Business+Tech is launching a new content series on product management this winter, PM with Iris Yuning Ye.
In this series, there will be 15 episodes coming from interviews with 15 seasoned U-M alumni who are in the Product Management field. No matter if you’re looking to pursue a PM career path after graduation or would love to learn more about what PM is, this will be a perfect series for you. Each episode will be published weekly on Wednesday starting on January 17th, 2024.
Without further ado, let’s hear from Emilee and Iris on how where the idea of this series came from what to expect from it.
PM with Iris Yuning Ye Series Episodes
- [01/17/2024] Ep 1: From BBA to Startup CTO to Sr. PM, Calvin Schemanski
- [01/24/2024] Ep 2: Respect Takes You a Long Way as PM, Justin Washington
- [01/31/2024] Ep 3: Spontaneous Decision Maker, Stephen Soward
- [02/07/2024] Ep 4: Every Job is a Learning Opportunity, Preeti Agarwal
- [02/14/2024] Ep 5: Appreciate the Lucks and Turn Them into Assets, Gui Ruggiero
- [02/21/2024] Ep 6: You Can Always Learn If You Care Enough, Natee Pretikul
- [02/28/2024] Ep 7: Explore Career Choices with Focus, Prashant Tomar
- [03/06/2024] Ep 8: PM is an Agile Leader, Shambhavi S. Rao
- [03/13/2024] Ep 9: A Winding Road to Product, Erwin Kim
- [03/20/2024] Ep 10: Survival Camp Teaches Me Product Management, Jack Grinblatt
- [03/27/2024] Ep 11: From Nature Conservation to PM, Cynthia Koenig
- [04/03/2024] Ep 12: It’s Okay to Not Have a Plan, Dennis Lu
- [04/10/2024] Ep 13: PM is Just Part of Me, Sara Raux
- [04/17/2024] Ep 14: Approach Career as an Open Book, Jaren Johnson
- [04/24/2024] Ep 15: Figure Out Your Uniqueness and Leverage It, Raghu Thricovil
Podcast Transcript
Emilee Studley (E): Hello listeners my name is Emilee Studley and I’m the Program Manager for Business+Tech. I’m sitting here with Iris Yuning Ye, a student from the School of information who’s working with Business+Tech to launch a new multimedia content series focused on the life of Product Manager. This series is called PM with Iris Yuning Ye. And just to clarify, PM is Product Management and Product Manager. You’ll hear us use that acronym quite often. So welcome Iris to the Ross digital studio and thank you so much for launching this series with us.
Iris Yuning Ye (I): Thank you so much for having me here. It’s so cool!
E: I agree! So you’re a second year School of Information student specializing in agile development who prior to coming to U of M worked as a product manager and ride hailing services and interned in Microsoft last summer and you interned as a product manager correct?
I: Yep I was in the product manager department and in the security product sector.
E: Awesome. So obviously you have an interest in product management and design. In your words, why were you interested in the series featuring product management?
I: It can be a quite long story. I actually got inspiration from a chat with my parents. They were already always curious about what I’m doing so they keep asking me “what are you doing as a product manager.” I explained to them several times and they were like “ohh I didn’t even know those responsibilities can come together as a position.” So I guess there are a lot of people don’t know about the responsibilities and how they work. And I guess it’s the case for the students because there’s no major called PM in any college. That’s where the inspiration came from. On the other hand, when I was talking with you last semester, there was a moment I was really stressed out and it reminded me of my junior year of college. I was super stressed out and I went through a depression phase during the time. Looking back, I think it stemmed partially from the mindset that if I don’t I cannot find the track or cannot find a career track through my major, my life is a total failure. I had that mindset. A background story was I majored in finance so I did nothing related to tech when I was in college. I was so stressed out to secure a finance job and to secure a finance internship. But on the other hand, the sober side of Iris was pretty sure that was not something I enjoyed and I was not happy at all in the job. I was not interested in the course work and I struggled a lot with waking up from bed to go to classes. So I wish I could have somebody to tell me back then “OK you can go to other choices”, “There are a lot of tracks you can go to.” So I hope that the PM series can serve as that role in the students life that if you’re not finding some interest and passion in your current job, it is OK. There are a lot of choices that we can learn from.
E: Thanks Iris. That’s a really inspirational story and I think a lot of our listeners and readers will really be able to empathize with that and I hope they get that out of this series too. I think what was really cool about brainstorming this (PM series) idea with you is that – Over the last year and a half working for business, I encountered so many alumni who are in product management. it was just mind blowing and I was like we have to do a series on this. Or something super cool people doing cool things who didn’t have that path laid for them and had to figure it out and. So any sort of thoughts or stories or feedback or advice they can give to students today is so valuable. I’m also excited to highlight those product management was an incredibly popular job function that U of M students are interested in but there still is a lot of unknowns surrounding the right things such as “What is the day-to-day responsibilities of a project manager”, “Is it really a good fit for me” and even “How do you break into that role.” So I think these are some of the key questions we’re going to be hoping to tackle during the series. But iris please tell us a bit about what to expect from this series and what you hope readers and listeners will gain.
I: I think first of all, as we already discussed a little bit, the career choices there. Most of the interviewees or at least a lot of them already have been in industry for more than five years or even a decade. Just by looking through people’s path or their choices, I hope the students when they read through the stories and interview articles, they can feel more energized about finding the right track for themselves and don’t feel limited by their major or whatever field you are in at this moment. Second, because a PM is not a major in college, I hope they can learn from the real person in real life that “what I’m doing in my PM job”. A lot of the alumni talk about their responsibilities and even share the products, stakeholders and collaborators they’re working on and with in their day-to-day life which I personally find is really valuable. If you go to find someone to talk to, it will be much harder. This is a much more efficient way you can learn from the alumni. Last but not least is how they can navigate through a career transition, if you ever find that in your career point that you want to make a transition. I personally think a lot of the MBA students come to Ross for MBA and they’re thinking about doing the career transition. So this will be a great lesson or just a great reference for them to look into.
E: This reminds me a bit about a common question asked in interviews at the end is “What are the day-to-day like in this role.” I think, well you should probably know that, at least somewhat, before you enter into that interview. So it’s sharing that story of what the day-to-day is like for product managers.
I: Yeah you can probably borrow some (of their answers). Even though you do not really know, you had never been in the field, then you heard from this series that you understand it better than someone who cannot even answer the question.
E: Yeah exactly. So over the course of this semester, we’ll be releasing up to 15 different episodes featuring interviews with product managers. For example, we’re going to have a Computer Science engineering alum who’s now a Principal Product Manager at Apple – Justin – speak about “Respect takes you a long way as a product manager”. And then we have an MBA alum and his name is Prashant Tomar, who’s the Lead Product Manager at Meta who’s going to be talking about “Exploring career choices with focus”. Although you probably could agree that all of the episodes are fantastic and people should read them all, I’d want to ask you which were your favorites.
I: There are two favorites. I would say first was Justin’s. I don’t want to spoil the content. But what I really enjoyed about Justin’s episode was that his story was quite unique. He was an engineering student but not so good at coding. He shared a whole story about how he figured out his passion and utilized his strength to finally get to the point that he felt comfortable with himself. So I thought that was a unique story.
E: Even though he’s from an engineering background, I think a lot of business students can empathize with the fact of not being proficient in coding or techie stuff, but you can still be a product manager at a tech company.
I: Yeah absolutely. And my second favorite was from Dennis. He is currently a product manager at Google. He was more like a wisdom sharing and I learned not only about PM but I learned about life hacks or just the tips from him. That was my favorite also. But yeah for sure you need to and you should read all of them!
E: Thank you so much Iris for taking the time to share a bit about the series with our listeners and viewers, or listeners or readers. To get access to the series you want to follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram where we’ll be releasing a new episode every Wednesday starting on January 17th. We’re not going to tell you which episode Justin’s gonna be released. You’re just gonna have to follow to find out. Thanks Iris
I: Thank you Emilee.