Test-n-Tell.com - making product decisions

  I've heard the term "career planning" very late. No one talked to me about a career in high school, nor later on my education path. I grew up in a poor country with a backwards education system (in 2006, the English theory book I was using was printed in 1968. It was full of "comrades" talking to each other in a way even British TV wouldn't use to mock Eastern Europeans). So I had no clue what I wanted to do, so as all my friends. 

  How do we decide to leave a job? Say it's a particularly bad Monday. You spill a coffee onto yourself, there were no seats on the train, you've been called out for being late, your boss is a jerk and your last evaluation went wrong so you'll not get promoted or get a raise.  - Enough is enough, - you think, - it's time to move on.  And maybe it is the time, but most likely not. It's highly possible you're making an important decision at the worst time. Odds are not in your favour. 

  I've noticed some PM vacancies mention this requirement to a potential candidate: "enjoys dealing with multiple stakeholders". Enjoys? Really? In my ten years of working in product, I've met dozens if not hundred fellow PMs and none of them were enjoying dealing with multiple stakeholders. Most commonly this aspect of product management is the most dreaded. 

  A good product management process has stolen a lot from the scientific method. But there is at least one other skill a good product team would want to adopt from science - an informed debate. 

  The previous article described what does it mean to be technical as a PM and how to become one . You don't need to know how to code or have a computer science degree to be a PM. You might just need to learn how your product is being built, learn the language of developers and be mindful about the limits of your knowledge.