Who Am I
Hello! And welcome to the first edition of the Complete Intro to Product Management as taught by Brian Holt.
This course is designed to give you an intro to product management, particularly for those who are already working in tech somewhere (like as an engineer or a designer) and those now looking to break into product management. In this course, we will go over what a product manager does and does not do, how to be an effective product manager, and tips and tricks of the trade as I have learned over the years.
One critical note for this class: there are many, many, many ways to be a good product manager. Unlike tech, where there is a generally acceptable way to write code and generally a realm of correct answers, this is a much more subjective field that can be done in infinite ways. I will give you my perspective and try to speak to a broad perspective, but this course is extremely colored by my personal experience. Take nothing said here as law but more as suggestions of places to start your own journey of learning.
Who is this course for
You, hopefully. 😄 This course is for anyone who wants to be a product manager. I will do my best to speak to everyone, but this course speaks well to those who are already software engineers, designers, QA engineers, etc., as that was my journey into tech. Be sure to let me know if you have unanswered questions so I can cover them in subsequent versions of this course.
Where to File Issues
I write these courses and take care to avoid making mistakes. However, when teaching hours of material, mistakes are inevitable, both here in the grammar and in the course with the material. However, I (and the wonderful team at Frontend Masters) are constantly correcting the mistakes so that those of you that come later get the best product possible. If you find an error, we'd love to fix it. The best way to do this is to open a pull request or file an issue on the GitHub repo. While I'm always happy to chat and give advice on social media, I can't be tech support for everyone. And if you file it on GitHub, those who come later can Google the same answer you got.
Who am I
My name is Brian Holt, and I am a product manager at Snowflake. I work specifically on a project called Streamlit which allows data scientists and Python developers to write amazing data visualization and AI apps without the aid of a frontend developer, empowering Python devs to do more. I have also worked as a PM on developer tools and SDKs at Stripe as well as a PM on Visual Studio Code and Azure at Microsoft. Previous to being a PM, I was a developer advocate at Microsoft and a staff software engineer at LinkedIn, Netflix, Reddit, and some other smaller companies. I am now halfway through my MBA at Seattle University, focusing on executive leadership.
I never thought I'd be a PM, but I've been happily doing it for nearly half my career. We'll get more into my journey later, but I wanted to shine a light on my bias here: I wrote code for a long time, and now I have been a PM of developer tools since then.
When I'm not working or developing new Frontend Masters courses, you'll find me in Seattle, WA. I love to snowboard, travel, hang out with my wife and son, get out of breath on my Peloton, play Dota 2 and Diablo IV poorly, as well as drink Islay Scotches, local IPAs, and coffees.
Catch up with me on social media! I'll be honest: I'm not great at responding to DMs. The best way to talk to me is just to tweet at me.
- Bluesky
- GitHub
- Peloton (you have to be a member and signed in for this link to work)
And one last request! Please star this repo. It helps the course be more discoverable, and with my fragile ego ⭐️
