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Hi,
I am looking to learn more about the NPI program manager role at Apple. Specifically want to understand the following:
1. What's exactly the day to day beyond the fluff job post?
2. What skills will be considered critical to be successful in the role?
3. How is success defined in the role?
4. What does the career progression look like?
5. What background is considered desirable for this role? Can one get into this role without prior background in NPI?
Thanks in advance!
Apple
IMO, that’s bad feedback. I LOVE working with very technical product owners. If they can convey requirements well, and have a good understanding of the Product and the vision for it going forward, being technical is a huge plus for me.
Sounds like you may need to work on soft skills. Develop your ability to communicate technical industry jargon in layman terms. Managers communicate key insights with stakeholders across various orgs. The ability to communicate effectively is important.
Were you talking about the technical details a lot more than the customer/challenge/ strategy?
Don't worry. It happens to the best of us. Focus on the problem you were trying to solve, who the customers were and why solving this was critical. Then talk about how you deviced a strategy and how you executed it. Then talk about the end result, preferably with some numbers to back it. Save the technical details and the process for developing the solution for follow up questions. If possible,pepper it into the story but don't go into detail here. Also talk about the teams you worked with so you cross the cross functional piece off the list.
Work back from customer needs and define product requirements that fulfill those needs. Then discuss what technology to use to build the features you need. Start from system architecture and go into fine grained entails only if it matters. Use simple language to make sure everyone understands why the technology you are proposing is suitable.
Talk about data and analytics used to drive decisions. Or strategies used to solve a problem. If you have a developer background you could discuss code you wrote to improve efficiency. For example, I automated a script to pull metrics used by the Leadership Team to drive decisions – or something like that. Hope that helps!
Recommend working with an experienced product management coach on Leland.
https://applicant.joinleland.com/search/career/ProductManagement
A developer is typically working to solve the problem in front of them. "Make this website's font comic sans." They may ask themselves "why would anyone want to do that?" but then do it anyway. A pm's role is different; yes, maybe some people want to use comic sans, and who are they? do they want to change it later? should we do it? should we create a tool that lets people do it themselves instead of just making the change? etc. If you know how something can be done, that can be a great skill but it also can make it difficult for you to express yourself in talking about those possible scenarios, because you go too deep into the weeds instead of keeping it high level.
What I generally look for from a technical PM is knowledge and understanding of how the systems work. My fear is that the PM will be trying to dictate how the system will be built rather than just creating requirements based on their experience and knowledge. Perhaps that is what they meant by "too technical."