Bryan Lee

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111 Resources I Wish I Had When I Started in Product Management

Bryan Lee

Photo by Mitya Ivanov on Unsplash

This is my collection of the best resources I’ve come across in my six years as a product manager. 

Note: these resources closely align with my career path, which has mostly been through smaller startups. I joined my first startup Tutum as the 5th person before we were acquired 1.5 years later at 11 people by Docker. I stayed at Docker for three years and saw them grow from 150 people to 500 people. I rejoined the co-founders of Tutum as the first employee at Undefined Labs, where we were acquired two years later at ten people by Datadog. Datadog is by far the largest organization I’ve belonged to, with more than 1,500 people. I’ve only been here for one month, but the speed and freedom at which teams move has been great so far.  

Each resource has helped move the needle in some way. I’ve categorized all of the resources according to the various skills required to be an effective product manager. Each category has been stack ranked, so I recommend starting at the top and working your way down. This list represents the document I’d pin to the desk of my younger self when I first took on this role. 

Most of the curated lists of resources I’ve seen have focused too much on “product management.” I believe the real value of a product manager lies in their ability to liaise with every department in the company. Our job is to be the universal translator that ensures the most critical information from the disparate parts of the organization finds its way to the right people, presented in an immediately understandable way. We are ultimately the curators, remixers, and disseminators of knowledge, layering on top a healthy dose of empathy.

This is why our education shouldn’t stop at just “product management” books and articles; we need to become fluent in all of the inner workings that make a product successful. We’re at the intersection of so much valuable company knowledge, it’s essential we know the best ways to leverage what we find. Because of this, I’ve included categories of content that have helped me become a better thinker and a more effective doer; the information we’re privy to is only as useful as our ability to process it and act on it.

While I can’t go back in time and help my younger self’s information diet, I hope this can act as an initial roadmap (product managers love roadmaps) for people interested in becoming an effective product manager - or help existing product managers looking to expand their knowledge in a specific domain.

Product

Product Strategy

Design

Growth/Marketing

Go-to-market (GTM)

Communication

Presenting

Technology

Consequences of Technology

Improve Your Thinking

Improve Your Focus

Ongoing Resources

Podcasts

Blogs

Websites

Newsletters

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