Product Management in a Large Company

It’s been a year of my product journey at a large company.Below are my thoughts about the same.

Company

Large companies definitely look for team players. In my experience as a PM at a large company, I’ve seen the absolute importance of prioritizing the success of the team over what someone individually wants. This makes a lot of sense because as the size of the team gets bigger, the total contribution of the team is much more than the contributions of a single person.

I think one of the most important skills a PM can have at a large company is strong communication. By strong I don’t mean forceful – the best PMs I’ve seen at my company have been clear communicators who are good at aligning and connecting different groups, visions, and ideas. Having mental toughness and flexibility goes a long way to delivering the final product when there are 20 differing viewpoints and voices.

Good

I think it’s very fair to say that larger companies, especially public companies, tend to focus on growing what is already successful. Also,most of them are willing to spend in new areas of Business.

Not so good

One of the more frustrating aspects of PMing at a large company is the sheer number of people involved in decision making. For a given project blockers tend to happen because there are so many people owning different parts that there’s inevitable delay and gaps in communication.

People(Top Bosses) here doesn’t have the necessary skills to lead Tech projects and often end up creating a me-too product,with no product differentiation . With this,  The “classic” growth formula(build a product, spend a million bucks in PR campaign, additional million in FB and Google ads) doesn’t work.