What accomplishment  in your product management career has brought you the highest level of  satisfaction and joy? Can you narrate why?

Building products for  education has been enticing to me as a product manager . The journey at  BYJU'S has been nothing short of phenomenal since it was the first place  where you could see different cohorts of users with different definitions of  value at scale . Also with scale comes ambiguity resilience  which helped me to refine and question my  hypothesis and experiment design in a robust way . The very same bit has also  helped me become a micro-influencer on Linkedin where content has been the  core differentiator and value proposition for me . This has helped me to  understand the expectations of aspirants in Product Management and help 10k+  PM's directly or indirectly.

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What aspect of  product management did you struggle the most with? How did you overcome  it?

For me it was always  experiment design , if a PM is not able to come up with the right hypothesis  for an experiment more often then not he will never be able to identify the  right metrics for success in terms of the actionable value for the end user .  The way I overcome this is by understand hypothesis decision making from  multiple standpoints , where data is a vector , design is a vector , UX  research is a vector and scalable feedback as a vector . This was primarily  enabled for me by meeting multiple connections on linkedin who work in  specific areas of product where I work and also increasing my ingestion  efficient as a PM in terms of reading about building products and staying  away from confirmation bias . Agility to test your POC as a smaller scale and  then derive insights from the same became key based on feedback I received  from the different vectors I choose to design my hypothesis on.

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What's one common  myth about product management that you find common among aspiring PMs.

The most common myth  is that product management is about just being at the intersection of  business , tech and design which leads to think it is just a glorified  context switching role . But on the  contrary its a very value driven / psychology driven role where build  hypothesis at scale is the hard part and takes sometimes years to practice .  If you are good at making predictable visionary bet based on various vectors  of information such as data , qualitative feedback etc you will be a great pm  . Stakeholder management comes as a part of it.

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What are some common  pitfalls that product managers must be aware of?

1. Spend time on  understanding the user and not on learning skill such as SQL, design etc

2.  Wins in career build trust, you are not anyones boss but learn collaborative success as a lever

3. Have a very high opinion and access quotient as the more perspectives you get, the better you are, than just listening to your upper management.

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If not product  management, what career would you have picked? Are there any complimentary skillsets that you see between being a PM and your alternate choice?

Probably would have  been a speaker / writer and yes the complimentary skill set is that as a  writer / speaker also you need engagement as a core lever to resonate with  your audience and add value. You think of the user persona in hand and try to add value in their time.

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What is something  about product management that you wish you knew when you started out?

The interesting thing  which I think I should have known was that it about learning and understand  about the user more than just working on skills which are known to be used by  PM's. Also, another thing I think which I should have known is that as soon  as you get feedback on your thinking you grow faster. So, don't work in silos, be open to learn and get opinions on your work.