Product Management as a title is ephemeral. Problem solvers from earlier eras, solving problems for digital eras would adapt well as PMs today. PMs from today, would have to adapt to new roles tomorrow.
Note to aspirants:
I know you love to gain knowledge, read about Product stories, PMs talking about what PMing is and stuff, but, that passive consumption of knowledge is of limited help. e.g. Thinking about the idea of becoming a celebrity and being one are very different games. The latter a lot more complex. The former is in thought domain, the latter in practical and the bridge between the two is thorny!
Similarly, what you read and fall in love with likely, is the product building stories, the strategy, design, user experience & marketing front to it. That is likely only 1/3rd of PM game. Execution, managing work relationships and other forms of “unsexy” work form the other part of the game.
Yes, you have to keep your thinking muscles active, but when you work as a PM, the role is so much more of other stuff, which is what contributes to the harder part of being a PM.
Why should you be a PM
Market pays well for this right now, as the “skill” or the “set of skills” is in demand. Will it pay well for long, we don’t know. Supply/demand balance. With incoming supply being skilled with theoretical concepts, likely that there would be corrections, but the time for you to try to be one is right now! The skills acquired would also open up more areas for you to try in future. A PM today may be an Investment Analyst tomorrow or a Chief of Staff to CEO office, wherever the winds blow.
PM Job
To work at an org with the title of a ‘Product Manager’, you have to cross the barriers of the guards guarding the gates. That is a battle we wrote in one of our previous posts. Check it here. The battle is not easy, but you have to do what you have to do to get that PM job title.
Someone who could not get into Swiggy, Flipkart and some big orgs once told us that maybe they aren’t good enough for PMing. We told them to try more orgs, and there are dozens of them (200-300 of them are listed here). Analogy being that not all football players get to play in premier leagues from the start. Some rise their way through. If they stop playing and give up, they are anyways not getting to the premier leagues.
If you are unable to make it as a PM, are you not PM material, NO, just that the guards didn’t let you through.e.g. I love football, but never enough to play professionally, there is no reason I should quit it because no professional team would pay me for it! I can still love football and be good at it and continue to develop my game for the love of it. Thus, you may not become a Product Manager by job title, but you are free and have whole right to read about Products and if you are a brave-heart, build products (solutions to some problems you/your network face) and enjoy the process. Doing the latter is more fun, but tougher, because it requires finding a problem and then self-discipline to see it through. In fact, not all product builders will enjoy being Product Managers (because there are other things which come along with the “Product Management” job title, while love for “Product” space has infinite possibilities.)
Even if you make it as a PM, you may discover that you loved (or were excited about) a specific part of a PM role, but ended up in another. e.g. someone who loved design, strategy taking care of internal Sales tools within the org. The fight then is about building relationships, demonstrating your interest time and again to get to the profile you want to work on. PM job title is not the end of struggle for all, it may be the beginning of new ones, but that is a separate discussion.
How employment works:
Someone pays you for what you are good at (for experienced folks) or something you could potentially be great at (for freshers). Your employment is dependent on what void the orgs hiring for, are looking to fill.
How long would the PM craze last?
We do not know. It may be metamorphosed into specialist titles - Growth PM, Technical PM, Data PM or maybe roles which do not exist right now.
What you should do? The ray of hope!
Hone your love. What you learn during preparing for Product Management, is knowledge which is in-demand, real, and it pays, unlike a lot of courses you studied in your colleges or a lot of what you do at work. Therefore, continue honing your Product sense. God knows a new role comes by tomorrow and your current work profile + strong product sense, gives you that opening.
Why is it harder than it sounds?
I know you loved what you read about a PMing and it was so fancy! But everyone else also reads the same. Give one serious PM aspirant who won’t throw the same PM concepts as you do. It is unlike software development, in that there is no competitive benchmark which keeps your progress on track. Unless you are building things on the side, and applying what you learn via concepts, it is very difficult to improve on your candidature. (assuming your social capital gained via network &/or college pedigree does not create enough leverage)
Differentiator
Friction to build products is at an all time low. Yes, getting yourself motivated to work is hard. Not easy. But if you want to be relevant, for the right <economic> opportunity to come, you have to continue your love for the process.