I’m inferring by “advance” you mean moving from an individual contributor PM to a role where you’re a manager of other PMs. If so, then the ideal path is straightforward:
- Work on an existing team that’s growing fast enough that more PMs will be needed OR be the first PM on a new team (e.g. in a startup or a new project at a BigCo). If you’re growing fast, there will be a point where a PM manager is needed.
- Succeed in both your core job and your soft skills: teamwork, managing up, etc. Hugely impress your peers and your management chain by becoming known as someone who rallies people to get hard things done without your colleagues hating you in the process. Understand the company culture and exemplify it. Don’t be a jerk. (Unless that’s the company culture!) When the time comes to hire a PM lead, your management will naturally think of promoting you into that role instead of hiring outside the team, because hiring an outsider is often riskier and more time-consuming than promoting a superstar with known strengths and weaknesses.
Sounds easy, right? Not exactly. Here’s a few things I’ve observed over the years:
- Most talented individual contributor PMs won’t be great managers. From my completely anecdotal dataset, I’d guess 1 in 5 PMs have great manager potential, maybe another 1 in 5 could do an OK job, and the other 60% would be awful.
- But… it’s really hard to get your management to promote you unless you’re a great PM. Even if a great PM Manager is 80% “great manager” and 20% “great PM”, that’s not usually obvious to the people who would promote you.
- Most PMs who really *want* to be managers are not going to be good managers. In my experience, there’s a negative correlation.
- Great PMs are often immersed in the “flow” of work. PMs who are laser-focused on building and shipping great products are usually too busy to claw their way up the corporate ladder.
- Managing people well requires self-awareness that managing people is hard, that failure is possible, and that there are downsides to becoming a manager. Ambivalence is a good sign in a potential manager candidate. Hubris and entitlement are a signal of unreadiness.
- Successful PMs are often opinionated and pushy. As a manager, you must work more collaboratively and deliberately. You can’t be a smart loose cannon anymore. This is a hard adjustment for some.
- Most teams aren’t growing fast enough to need new managers. This is true at most startups, where if you’re not the head of product then it will usually be years (think: IPO or Series D) before another level of PM management is needed under the VP. This is also true in most BigCo teams— if the team’s been around for more than a year, management opportunities are usually limited.
OK, now that I’ve answered the question you asked, here’s my *real* advice.
Try to honestly define “advance” for yourself. What do you want? More responsibility? More money? A job with more prestige? Training for being a startup VP or CEO? If you understand what you want— and what you don’t—you’ll be in a better position to achieve it.
Many PMs think that becoming a manager is the only way to career growth. This is wrong. For example, many individual contributor PMs at Google and Facebook were startup CEOs or very senior PMs at other companies. Do they manage PMs? Nope. Do they make a crapload more $$$ than most PM managers? Yep. Do they have more impact and influence than most PM managers? Yep. Are they better positioned than most PM leads to start their own company or to land a sweet VP gig at a fast growing startup? You betcha.
Net-net, my overall advice is to stop worrying about becoming a manager. Focus on finding great, fast-growing teams where you can learn how to be a great PM. Then focus on building profitable products that users love. Don’t overly obsess over career growth. Rinse and repeat. The rest will take care of itself.