I became a PM for the first time a few years ago, and also recently took up some bass guitar again for the first time in about 2 decades.
To practice for a cover I was checking out this music video of classic rock hit Venus by Shocking Blue looking for the bass player and noticing the relative roles and positions in the band.
… It struck me that there are some interesting parallels between bass players and PMs.
Note: to be taken tongue-in-cheek rather than seriously.
- Both are a more of a ‘background’ role that typically — and in music videos like the above or on stage, literally — isn’t quite as much in the spotlight as others.
- Both are in many ways the ‘bridge’ that ties together things: a bass player ties together the steady underlying foundation of drums with the more highly visible and tangible guitars and vocals. A PM ties together the steady underlying foundation of company strategy and customer/user insights with the more highly visible and tangible design and engineering work.
- Both feel intuitively more ‘easy’ and accessible at first glance compared to more technical things like, say, guitar solos or software engineering.
- Both tend to be guided around, and practiced through, commonly known structures. Like Product Frameworks and major/minor scales. A major part of initially starting out is ‘learning the lingo’ of these until they become second nature. A major part of growing in the role is understanding nuances: when it makes sense to follow, and when it makes sense to diverge from them.
- Both have hugely known and influencial ‘superstars’ within their space that nobody has ever heard of outside of it. Ask people about Marty Cagan and Victor Wooten and you get very similar looks. Typically somewhere between a polite nod and a vacant stare.
- The truly brilliant superstars that become mainstream household names tend to be associated with something in addition to it, or by virtue of the success of the larger company/band they are associated with. Few in history have achieved the heights in product management and crafting bass lines that Steve Jobs and Paul McCarney did, but it’s not the first thing you tend to think about when hearing their names.
- You often roll into it from an adjacent role. Did you know Paul McCartney started out on rhythm guitar with the Beatles?
- Taken on their own they are err… pretty pointless. A software startup without any engineering sounds about as appealing as a bass without any other instruments, or having some tasty salt without fries.
- Those times when you manage to get it just right it’s highly valuable and satisfying, and a ton of fun :)
Now, where can we find some data on this?