Product Management Job Trends
Introduction
Have a quick glance at many of the online job postings for product management positions.
There are seemingly endless variations and inconsistencies, but it is possible to uncover the trends and realize the primary types of product management jobs with the proper understanding.
This review provides a brief analysis of the product management job market and segmentation of the jobs according to the four different schools of thought in product management.
The Technical Product Manager
By viewing open product management positions related to software development, you may get the impression that the product manager is a highly technical role that works closely with the engineers and requires computer programming skills — a technical product manager.
The Technology approach to product management considers product management as an extension of product development and, at times, even subservient to product development.
Under the Technology approach, product management practitioners are expected to be technically proficient. Indeed, many are former engineers who perform various activities that support product development and occasionally sales.
The technical product manager’s main job focus is to determine (and often prioritize) product functionality and features, and communicate these to product development.
At some software development companies that adopt Scrum, a lightweight software development method, the technical product manager will likely assume the Scrum product owner role's responsibilities.
The Technology approach to product management provides a logical explanation to the origin of the technical product manager job type, where product managers are expected to help the engineers in their product development efforts and be technical to the point of having programming skills.
The Delivery Product Manager
There are many open product management positions, commonly at technology and non-software companies, for a product manager with managerial, tactical, and operational skills. These positions are similar to a project manager focused on product delivery and managing the team timelines and deliverables—a delivery product manager.
The Generalization approach to product management views product management as multidisciplinary and multifaceted and responsible for nearly anything related to the product. This is the CEO of the Product mindset.
One common occurrence of the Generalization approach is that the product manager is assigned program management responsibilities.
The Program Manager is an encompassing role with complete and overall responsibility for a product project, also owning all monetary considerations and project management.
One common occurrence of the Generalization approach is that the Product Manager is tasked with program management responsibilities. Hence, there lays the origin of the delivery product manager type of job description.
Understanding the Trends
There are several plausible explanations for the abundance of technical product manager and delivery product manager positions.
At the macro level, there is the possibility of companies pushing product managers to become more generalized and assume peripheral technical and project responsibilities as an aftereffect and the repercussion of a global recession that forces everybody to do more.
Covid-19 has induced a global economic downturn, possibly explaining the many technical product manager and delivery product manager job openings.
However, a recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic and societal effects could soon begin with the prospect of approved therapeutics and vaccines for the coronavirus.
Since there is usually a rebound for role specialization after a recession has ended, there may be some growth in highly specialized product management openings post Covid-19.
Coincidentally, there is an ongoing talent recession nowadays that is unrelated to Covid-19. It has become increasingly challenging for hiring managers and recruiters to find qualified workers in many fields, not just high-tech. But this should not have any effect on product managers’ job descriptions.
A more remote possibility and quite a stretch to explain the abundance of technical product manager and delivery product manager positions would be that consulting organizations are trying to hire and sell their consultants, people who were formerly program managers, as product managers.
Even if this is true, the reality is that the customer company and its executives shape the product manager's role as they see fit. So this means that consulting organizations are in a secondary position to influence a product manager's role. Expectedly, consulting organizations are likely to have minimal influence on the character of product manager job descriptions.
Identifying trends in product management is difficult in the short term. This is particularly true to anything related to business and social studies.
At the moment, there are no verifiable trends or shifts in forcing product managers to be more technical or more tactical.
There were always many open positions for technical product manager and delivery product manager roles. This has been going on for many years and will continue at companies who subscribe to Generalization and the Technology approaches to product management, which is the likeliest explanation.
It should be noted that Generalization and the Technology approaches to product management are unsupported and lack a methodological foundation, and thus they can be invalidated.
Winning the Popularity Contest
To better analyze present-day jobs in technology product management, we need to divide the overall market into two segments:
- Technology companies that are primarily engaged in software development.
- Technology companies that are primarily engaged in non-software product development.
The non-software product companies may develop some software, but often that software is integrated into the main core product and is only regarded as a feature enabler.
Software development companies, who use Lightweight Software Development (rebranded as Agile in 2001) and those who subscribe to the Scrum software development method, are especially prone to conflate product management with product development.
As noted earlier, the Technology approach to product management views the product manager as part of product development and subservient to the software development method.
This mindset fits in well with some Scrum interpretations, and according to various research and industry reports over the last three years, it seems that over 91% of software development companies use some form of lightweight software development methods (predominantly Scrum).
Therefore, it is safe to assume that a very high percentage of at least 70% or more of software development companies employ the Technology approach to product management.
The Generalization approach to product management (product manager does everything, aka CEO of the Product) seems more dominant at the non-software product companies.
Based on Blackblot’s own internal data and published surveys, it is estimated that about 50% of the non-software product companies use the Generalization approach.
Oddly enough, at very large software development companies that employ vast numbers of software developers, the Generalization approach to product management is very evident.mark>
Product managers at these big companies act as program managers and often have complete and overall responsibility for the product project, including owning all monetary considerations and project management. Blackblot’s unsupported estimate is that about 25% of software development companies use the Generalization approach.
The Business approach to product management is heavily focused on the product's business aspects, emphasizing all related monetary issues such as metrics, costing, pricing, etc.
The Business approach is seen mostly in professional services companies and product companies that deal with emerging technologies (electric vehicles, for example).
The use of the Business approach to product management seems to be concentrated in scattered geographical pockets in North America, such as on the east coast in the USA. This assessment is very anecdotal, unsupported, and must be viewed as such. Also, Blackblot has not located any data to indicate the percentage of companies using the Business approach.
The Methodology approach to product management views product management as a professional domain governed by a set of foundation rules supported by cogent rationales and solid arguments. This approach is represented by the Blackblot PMTK Methodology™, which considers product management a highly strategic function that operates solely in the problem space.
According to various independent product management domain surveys over the last three years, PMTK is employed by about 15% of software development companies that participated in the surveys. However, this percentage is misleading because the surveys erroneously view a whole range of software development methods (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, waterfall, etc.) as forms of product management.
If all software development methods would be excluded from the product management surveys and the percentages recalculated, then it is estimated that the results could show that PMTK or variants thereof are employed by about 30% of software development companies who participated in the surveys.
Accordingly, leveraging Blackblot’s own data about the prevalence of PMTK and various product management domain surveys over the last three years, it is estimated that about 10%-15% (one in ten) non-software product companies use the Methodology approach to product management in some form or another. But again, this assessment is very anecdotal, unsupported, and must be viewed as such.
Summary
Job openings in product management will be available in the near future more than ever before, in both high-tech and traditional industries.
The concepts outlined in this review provide job seekers with the tools to better understand and select the types of product management opportunities that fit their skills.