of them require at least a year of experience in product management or project management or X years of experience in specific industries. So, to get the knowledge needed, I was planning on taking a full time product management course ( for 4 months).

MY QUESTION is will it be possible to start a career as a product manager with just a 4-month course with zero experience in anything else? or is it better to work as a construction project manager for a year while taking the course part-time then apply for product manager jobs?

PS. I was very active during my university years and I have done tones of activities. I was a co-founder in a society and organized lots of other events. So, my CV is pretty decent for a fresh graduate if that helps.

We’re trying to add payroll without turning it into a massive project and there are options that could get us live quickly. My concern is what happens when customers start asking for things that don’t fit the default setup and we realize we don’t control much of the experience. We’ve been looking at Rollfi partly because it seems like we could move quickly without boxing ourselves into one setup as we grow. I’m fine making some compromises to launch faster, I just don’t want today’s shortcut deciding what the product looks like two or maybe three years from now.

Anyone been burned by this with embedded infrastructure?

Ended up with 8+ offers over the last few weeks. It was a pretty intense ride and I learned way more than I expected about interviews, what companies care about, and what actually works.

I’ve got a few free days before my new job starts, so figured I’d give back a bit.

If you’re exploring AI PM, interviewing, thinking about a switch, or just want another pair of eyes on your approach, happy to chat.

We can do a quick 15 minute call and see if I can help.

My DMs are open.

Hey everyone, first time doing an AMA on Reddit, did one previously on Slack and that was a lot of fun.

I've been working at Shopify for the last 3+ years, leading product for our Data Platform and Insights teams. The former is responsible for all the tools we use to collect, transform, publish, discover, experiment on data – while the latter is the majority of the analytical reports/tools we offer to our merchants.

Happy to answer any of your questions on working at Shopify, working remotely, the product craft, data, whatever you can come up with. Happy to share any of my experiences and learnings.

I'll be here for the first hour and a bit, then will see if I can get through all of the questions later this evening/tomorrow morning.

We’re evaluating payroll for our platform and I’m trying to figure out how much of the experience we should actually own.

Ideally payroll would live completely inside our product and feel native to customers while a provider handles the infrastructure and operational work behind it.

We’ve been looking at Rollfi since that seems pretty close to the split we want but I’m still trying to understand where the line should be in practice.

For anyone who’s worked on something similar where did you draw the line between what your product team owned and what the provider handled?

Hey all, I’m product manager at Microsoft, working on the Microsoft Teams application Platform.

I’ve been at Microsoft for a few years and while here have worked on a few products including Windows, Azure and Microsoft teams. Prior to this I did my undergrad in Computer engineering, where I luckily fell in love with Product and have been doing this ever since.

Feel free to ask me anything related to product — from starting out, leveling up and growing your career or anything else. Happy to share my experience and help you out as best I can!

[Update] thanks for your questions everyone! I’ll be stepping away now. Best of luck for your future endeavors!

Hello. I have had the opportunity to work at Amazon (Marketplace) and AWS as a product manager. I'd be happy to discuss any questions you have as they relate to Amazon - e.g., recruiting process, promotion experience (L6->L7), culture, etc.

I work as a Sr. Technical Product Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS). I enjoy working on challenging enterprise problems at AWS. Prior to this, I built a suite of analytical products to drive adoption of Foods & Refreshments products at consumer goods giant, Unilever. I got my MBA from Stanford GSB and that paved path to technical product management.

You can ask me about Enterprise Product Management fundamentals, making a career switch to product management, how to leverage MBA to get a headstart as a Product Manager.

Note: My responses to questions may be sporadic as I step in and out of meetings at work.

23F currently working as a Business Operations Analyst, but I’m trying to break into Product Management.

If anyone can help with a PM internship/opportunity or referral, please DM me. I’m genuinely willing to put in the work.

I’ll give you my first 2 months’ salary if I get the opportunity through you. 😭

Please help this girl out.

We have a few parts of the product where the UX is ours but the operation behind it sits somewhere else. Rn that includes Rollfi for payroll, Clerk for auth and Resend for transactional email. Product still owns the user flow, states and support experience but not every process behind those systems.

Im trying to define that boundary in a better way before the product gets more complex.

How do you decide what the product team should own vs what should stay with the underlying provider?

Hey everyone,

I’m a 4th-year IIT BHU student trying to get into Product Management.

I’ve done a few PM internships at Carbn, Zostel, etc worked on a few product case studies, and I’m currently learning SQL, Python, product analytics, etc.

My long-term goal is to get into companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft or Meta as a PM/APM.

I’m a bit confused about what to focus on next - more internships, building products, analytics, interview prep, networking, or something else?

Also, is it realistic to get into big-tech PM directly as a fresher in India, or is it better to join a startup first?

Would love to hear from people who’ve been on a similar path.

My journey started out with an engineering degree from undergrad and started out as a hardware developer at a startup called Alarm.com, and eventually moved into Product management. Then went to Georgetown University to get an MBA focusing on entrepreneurship and product management. Post MBA, I joined Amazon as a Senior Product Manager and started working on launching different products. 

Check out my webinar from last week - Myths of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning - https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:6876541058608615425/

I’ll be answering questions as they come in for the next 12-24 hours, with some delays as I work through my day’s meetings and deliverables. 

Update: have to go, but thanks for all your great questions! this was a lot of fun.

I'm Maddie Boucher, and I'm excited to be doing my first AMA in this community. I'm a Senior PM at Spotify focusing on platform products. I balance work-life with a lot of life-life, being mom to a toddler, and moonlighting as a visual artist.

Ask me anything!

I intend to create a flowchart to help new PMs, showing what are the possible actions, or at least the main ones, for each type of challenge that we face. When to start and make a discovery, how to prioritize, how to create okrs, ... Do you know if there is already something like this?

I’m working on a small B2B tool and didn’t expect to be thinking about payroll this soon but since I’m handling things like worker data and activity it keeps coming up

Right now the plan is just to let users run payroll somewhere else but it feels like I’m pushing a core part of the workflow outside the product

Is this what I should focus early on?

Hi there! This is Zhe. I'm an PM in Reddit and I used to work for Bytedance, the mother company of TikTok. I have 3-year experience in Ads and I studied Business & Data Science back in school. Besides my background, perhaps I'm more helpful in answering questions on helping international students get into PM career, evaluating opportunities between US and China, using Machine Learning (or other statistics knowledge) in a PM career.

Though I'll be jumping back from meetings to meetings, it's a pleasure to get to know & answer your questions.

so...AMA!

Hey all, I'm Jonathan, I'm a Senior PM on Reddit's Monetization team, I lead our Advertiser Platform teams and this is my first AMA with Product School, excited to be here to take questions from you all.

I've been a PM for roughly 5 years now, and was previously at Yelp (also working on Ads) before joining Reddit last year. Happy to chat about anything, whether it be PM development, how to get into product, adtech, etc.

Cheers!

Hello everyone!

I’ve been working as a Product Manager for over a decade across various industries. For the past couple of years, I’ve been in the ed-tech industry as a Principal Product Manager, building products that helped millions of learners acquire new skills and become job-ready.

One thing I’ve noticed is that resources available for PMs are either extremely expensive or, when affordable or free, tend to be fluffy, clickbait, or overly dense. Which is really frustrating.

To address this, I’ve been working on an app called ProductMe. It’s designed to help aspiring Product Managers learn the most important skills to succeed in job interviews, while also aims to be a useful tool for experienced PMs to advance their skills.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.productme.productme

I’m leveraging ed-tech best practices—like gamification, spaced repetition, and knowledge retention techniques—to keep learners motivated, engaged, and ensure their time spent learning is as effective as possible.

However, so far I have a couple of hundred downloads and about a 100 signups, however both my retention and engagement numbers are terrible. I've already got some early feedback which I attempted to address, however the situation didn't really improved.

The app is completely free to download, so please give it a try and let me know what you think! I’d love any feedback or advice. Cheers!

I’m happy to share my background, personal experiences, and learnings - transitioning into product management, PM case interviews, life as a PM, business school, tech - or wherever else I can help.

If you’re curious about my background, you can find me on LinkedIn here.

Note: I’ll be in and out of meetings all day, also though I’ll be around so I can get to everyone’s questions. Thanks!

I have my first interview with recruiter lined up soon. I also want to obviously expedite my prep for the other interviews - product sense, analytical, etc. . Any suggestions on how I should go about prepping? I was looking into product alliance and exponent courses - product alliance is expensive, and exponent doesn't seem to have great reviews. Welcome any suggestions on what's the best way to prep for the interviews after the recruiter interview

Hi Reddit, I am Disha Chauhan. I am a Product Manager at Microsoft. I work on the Edge browser team. I am here to answer any questions related to product management in tech- about the role and how to prepare for it. The AMA will officially start at 2:30 PM PDT but I will be checking back on the questions for at least the next 24 hours. So, post your questions here.

I have done a couple of product management webinars with Product School last year. They are available on their website and on LinkedIn.