At a high level, a PM is responsible for their team working on the highest leverage projects and making sure the product that launches is awesome on usability and functionality. I was a Product Manager on the Pages team at Facebook for 1.5 years, so I got to be on a number of projects from start to finish. While I was there, the Pages team grew from 4 to 36 engineers and from 1 to 4 PM's. It's a great role, which I highly recommend, although it's not a fit for everyone.
What this actually entails varies widely based on a few variables:
- PM Role varies between groups within FB: PM's on Site Integrity have pretty different roles than PM's on Timeline or on Growth. For instance, PM's on Site Integrity are trying to remove fake users and motivate appropriate use of FB. They do this by building and monitoring robust internal systems that track and identify undesirable behavior. PM's on Growth are trying to get as many people on FB as possible and get them to be as active as possible. They do this by running lots of small experiments to see what pays off. Some PM's need to be more design focused, while others need to be more data driven. If you're a PM on the ads team, for instance, you need to have a deep knowledge of the digital ads world.
- PM role varies with the stage of the project: at the very beginning, it's not clear what should be worked on and why. For instance, should Pages use the Timeline design or go with some other design? Is Post Scheduling more important or new Post Targeting options? This up-front definition is super important since doing it badly means a lot of wasted time later. Once a project is defined, things turn more to project management. What's the timeline for release, what other teams need to be coordinated with, etc. Then the role turns more into Quality Assurance and launch. What's an acceptable state for the product to launch in? When/how does this launch?
- PM role involves interfacing with the many other roles: the main roles on a product team at Facebook are engineers, an engineering manager, a product manager, a designer, a product marketing manager, a product specialist, and an analyst. If you're a PM on a team that's missing one of these roles, or is understaffed in the role, then you end up picking up the slack. PM's routinely have to make designs, write code, pull data, recruit new people to the team (including making acquisitions), and test the product. Whatever it takes to get an awesome product out the door. Here's what each of the other main roles does (and therefore what a PM would need to do if this role is missing):
- Engineer: build it. This is the role that all of Facebook revolves around, and the company is undoubtedly lead by engineering. The company keeps its quality bar incredibly high, and engineers at Facebook are awesome.
- Engineering manager: responsible for resource allocation (who works on what), recruiting more engineers, keeping the team happy, and keeping the code clean. Describing this role deserves its own post, as it involves a lot else as well. Eng managers and PM's work very closely together. As a PM, you have to get along with eng managers really well or you're not going to do well (bit.ly/U9Q2H7).
- Designer: when I first joined Facebook, one of the engineering managers jokingly said: "in the end, we're all just pawns in a game of designers." After more experience, I found this to be somewhat true although it's ultimately a good thing. The design team keeps consistency across Facebook, and to a large degree keeps the company in check. A PM might be able to say, "we're going in this general direction," but a designer decides what it looks like and how it works. This is also, though, a collaborative process.
- Product Marketing Manager: this role is the official liaison to the rest of Facebook and the outside world. They will go off to do market research ahead of deciding which product direction to go in (inbound marketing) and they also take care of all product launch marketing (outbound marketing). They regularly meet with clients (at least on the Pages and Ads teams) and spend a lot of time talking with Sales. PM's and PMM's work closely together to figure out what should be built and how the market reacts to new launches.
- Product Specialist: this is a nebulous role that's still evolving, but at least on the Pages team it was a crucial one. Although Facebook doesn't have an official Quality Assurance department, this is as close as it comes. The Product Specialist managers and triages all inbound bugs, and when products are nearing launch they take care of all the testing. As the title implies, this person is expected to know everything about the current state of the product they are on. They make sure nothing important falls between the cracks.
- Analyst: when we'd get too carried away in debates in meetings, one of the eng managers would often remark: "warning: we are entering a data-free zone." The meaning was that without grounding our arguments in data, we're just talking about opinions. The analysts at FB are crucial for keeping everyone grounded in actual numbers. How well/badly are we doing? What should be our measure of success? How do we tell if something is broken? Analysts play a huge role at Facebook, which will continue to be true as the company grows larger.
- If the feature is engineering-led: engineers at Facebook move quickly and are empowered to work on what they care about, so there are a lot of projects going on at any given time. As a PM, you're responsible for making sure everything that's launching actually makes sense and works together. Subsequently, as a PM you often have a lot of different projects going on at any given time (although your involvement in each varies widely). Deciding where you spend your time is critical, since there aren't enough hours in a day to be involved in everything. It's also sometimes necessary to alter or stop a project if it doesn't make sense in the larger product context (this happened fairly regularly to Pages since it's so visible).
- More important features require a review process: for smaller projects, you don't need to review with anyone other than the engineers and designer you're working with. PM's have a good amount of authority for most things. Larger projects mostly get reviewed with Zuck, although sometimes it'll just be with the head of your product devision. Zuck is still really involved, though, and reviews an impressive number of the projects going on. In addition to setting the overall vision for Facebook, he does a good job making sure projects across different areas make sense with each other. Given the size of the company, it's tough for any individual PM to be aware of everything going on.
