I’m a product manager by chance.
I didn’t dream of becoming a product manager as a kid. I never got a university degree in product management (or any other for that matter). It just somehow happened.
I’m a copywriter and startup co-founder, turned product manager.
Nowadays, while trying to hire product managers for my team, I started wondering where do product managers come from.
So I did what product managers do. I looked for data to play with.
Using Linkedin, I gathered 1,000 random profiles of product managers in the United States and analyzed their education and job experience.
Cool insights below.
– Less than half of product managers have a technical education.
– The most popular degrees product managers acquire areComputer Science and different kinds of Engineering.
– Only 11% of Product Managers started their careers in product management.
– Product Managers are big fans of MBAs.
– Google & Facebook are big fans of technical Product Managers.
– Looking to hire a product manager? Try stealing one from R&D.
– Looking for your first product management job? Might be easier totry in a really big company so they won’t notice you know nothing.
I analyzed my own Linkedin network. I’m a web product manager living in Israel, so my dataset probably leans towards that as well. Even though there are product managers in nearly every commercial industry, here I focus on my own world.