# What being a PM is really like - Software is easy, People are hard DevFeed: [What being a PM is really like - Software is easy, People are hard]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Map Published: 2016-01-28T20:55:56Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Craig Kerstiens]() Topics: [data](), [decision-making](), [Users](), [dashboards](), [SQL](), [User experience (UX)]() Tags: [product-management](), [startups]() ## AI overview The article describes the day-to-day work of a product manager, emphasizing that the role involves substantial data gathering, customer interaction, user studies, and dashboard maintenance rather than only high-level strategy. It presents these activities as practical examples of product decision-making. ## Source excerpt In recent months I've had the question nearly once a week about advice/tips for becoming a Product Manager or more commonly referred to as PM. These are generally coming from people that are either currently engineers, or previously were and are in some engineer/customer role such as a sales engineer or solution architect. There's a number of high level pieces talking about PM and it often feels glorious, I mean you get to make product decisions right? You get to call some shots. Well that sometimes may be true, but don't assume it's all rainbows and sparkles. Especially as a first time PM what your day to day will look like won't be debating strategy all day long. Here's a few of the good and the bad sides of being a PM. Plenty of grunt work While you may get to make a decision or two, the bulk of your time will not be thinking about grandiose visions, instead you'll be doing a lot to gather data. There's a lot of means for gathering data across lots of sources, the more you use the better you'll be. Knowing the ones you steer towards, as well as ones you steer away from is useful so you can balance a bias more fairly. For myself SQL is a go-to, then customer interactions both qualitative and quantitative such as surveys, following what media is saying about your space is important as well. And while user studies are often relegated to design and UX, as a PM you need to make sure it at least happens (Invision App is a favorite for lightweight tests). In a given week I probably spend 10 hrs interacting with customers, looking at data, and sadly that's probably not enough. A few practical examples of this Each morning I send emails to 10-20 users who used the product for the first time, yes this is automated but carving out 30 minutes of my day to actually follow-up with each of them is less automated. Another example is keeping a health of business dashboard up to date. Personally I use google sheets for this. Within one spreadsheet I have monthly and weekly targets