Generalist or Specialist

Q: Should a Product Manager be a generalist or a specialist?

A: In a startup culture, PMs take on a lot of diverse areas. From specs to running sprints, writing copy to evaluating vendors, from hiring to API research.

This requires context switching rapidly and working on a lot of things that you might not be good at or particularly fond of.

To fill in the skill and knowledge gaps, such PMs need to pull in and work well with specialists like UX designers or marketers to get the job done.

So, it certainly helps being a generalist.

However, PMs need to avoid being merely proxies and gain depth in 3 areas:

1. Subject matter: the team relies on this to make better decisions.

2. PM fundamentals: be adept in activities like user research, specs, prioritization & metrics to deliver tangible value.

3. At least one integral discipline: like marketing, design or tech - this prevents them from overly relying on everyone else for everything.

People often ask me about courses they should take.

If you already have experience, you'd be better off going deeper in a related area like marketing than taking a general PM course which mostly covers things you already know.