Making products is actually a high-latitude thing

@Xihu Yuge There is an interview with a programmer, who has been working as a technology developer for 8 years. After transforming into a product manager, he talked about his feelings.

Two words: Crit.

“When I was doing technology, I saw product managers doing design problems. I think the function design of the product is very simple. It is just to build a house that can live in people. It is just beautiful and ugly.”

That’s not the case.

“This is a very professional thing, accidentally built a house, the owner can not even find the gate of the community.”

“Moving from technology to product is not a simple change of job description.”

“You have to reinvent yourself.”

Technology to product, you have to “upgrade”

This is not to belittle engineering thinking.

Some say the smartest guys on the planet use engineering thinking (like Musk). But we have to admit that pragmatism is counterproductive in the wrong direction.

A technician must move up the ladder to become a qualified product manager across the technology and product divide.

What’s the difference between engineering thinking and product thinking when it comes to making a vibrating bell?

(Copy the vibrating bell made by RP with prototyping tool)

Clearly, the product is thinking more about what happens “after the bell vibrates.”

Product thinking is highly dependent on big data experience, imagination, empathy, and the user as the core to a higher dimension of continuous divergence, divergence, divergence…

A vast and complex body of knowledge

Image source: Data in words (too long to see version)

It turns out we were thinking differently:

Developers think about how to use the principle of minimum feasibility (MVP) to get things done.

What the product wants to do is to integrate five dimensions (strategic existence layer, capability circle layer, resource structure layer, role frame layer and perception layer), correctly define requirements and link multiple resources to achieve it.

Product managers are veritable superindividuals.

Five years ago, it was said that product manager would be obsolete in five years. After all these years… Really good product managers are in short supply. No amount of doom and gloom can hide the fact that product managers are veritable superindividuals, the core competencies of the near future.

But as Luo Zhenyu notes in Superindividual:

“The most capable person is not how powerful he is, but how many resources he can link, how many projects to build and complete.”

Ultimately, it comes down to collaboration and linking.

To be a qualified product person, you need to:

  • Stand tall.

Standing tall isn’t about being looked up to, it’s about positioning the product accurately and making a product for the “majority” of users.

There are a lot of product managers out there who are really savvy.

I don’t blame them.

It’s really hard to be a good product manager. There’s so much to learn. Many product managers are young, haven’t gone through their Odyssey, and have an ethereal, idealized and elitist view of users, people, and the world.

Capturing public expectations requires a series of bumps and setbacks that are not instantaneous.

  • Multiple latitude freely switch.

In order to communicate with people from different latitudes, we need to have empathy, have many cards in our hands, bear the pain of not being understood, and more importantly, we need to turn pain into power and win the support and cooperation of people from all sides.

Especially in the face of development, a divergent brain does seem unreasonable in front of engineering thinking that emphasizes structure, emphasizes rules and requires everything to become controllable.

This is why there are so many disagreements between development and product.

“What does the product manager think all day? Can I open his head and see what he’s really thinking?”

It’s not impossible.

“Copy guest, tolerance is great”

There are intricate mechanisms behind the proposal of a demand. These mechanisms are explicit and visible, but it is difficult to accurately restore them in language. I believe that the product people have deep experience.

A good product manager, though, can articulate what he wants the world to be like. But as the lost Control Player says: a thousand words are not as good as a pair of glasses, as long as you put them on, people can immediately see your world.

Copy guest collaboration platform is such a pair of glasses. Design-product-r&d, three worlds compressed into one plane. Let the developer fully understand your decision. Amplify the overlooked facts by highlighting them. Let the world see the logic behind your design, help you accurately determine development costs, and be a lean product person.

“Pay for invisible decision-making mechanisms”

In reality, most product managers are just satisficers with insufficient authority and no chance to contact the strategic layer. They are just implementers and tool people. What Copycat has been doing is becoming a powerful card in the hands of product managers. Pay for the invisible decision-making mechanism behind a good product. Pay for all your balancing, brainstorming, and soft power to connect. Pay for every deliberate decision you make. Let the benefits of product thinking truly benefit every user.

As Copy founder Lao Bu said: “the god of product manager, must be their own.”