A reader was curious as to what resources I found most helpful while transitioning into Product Management from a non-technical background [1]. Below is a list of things that I have found both helpful and rewarding, which are mostly about Product Management related topics. Most of the online resources are free. I’ll update this with new resources later on as I learn more.
Note: Product Management is done quite differently in different companies, but the resources below are applicable across a wide range of companies and roles.
General Management
- Ian McAllister’s Quora answers. Ian McAllister shares a lot of great learnings from his 12+ years in Manager and Director roles at Amazon, Microsoft, and Airbnb.
- First Round Review articles. Possibly the best source of reliable, consistent, relevant content on product management, company strategy, people management, and much more.
- [book] Creativity, Inc.*
- [book] A More Beautiful Question*.
Design
- [book] Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love*.
- [online blog] Julie Zhuo’s articles. Julie Zhuo shares her learnings on product design and more. She’s a VP of Design at Facebook. Her website links to top content you may want to get started with.
- [book] The Inmates Are Running the Asylum*.
Agile
Technical knowledge
- [online course] Dash: General Assembly. this interactive online course helped me understand quickly how to bring together HTML, CSS, and basic JavaScript.
- [book] JavaScript & jQuery: The Missing Manual*. this book was fundamental to get me more comfortable with JavaScript & jQuery.
- [online course] CodeCademy: Make an Interactive Website.
- [online course] CodeCademy: Python.
- [online course] Harvard CS50 on EdX. I completed roughly half of the course and nothing has been more helpful for me to understand the fundamentals of Computer Science. The course is taught on C and although quite time intensive it was fun and rewarding.
- [book] The Datacenter as a Computer [free pdf]: on understanding infrastructure components.
Entrepreneurship & Product Strategy
- [online course] Entrepreneurship: Coursera Specialization by Wharton. Product management is a highly entrepreneurial activity. I found this course to be helpful at general product strategy.
- [book] Zero to One*.
* Note: I use some affiliate links in this post, marked with an asterisk. If you click through and purchase products I earn a small referral fee at no cost to you.
[1] Post inspired by a question a reader submitted via Medium on https://omareduardo.com/2017/05/21/my-transition-into-product-management-from-a-non-technical-background/
