The Dumbest Motherfucker in the Room
The hardest lesson to learn for an engineer who turns into a (technical) product manager, especially in their own area of expertise, is to embrace being the dumbest motherfucker in the room.
As an introverted engineer, I was often silent. I had to have all the facts before I opened my mouth. As a product manager, I am the voice of the customer. That customer may be an engineer, but that engineer is not you. Assumptions on how technology ought to be used can be hard to shake after years of clacking away at the keyboard. While your technical experience is valuable, it cannot become the blueprint for all future solutions.
To get to the heart of a customer problem, someone has to ask questions, probe beyond the surface, and question (almost) everything, because occasionally you stumble upon an unexpected answer that leads to a true insight. And that someone is the product manager.
Unfortunately, there is no secret formula. It is about putting yourself out there and acting like the dumbest motherfucker in the room. It obviously helps if you are, but fortunately that is most of the time. That’s because you have no idea about the unique environment of your customers and their particular problems. You may think you do, but you really don’t. You only have your own assumptions about what you perceive as problems.
Assuming the role of the room’s designated dunce may feel unnatural, particularly if you come from a science or engineering background. I can relate. It is hard to abandon your ego or ask the seemingly obvious questions people roll their eyes at. You can often see the thought bubbles above people’s heads pop up, as they contemplate, “Who is this moron?!”
Preconceived notions of customer problems have no place in product discovery. You are out to uncover the truth, not to confirm what you think you already know about your customers. And it is when you bump into a nugget of insight that it shatters your own ideas of what you originally thought was right, which is the true value of a product manager. It often happens when you stumble upon an acute but hidden customer pain rather than the obvious dull discomforts everyone talks about. And at that moment, those negative thought bubbles turn into acknowledging nods that wonder how exactly you managed to pull off such a tiny miracle of insight.
Everybody is winging it
As an introverted engineer, I was often silent. I assumed everyone who spoke up had something to say. There were, of course, people who opened their mouths just to say something. While these people may be easy to spot and subsequently ignore, that leaves the group who sound reasonable and knowledgeable.
Well, it turns out that everyone is winging it. And I mean everyone, myself included. The difference is the degree to which people are winging it. Some make stuff up as they go along while others try to uncover basic facts to back up their claims. Few are completely selfless and willing to uncover the truth, no matter where it leads them. The problem is that it requires you to throw off all your preconceptions. And that is hard, especially when your livelihood depends on it.
In an early product role, I agonized over the fact that the product I was responsible for did not do as well as it might have. In fact, it was limited by design to work only on top of the company’s enterprise stack. That may have been a strategically sound decision, but the company’s customers were different from the ones interested in the technology my team had built in partnership with an early adopter: prospects were not going to change their entire stacks for a single product. Instead of saying that out loud, I tried to make it work for the few existing customers lest I be let go on the spot, because that would have almost certainly been my fate as well as that of the engineers on the team.
Much later, I switched jobs because I had enough of the same old problems and wanted a new challenge, a new area that I was already familiar with as an engineer, but had yet to have the opportunity to sink my teeth in as a product manager. After 50 or so interviews with customers within the period of little more than a fortnight and still within my first month on the job, I had to conclude that the original product idea was no longer valid. I had been hired on somebody else’s assumptions, based on what they had learned at another company in another industry, and which they had expected to apply elsewhere. After presenting the conclusions, I had a choice: stay on and figure out what else needed to be done—though most likely in areas I had no interest to continue with—or leave the company. The decision was obvious yet tough.
Embrace your inner Samuel L. Jackson
As an introverted product manager, I can no longer afford to be silent. But instead of talking, I ask lots of questions. Questions that may be uncomfortable, not because of their content, but because they make me sound like a complete fool, on purpose.
What I also cannot afford is to pretend to know more than I actually do. As a PM, you cannot make up requirements, as that may affect the design of the product and thus its cost or feasibility. Sometimes you have to go with imperfect information, but it ought to be clear which requirements are validated and what is a presumption. Yes, that makes you look like an utter nincompoop, again, but that is the key message: a product manager is supposed to be the dumbest motherfucker in the room.
Embrace it. And if you are still uncomfortable, well, you are supposed to be uncomfortable. Better you than the entire product team after having wasted years of work. And if that does not help, just picture Samuel L. Jackson saying it to you, and you’ll be fine. Intimidated, but fine.
