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The Biggest Problem In The Product Management Industry Is Its Exclusivity
The primary job of a Product Manager is to be the voice of the customer and to make the customers’ lives better. Historically, the way to do this was to get the smartest people, collaborating with other smart people, to launch products and features that solve problems.
However, while we as a society have given racial and gender diversity in tech the proper level of criticism that is deserves, the Product Management industry has been the leaders of double speak and hypocrisy when it comes to embodying the very principles of customer empathy that it was meant to be built on. And that has implications that impacts all of us.
- College Degree Required?
An extremely basic premise of the industry is to focus on “outcomes” not “outputs”. The goal is not to launch x amount of features, but unlock x value. So why on earth does an industry built on this premise have an output oriented requirement for access? Why is a college degree (an output) being treated as a proxy for what is really important, which is aptitude and creativity.
The overwhelming majority of the country do not have college degrees. This is due in large part to the fact that the top indicator for whether someone gets a degree or not is whether their parents have gotten a degree. The…
