Career advice for Google AI Product Managers is unexpectedly harsh.
Marilee Nika, who has worked in AI product roles for more than a decade, said on Sunday's episode of Aakash Gupta's The Growth Podcast that aspiring product managers should “be like crabs.”
“That means you have to act in parallel with what you've been doing before,” Nika said, adding that past experience can be a competitive advantage.
Nika shared the example of an AI Product Management Boot Camp student who worked in the hearing aid industry and felt stuck and closed off from the technology industry. The student believed he was in a “completely different realm” and didn't see a clear path to product management, she said.
Nika encouraged him to think more closely about how his experience could be applied. They checked Apple's career site and found an opening for a product manager working on AirPods. This is a role that may involve hearing expertise.
“We need to be open-minded. We need to really incorporate our past experiences because that's what will differentiate us,” Nika said.
Nika also shared another example of a sports journalist who was looking to move into an AI product manager role in the sports field. Rather than fearing not having a traditional product resume, Nika advised relying on your area of expertise. Product skills can be learned, but a deep understanding of users and the industry is hard to replace, she said.
Skills a product manager should have
Nika said that “AI literacy” is now essential for product managers.
“Understand the unique complexities that AI brings and how dependent we are on data,” she said, explaining how AI is expected to play that role.
Aspiring product managers also need to understand “what's behind the coding,” such as knowing what APIs are and how products are shipped.
Other technology industry leaders and employees echo the same message.
Last year, Dropbox's vice president of AI products and growth told Business Insider that product managers need to become familiar with new AI tools, such as the Vibe coding tool, which allows non-programmers to rapidly prototype ideas.
Instead of spending time creating documentation, product managers can use AI tools to build lightweight prototypes and test ideas early, he said. This, he added, helps “accelerate their thinking about developing their tastes, developing their skills and understanding the meaning of physical products.”
A senior product manager at Microsoft told Business Insider in December that product managers will increasingly be expected to leverage AI to speed up their work. He said that AI tools allowed him to draft working documents, summarize information, and generate recommendations for approaching product management problems.
