Why I’m not learning to code (yet)
Should product managers be able to write code and build products on their own? Is it necessary to study computer science if you want to become a product manager? These are common questions and I am going to explain in this article, why I am not learning to code, at least not yet.
About me
I started working as a product manager in 2015, after organizing tech conferences like droidcon Berlin. In the first weeks of my job as a project/product manager at Evenly, a consultancy that builds high quality apps for clients, I started learning to code because I thought that’s the right thing. However, I found there’s so much to learn when you want to be a really good product manager, that I stopped learning to code and focused on improving a lot of other skills that I needed first. I am a very curious person and want to learn a lot all the time, start new hobbies, read books, do sports — but I figured out that I need to focus and not spread my energy on too many things at the same time.
I am currently spending some months with my grandmothers to care for them, but I’m up also looking for a new job as a product manager for 2019.
What’s my goal? Is coding helping me reach it?
My goal is to collaborate well with developers, designers, analysts and several stakeholders. Does learning how to code support me with that? I think it can help, but before you get into the details and learn how to code, there is much more wich is also technical knowledge to some degree, that you should learn first.
While I’m caring for my grandmothers, I am also looking for a new job as a product manager, so that’s another goal right now. Will someone hire me if I know how to code? Maybe. Depends on what kind of coding and to what degree I am skilled — so for this short-term goal it doesn’t help. But overall, I need to convince with my main product management skills. Besides, when reading descriptions of job openings, I rarely see coding as a requirement. However, many companies want product managers to be “data-driven” and that is an area that makes sense to me.
There’s so much to learn on a higher level
In the last three years, I focused mainly on mobile apps but also TV apps, watchOS apps and voice UI. There’s a lot to learn about the different platforms and app development in general:
- How APIs work
- The User Interface Guidelines for iOS
- The Android Material Guidelines
- tvOS guidelines
- Android TV and Fire TV guidelines
- How voice apps work
- Git flow and what it means for your process
- The process of getting an app into the store(s)
- How to manage Quality Assurance
- How to estimate development effort
And of course there’s a lot to learn about the core responsibilities of a product manager: user experience (my favorite topic), user research, stakeholder management, facilitate estimations, defining KPIs, analyzing user behavior and identifying improvements, prioritizing, creating roadmaps, facilitating planning and retro meetings, managing the backlog, creating user stories, quality assurance management, release planning… and the important skill of hearing what a client/user says and understanding what they really want. :)
As a product manager, you need skills in several fields: design and UX, communication, leadership, engineering and business. You’ll develop more expertise in some of these areas than in others and that’s okay. But it’s helpful if you’re someone who likes to continuously improve and learn quickly.
Understanding each other
Working in teams is easier, when people understand each other and have basic knowledge about what the other team members are doing in their special field. This helps everyone not only to value each colleague’s contribution but also facilitates better communication. So in this context, as a product manager, I need some degree of technical understanding — technical fluency. In the same way, engineers need some knowledge of UX and UI and they need to understand the value of product management. And designers need to have some tech knowledge regarding the platform(s) that they design for.
What you really need is technical fluency
Many recruiters use a computer science degree requirement as a filter to easily sort out people for product management roles, but what they really require is someone with technical fluency. This means that they need a product manager to
- Communicate effectively with engineering
- Understand technical implications
Because if I don’t have these abilities, the product quality and the project’s success will suffer.
Technical fluency is also the capability to effectively translate non-technical ideas into technical ideas and vice versa.
Becoming a better product manager vs. becoming a coding beginner
My time is limited, so I focus on becoming a great product manager first. At this point, I decided that learning to code (for example learning Swift or Kotlin) is not what will make me a better product manager. However, I will keep asking questions and listen to any engineer who’s happy to explain what she or he’s doing, because I love learning these things with little real-life examples. I will never say “I’m not a technical person, I won’t understand this” because such a phrase keeps me from improving my technical fluency. During my time at Evenly, I enjoyed listening to technical conversations at lunch-time with my colleagues, because over the years I soaked up a lot of information. Nadia Eghbal wrote a blog post about technical conversations that I can fully support.
Coding is hard. So you better have a good reason and a lot of motivation when you start learning it.
What I’m learning instead
So what am I doing to become a better product manager? First, I will continuously learn by facing challenges and finding solutions, improving my skills on the job, everyday, by doing the job. Secondly, I am going to look for areas where I see the need for improvement, topics that seem to add a lot of value to my work. Currently, I decided to expand my knowledge about data analysis and become more data-driven. I believe that connecting quantitative data with qualitative aspects like user interviews allows us to make the right strategic decisions and build better products. For this reason, I’m currently doing this SQL course on Udemy. My goal is to combine creative ideas or assumptions with insights about user behaviour.
But companies like Google want product managers to have an engineering background!?
Yes, many companies see it as beneficial to have studied computer science or to have worked as an engineer before you became a product manager. I agree that it can be beneficial. But I also think that it brings other challenges. Product Managers with a background in engineering might not be up-to-date with current developments, because there’s something new to learn all the time and it’s not their main task anymore. So they might face challenges in collaborating with their engineering colleagues, thinking they know how to implement a requirement, maybe even micro-managing the developers in the team instead of trusting them. This might lead to frustration for others and the product manager might have difficulty with their role because they’re getting involved in too many details.
For me personally it was amazing how in the first weeks and months as a product manager for mobile apps, I learned something about a technical aspect every single day — and by that I was soon able to understand what is easy to implement and what’s rather impossible, how much effort it probably takes, and I was soon able to have constructive conversations with engineers.
Building trust instead of micro-managing
Personally, I prefer a collaboration style with developers that is based on mutual trust and asking questions. I think that me not being a former developer makes it easier for me to ask questions. And I’m absolutely not talking about “How long will it take you to implement this? When are you done?” but questions that help us understand each other, help me understand how things work, help the engineer understand the goals, user needs, and overall vision that play a role in the development of a feature.
I need to communicate with developers about what we want to achieve and why, but I don’t have to tell them how in detail they should realize it.
And I strongly believe that product development teams work best when you trust all team members with their area of expertise and value their contribution. You know what’s important? Treating people with respect.
Rather than knowing how to code, I need to have great communication skills and empathy. That way, I can establish a collaborative atmosphere and this leads to a mutual trusting relationship with engineers who will then not hesitate to talk to me about their technical challenges. I don’t need to control what they are doing but rather make sure we have a supportive and transparent relationship.
What about the “(yet)” in the headline?
You’re right, the headline says “Why I’m not learning to code (yet)”. I am not saying that I will never learn to code or that — as a product manager — you should absolutely not do it. For me, it’s about goals. What do you want to accomplish? My goals might change. Maybe I’ll want to build digital products myself, including writing code. Then I’ll need to learn it. Maybe in some months or years I will be an expert in analyzing data and look for another opportunity to improve as a product manager, then it might be learning to code. Just because so far it hasn’t been the thing I needed or wanted to do, I won’t say I’ll never do it.
So instead of an advice on whether to learn coding or not I’d say: stay curious, keep asking questions, find out what your interests your goals are.
Thank you for reading my thoughts on this topic! Feel free to comment and share your experience with learning to code as a product manager.
Another topic that is important for product managers is User Experience, that’s why I am constantly learning about it and why I engange in building the Ladies That UX community in Berlin.
Here’s a series of articles that I wrote about seven aspects that improve the UX of your app.
