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Internet product managers will be unemployed after five years
Today this sharing theme thought for a long time, as the first lesson in the morning should give you a wake-up call, so my title is "product managers, five years later, you will be unemployed?

This is the first time I've seen a product manager in the world.

Before the lecture, I will do a small interaction, everyone here, is the 90 after please raise your hand? Well, it's about one-third of the population, and the post-80s? The rest of you are post 80s, so I'm glad I'm in the same boat as most of you. Also, this topic definitely makes sense to most of you.

I've been in the business for over a decade now, and this issue was the topic I struggled with the most when I was in the business for five to seven or eight years. At that time, I felt that the world was too unfriendly, the Internet industry is full of young people, over 30 years old is very stressful, the way I relieve this pressure is that every weekend I have to do something I think is more meaningful. In the end, because of the inner panic, worried that one day will be unemployed, if unemployed must find a way back to themselves or to prepare for their own skills, will not be eliminated because of the Internet after the income will be sharply reduced.

One, the surface analysis of career anxiety

Why is there such anxiety? First do a superficial analysis. I screened three very bullish people, the first Zhang Tianyi, the second Wang Xinwen, the third 09, these three people are 85 years later. I personally respect Wang Xinwen the most, he is the founder of the legend of the Tower of Daggers, it is said that the company's monthly water flow has exceeded 200 million. Zhang Tianyi founded Fushitang, also has a high reputation in the industry. The third 09 is a game genius, people who play DOTA should have heard of, a few years ago has been over ten million dollars a year.

Again, let's talk about which products young people prefer. These are the five logos I collected from the young people in the team, how many do you recognize?

The second symptom of professional panic, I summarize is: it seems to be starting to be a little out, panic. The Internet is changing so fast, without realizing it, it's already OUT, it's horrible. Just like pony (Ma Huateng) once in tencent to product managers said: you are not wrong, you are just too old.

I'd like to ask everyone here if they've ever had a dream of retiring and traveling the world after the age of 40? But have you really thought about what state you'll be in after 40? I have listed some keywords below to give you a taste of the world's malice.

The first keyword is working environment. Take me for example, 7 * 14 has been nearly two months, today's PPT is still changing two hours before the stage. This is how the Internet industry is like, the work is miserable, the pressure is huge, and everyone is tired as a Xiang.

The second keyword is character portrait. 40 years old what is the state of us? Maybe then we are still northern drift, no account, may be a bald middle-aged man, or scruffy middle-aged woman, oh yes, also carry a swimming ring. What a cruel picture that is!

The third keyword is market competition. I don't know if you've done the math, the post-90s are 25 years old this year, do you think they are still a child? No, they already belong to the legal age of late marriage. Now the major companies should have been full of 90 after the entry, even the 95 years have begun to intern. I interviewed a few interns this year, the 95 year olds are very thoughtful, started a business in their freshman year and failed in their sophomore year, life experience is so complete, so much better than me.

The fourth keyword is to raise a family. 40 years old, I think we should have started a family, to the family as the center of gravity, especially the boys or the backbone of the family, may be faced with things can not afford to buy, the child can afford to give birth to a child can not afford to give birth to a second, and even our pensions are also in the air, by the age of 60, we are not already afford to live?

Second, the deep-seated causes of occupational anxiety

The above is the appearance, I will summarize the deep-seated reasons to see why the product of the work of anxiety is particularly serious?

First: we don't seem to know any skills. We must feel familiar with these icons, from axure onwards, PS already belongs to the skill-rich class, many people are the drawing board or the beauty of the show. If you know Python, that's amazing, you're definitely a technical product manager. In terms of skill points then, we really don't seem to be very good at it.

Second: I don't see much of a future. Should work experience be accumulated in one industry, or multiple? Not everyone is in, or has the opportunity to be in, an emerging field or industry. I have a friend who has been working on products for ten years and has a lot of experience, but she has been focusing on PC antivirus engines forever and ever. Now let's count the number of companies in the market that are still making PC antivirus engines, well, there can't be more than five. PC, antivirus, or engine, all together, it's going to be such a narrow range of choices. The industry has a lot of choices for us, but it can be very confusing.

After my last lecture, a lot of people added me to WeChat, and most of them came up and asked me if Tencent wanted more people. But do you know the state of others in such companies as BAT? Many people do not think that BAT how good, BAT people every day are thinking from BAT jump out of where to start a business to where to get rich. Everyone has their own problems.

But when it comes to the matter of project prospects, many people may have **** knowledge. Not everyone is cognizant of the development and direction of the project. And when we do come across a promising project, there's a high probability that we'll come across a dumbass leader. Watching everyone on stage laughing should be a lot of ****ing knowledge on the subject. Jumping ship too often is not a good thing, some people will jump from one industry to another without much correlation between them. Last time a lot of people added me to WeChat, asking Tencent still want people? I feel very sad, we all want to jump into BAT? In fact, in BAT inside the people will not feel BAT how good, BAT people every day in the BAT jumped out of where to go after the startup.

Third, it doesn't seem like you can do much innovation. In our normal work, I most often see a scene, is a write product requirements, the first thing is to see how the competitors do. The second thing is to see how similar products abroad. Beautiful name, competitive analysis! Is this really a competitor analysis? Competitive analysis, that is, how the competitors do, take over and copy a copy? People are a bit cynical, will be in various forums to scold, China has not plagiarized the company? Is China suitable for innovation? What is the role of innovative products here?

Fourth, we can't be significantly different from others in terms of access to information. Theoretically, there is no longer any information that you know and he does not. The sources and channels through which we all receive information are becoming more and more convergent. The development of the Internet has made the path of information dissemination shorter than ever before.

Secondly, there are almost no practitioners who do not understand the Internet. Information is so flattened that it is very easy to share information and publish ideas. This makes the cost of innovation is falling. Watching the Voice of China, there is a feeling that people who sing well seem to be getting more and more, and when you think about it, you think it has something to do with the popularity of KTVs in China, plus the K-song software, which allows individuals to find corners to practice. And many things, the lack of just practice soil. As long as you are willing to spend energy, there will be opportunities. In this age of information flooding anyone can say whatever they want, and these two reasons make those of us who IDEA on the internet, less and less advantageous. So there are essentially no more unthought of ideas, unpublished opinions.

The last point is that there is a clear trend of increasing senior industry experts. In the vertical industry has been accumulating experts, superimposed on the basic skills of the Internet, they become industry experts, we see a variety of, including steamed bread sharing can also be seen in all walks of life, which everyone has something to learn.

Combined, we are in essence, as if it is difficult to remain little different from others.

Another source of industry anxiety comes from the industry barriers to product, which are just amazingly low. The lowest barriers to entry in all industries, including traditional ones, are intermediaries, sales, and ...... products. There's a ****ty thing about this kind of industry, which is that anyone can do it if they want to. I've seen from the English, math and other majors out to do products, there are from testing and technology to do products, more and more people pouring into this industry, coupled with the relatively low technical threshold of this industry, it leads to everyone's pressure has become unprecedented.

What's even more cruel is that in this industry, there are a lot of people who are better than you and work harder than you. I'll give you two examples. The first is still from Pony. a few years ago, tencent input method is actually tencent very small a product, one day at 2:00 in the morning I was pulled into the micro letter group, saw Pony sent five very detailed suggestions, including a certain page of the return key should be placed below rather than above, similar to this point about five. The last one is to say that I'm a person who usually rests late, if you feel disturbed, you can mute it first, and then reply tomorrow morning after seeing it. According to incomplete statistics, pony will carry out a lot of experience every day, and then put these, some even very detailed questions, feedback to each product team. Another example comes from a friend of mine, who is in Xiaomi, who posted a picture one day with the text "Saturday morning at 9:30 in the company basement". Can you see it? Both cars are Porsches. The tycoons are working so early on weekends, what about us normal people!

In fact, physical exhaustion is not a big problem, the biggest trouble comes from the spiritual level, you try, but it seems that there is no use? To summarize it is the direction problem.

People's deep-seated pain comes from the mismatch between ambition and ability, which is actually the most source of your anxiety. It's also what drives your progress.

Three, what can I do to get myself out of this career anxiety rut?

In the workplace, you need to consider two things. The first is to know clearly the personal development, in layman's terms, how to become Ultraman? The second is to clearly know the industry development, where is the monster?

First, talk about the promotion of personal development.

Today there are more than 80 years, I will use the Saint Seiya as an example. Star Yagami's growth comes from three most important points: the first is the skill, he mastered the skill of Pegasus Meteor Fist; the second is the mentality, he insisted on the pursuit of the goal of perseverance, countless times beaten to death, countless times to get up; the third is the stage, he is very clear about his own state, the challenge is from the silver to the gold and then to the King of the Sea King of the Underworld, although he is the challenge of the inter-levels, but he is in a very clear perception of their own stage, if the cartoon a start, the first time I saw the cartoon, I was very happy. A clear perception, if the comic started out to challenge the bottom boss, there must not be any good results is not it?

We'll start with the skills chapter.

Practicing ten years, my interview questions basically did not change much. First, do you have aspirations? Secondly, do you have any specialties? What are your hobbies? The third question is compared with others, you have different? What are the advantages that make you better suited for this kind of work than others?

The third question actually cuts to a different level. Ideal is your future, specialty is your present, and different is your perception of yourself. On the surface these are just three questions that seem quite unrelated, but from the answers to these three questions, you can learn whether or not you have a clear perception of your state.

Why are these three questions important?

There's an answer from our company vp that I think explains why better: when introspecting, it's important to distinguish whether this is your long board, short board, or bottleneck? Before we have always said, to make up for their own short board, but to the fast-changing mobile Internet era, the workplace less and less people care about how short your short board is, but valued your long board in the end how long it is, how much core value can be played, and how to solve the bottleneck problem. And the interviewer's answer to the question, in my opinion, is for their own perception of a very good way to ask, but also a very good examination of the entry point.

Four, the core of the product quality model

I refined the core of the product quality model, basically summarized as these four points.

The first point: insight, from the chaotic complexity of the appearance of insight into the deepest reasons.

Previously in Sogou to do the exploration engine, which is a particularly forward-looking project, simply put is similar to google now, in the user's browsing page, recommending relevant reading. As this recommendation is not based on simple keyword related, for example, like now in the search box to enter the keyword will have a drop-down question prompt. This kind of recommendation has some semantic jumps, but it's very understandable for human beings. For example, if a user is browsing for a guide to Phuket, and you recommend a cheap airfare to the island, go take a trip there!

When we first started this project, many people found it difficult to do, and the team said how should we carry out this work? The answer I gave was to look at the user session, which is the details of the page a user is browsing, how long they spent searching, whether they flipped or scrolled, where they clicked, and where they spent their time. I have an impressive case, a user in the Taobao page to look at the afternoon sneakers, she tried to change a variety of keywords to search for the desired sneakers, such as Nike, pink, size 37, etc., exhausting all kinds of ways, and finally it should be close to the end of the time, she spent less than three minutes, jumped to three pages: the search page, the details of the product, the payment, and bought a purifier.

I'm sure many men can't understand how women think about shopping, just as they can't understand why Taobao's shopping cart is capped at 99, but most women are perennially full. So from a lot of appearances, we need to go to a deep insight, in order to better understand standing behind these phenomena, the basic situation of people.

The second important ability is empathy.

All product managers know some very popular words, such as user pain points ah, user value ah, demand ah and so on, every day hanging mouth. But we seriously reflect on it, you really stand in the user's point of view to think about it? This I borrow the case of WeChat to share it. Recently with their team have in-depth business contact, they gave me a really big impact. Everyone, to complete each function, have fully thought about the user in this scenario in a variety of ways to play, not polished to the extreme, not on line. We may have unconvinced, may as well ask yourself a question, when the KPI and user value conflict, which one will you choose? Many people will say that they may choose KPI, yet WeChat chooses the user value, the hardest thing is that the size of their team has reached one or two thousand people, they can still do it every person who does the product think this way, this is WeChat team is very cow place.

The third is the ability to generalize.

We should have a clearer logic, it is inevitable. Do product must deal with the development, you do not have the logic to support, excessive jump development will not be recognized.

The fourth with the last one together, that is, the ability to interpret.

Many people only induction process, there is no thinking process, I think the product demand is not from the induction, if from the induction of the world's product demand has been done, in fact, in many places need to jump. Then this kind of jump is completed and then backward back to the part, is the deduction.

The above four is the most important core of the product quality model, if at the same time have these four qualities, then congratulations, you are very suitable for doing products.

Fifth, from the quality model mapping to the character

Excellent product manager's character is manifested as follows: the first hobbies wide range of N skills, for many **** of the beauty of things, such as music, art, and have the ability to appreciate. The second is easy to be moved by the story, there is a sensibility layer, so that it is easy to have empathy, you can better think differently. Third rational and calm, things are organized, there is such a beautiful quality as obsessive-compulsive disorder, do not give up in the face of setbacks have resilience. The fourth in the character level have split, random, sky sky part, this is the foundation of your do thinking jump.

The root cause, because the product is not a rely on reason, logic to carry out the work, the need for very much imagination and sensibility of the ability to perceive.

Then there are probably most people who feel that they don't hit all of the above types. Don't worry, to a large extent, the product industry has planning, operation, data and other branches. Take the specific product planning as an example, in which there are more sub-divisions, such as commercial, strategic, client-side type, their requirements for the ability model will be different. Today came a lot of practitioners, here to give you a suggestion, if cross-industry job-hopping, it is best to be in a vertical dimension, we jumped in the depth of their own industry dimension is better, for example, you can be from the Baidu phoenix nest of commercial product managers, jumping to something like 58 to do vertical O2O.

Of course, the most important thing is to find the most suitable for their own, such as the strategy type of product in fact needs to jump ability It will not be very strong, to be very strong data mining ability and reasoning ability, logic to be very strict, very precise, so that you can have a very good cooperation with the team, the whole strategy to do very well. Therefore, we need to have a very clear understanding of the product industry we are working in. Especially when we just entered the job market, we must find the most suitable for their own development of the market segment, just like the product, the tone of the right, the follow-up can have a more permanent development.

Sixth, mentality: the practice of mindfulness

Then again, the mentality of the chapter, which has a little chicken soup. But if the chicken soup you only as chicken soup to see, then it is only a bowl of soup. If you can make sense of the truth of it, it will help a lot.

Many people speak of opportunity, in fact, has it ever occurred to us that every day is to make choices, for example, you open a meeting, you are silent at the meeting performance or performance of positive, today's program to give is conservative or very radical, every step in the work, are choices. Choices will accumulate into opportunities, opportunities will eventually trigger qualitative change. Opportunity comes from the accumulation of quantity, opportunity does not just come.

Every success is not by chance, I do not have so much contact with the gods, more profound is the WeChat and the application of treasure, with their personal thinking, as well as the overall state of the team, success is absolutely not by chance. The reason why the gods become gods, is that this person even if not engaged in the product of this industry, they in other industries will certainly also do the top.

The person who can control the big picture should have three abilities:

One of them is called passion, and passion means that you are good at learning, and you are eager for knowledge.

The second big picture, in the rapid development of the industry, if you only look at the immediate thing is not to do great things.

The third is responsible, when the boss really accountable for the product is not good product managers can be brave to come forward when the problem. Only those who face up to their own problems can change the problem, bad things happen when they are desperately trying to push on others in fact, is to give up the opportunity to change their own, these three points to everyone.

Seven, the product manager of the four major stages

Lastly, the stages of the chapter, we do the product everyone needs to understand what they are currently in a state, and know what the next stage is like, so that there is a very clear goal, will be better to improve. Here to do a summary of the product stage, divided into four stages. The first stage of the demand for entry. Generally, it is a product manager who has been practicing for one to three years, and is able to disassemble the complex requirements below the medium level into a document, and the key issues are not reworked, and the idea has an effect after the launch. In particular, I want to note that I am talking about the results here are effective, not the measurement of the process.

The second is the requirements primer. The ability to break down very complex requirements in a complete way, the logic is complete, the requirements are reliable.

The first and second phases together, I call it "a glimpse of the panther in the tube" stage, because it is only a partial understanding, so it is inevitably "visible".

The third is the middle stage of demand. Can implement the target direction into the plan, and from the plan to further disassemble into the version, this is the planning level of the product stage, in this stage, basically can cover a small and medium-sized products. I made a more common name, "see the mountain is the mountain".

The last one is Requirements High Level. I'm in the process of figuring this out myself, so I can only sketchily summarize here and above. The core of this stage is to build a product architecture, I think the essence is insight into human nature, back to basics stage. This type of master, can be in a very complex clue, find the most critical point, build the entire product architecture. Architecture level is "see the mountain is not the mountain" state, in the master of the deconstruction, the mountain is not a specific mountain, but a very clear path, as well as in this path to see the scenery.

Today's time is limited, so I'm going to focus on the first two stages of the detailed deconstruction. Wandering outside the door as well as just entering the door basically belongs to the first stage, entry level. Before the old criticism of our team of people, many just recently graduated from school, requirements written very student-like.

The first is that there is no user needs analysis, they feel that they have, but in my eyes is not a user needs analysis, just their own generation of yyy.

The second is that it is easy to do too much unfolding in the unnecessary places, we do product is very easy to get high, to get a point feel that this point to do is really too cattle, too perfect, must do very good picture, with a large paragraph text description, in the I'm not sure if I've ever done too much preparation work in an unnecessary place, but I've skipped the core logic and reasoning, and I think I've put the cart before the horse a little bit.

Thirdly, we have just embarked on the post of product manager, I do not know whether the title of the manager is easy to cause some illusion, so the inertia of this identity, so that everyone is very concerned about their own identity, and I hate to be in every place to reflect my right to speak as a product manager, authoritative. Get the demand, more directly from the resource perspective analysis, strategic analysis, rather than the user's dimension.

Demand primary: why are you still hovering in place?

People who have been working for two or three years, the most important thing you need at this stage is to advance. There is a sense of exhaustion at this stage, thinking why do I feel as if I'm not progressing? I've been stagnating, why does it always look like this?

This time you have to ask yourself, the first question , what is the structure of your thinking? Linear? Faceted? Or structured? The height of your thinking determines your stage of progress.

The second question is, do you really understand what it means to "express yourself well"? Many people in the interview, I asked "you think the most important quality of the product manager is what time", 90% of people will answer the communication ability. In fact, I think we understand the communication ability is very one-sided, communication ability is essentially not a skill thing, is the logical structure of your thinking, many times communication is not clear, not a bad attitude, but because of the organization of our thinking and listening to the opposite side of the person is not in a state that can be a dialogue.

The third question is, what is the fundamental point of your career? Is it clear? Return to the previous interview questions, remember my entry point? What you do and what you are good at match? This thing to have a deep knowledge.

In our version of the planning process, the work of two to three years of people may be a lot of people have this experience, write a full, time schedule is very well thought out plan. It may seem fine at first, but in fact, is the thinking really clear?

Many project plans, in my opinion, is just a list, what is the key node of your project? Key nodes between one, two, three, four, five, there is a relationship? There is a main line? As a product, up first to write the project plan, the pressure did not mention your product needs to meet the user needs is what? What experience do you need to bring to the user within six months? Back to the user value, this should be the main line of the product.

Eight, sand in the long-distance running shoes

Execution is the biggest enemy of people with imagination. Execution is a very important thing, we many times mention WeChat are saying how to speak of the product, how, I strongly recommend that we take WeChat's earliest release schedule on the right, to study that time, the WeChat team is a kind of version of the gesture, and the market to compete for time. Execution is the premise of all work, without this, do not mention product design. How about a good idea, without execution everything is empty talk.

In a long career, we have to keep enough curiosity. Curiosity is good for a short period of time, but it's really hard for a long period of time. People who are willing to take the initiative to learn is actually very few, I often recommend a lot of books to the people around me, but the effect is not very good, I have thought about this problem, why people are not willing to learn? Later figured out that is, you if you do not encounter a problem, do not want to go through the books to find the answer, you will not want to go to study.

Learning is a very tiring thing, we have to find the curiosity, willing to be based on that point, from that place to cut into the better, rather than the clouds, today the Internet announced a Ma Yun's list of books, tomorrow out of a Ma Huateng's list of books, we began to read, which will not have the effect of you read the end of the forgotten.

Again, when it comes to insight, I've emphasized many times today the importance of this quality for product people. The insight I'm talking about here is not simply a scenario where you see an escalator and say "ah this design is ergonomic", this phenomenal association is too shallow. I would like to ask everyone here, have you ever done newbie teaching in a new product? Have you done product guidance? And why do you do it?

If you don't love to learn, why let users learn? So I especially agree with Zhang Xiaolong share mentioned, all to the user to set up a new user guide as well as the new user process teaching is a very anti-human practices, they do not love to learn why the learning imposed on the user.

Just now is the part of personal development, the next part of the industry, due to space limitations, can only later find opportunities to share with you, the industry is changing particularly fast, changing day by day, everyone has to remain very conscious of the state in order to continue to develop in this industry.

Nine, the demand for common misconceptions

Lastly, I'd like to share some words from the bottom of the box, the so-called demand for common misconceptions.

The first, do not do competitive research. Practicing for many years, this case is really encountered too much, the product to do after the demand, get the hands of the big boss, he first do not look at how you think, but ask you Baidu said how to do? Tencent is how to do? Taobao is how to do? This cultural atmosphere, or such a leadership principle, guiding principle, there is a very big problem. I believe that many people here, the beginning of their career is to do competitive analysis. I think this is really very bad habit.

When you research competitors, your market, your goals are already limited to researching and imitating competitors. However, many times the subversion, not from the same dimension, just like the circle of friends to subvert the microblogging, is not a direct competitive relationship, so competitor research this thing we must be very careful.

So do not do competitive research, what should be done? To do competitive insights. Or to cite the example of microblogging, Long told a thing particularly touching, said you have to observe the user trend in the user how to use, for example, when they were observing the microblogging, mainly look at the time of everyone posting, everyone posting text type, etc., you in the end want to do in the eyes of others in the eyes of you or in the eyes of your own you, from which to corroborate the observation of the user trend, rather than look at the Sina microblogging what features, Tencent microblogging what features. What are the features of Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo? This kind of imitation is too elementary.

Insight explains the why, not the how. I've been reading a book called "A Brief History of Humankind" for the past two days, and I think it's a great book to read if you have any questions about the origins of humankind. For example, we know that this dynasty followed by this dynasty, we know it is so, but do not know why? When you don't know why this is so, the logic behind this thing can't be well understood. I think if you do competitive plagiarism, you really copied very fur.

Ten, do not do discrete user interviews, to do user insights

There is also a demand for a common misunderstanding is not to do discrete user interviews, user interviews like Schr?dinger's cat, when the observer of the user to the perturbation, has meant that there is no correct answer. We go back and read the detailed theory of Schr?dinger's cat, and we will not repeat it here. The user level also has to do insights, I am a circle, there is a circle outside of us, due to the natural exclusivity of human nature, we will subconsciously ignore the non-owner's kind - them. For the vast majority of users, are being you are categorized outside of our circle.

Our perception of "I" is much larger than what we subconsciously think, and the product manager will amplify the "I" dimension after substituting a group. However, the number of labeled "we" is much smaller than imagined. Usually, we say "we have **** sex", "we have curiosity", "we are all hip", "we are all how so and so". "are how so and so", in fact, this label hits very few people, the larger scope, is the unknown "they".

Therefore, the product should be kept in awe. Don't bring yourself easily, but do a good job of user insights to understand well how "they" think.

There is also a misconception that many people talk about the technical aspects of making products. I've always instilled in my team the idea that when writing requirements, you must not consider technical issues. When you are doing the program, you have too many technical level ideas, with too many practical level ideas to do out must be a compromise program, if you do a compromise program, and finally failed, how will clearly know their own ideas in which place went wrong? For resources, technical capabilities, realization of the situation, etc., do not do these things to consider, so that the product must not be good things, not on behalf of your level, so be sure to do the perfect design for the user, do not do too much complexity of the imagination.

I think success for everyone, may be just a very short process, the average person to a step above, think must be my next stage where? The next intersection should be how to go? So I myself feel that pain is but the norm in life, happiness is not a short node, life is a practice, after experiencing such a practice, I believe that we will find their own in this industry can be a permanent foothold in the point.

This can be supported by something, not because five years later to 30 years old, or even a little older will be lost, it is a kind of growth in your heart, is your grasp of the future of life, is your cognition of their own now, is your understanding of the whole world and curiosity.

I am sure you will find your answer in the process of practicing.