How Kevin J. Hanna got into Product Management

Kevin J. Hanna

Product Manager

First product job

🐣 Transitioned to PM in the same company in 2017

Before becoming a PM

💼 Full-Stack Developer

💻 5 years of exp. in tech companies

🎓 Computer Sciences / Software Engineering

The Story

How did you land your first job as a product manager?

I’d say luck and passion. I was multiple times “in the right place, at the right time”.

I was fortunate enough to attend a technical high school, where I learned programming and design. Even better, we learned how to create technical products. To test what we, students, had learned we were expected to develop year-long projects in groups of three. We did the whole product building life-cycle: coming up with the idea, planning it, getting the teacher’s buy-in, developing it, and presenting them at a school demo day.

After high school, I studied Software Engineering at university. While at it, I joined a startup as the first employee. That meant that on top of working as a full-stack developer, I also helped in defining what we were going to build, designing how it would look, and how users would interact with it. After a while, I started getting involved with the strategic decision making. Our goal was to reach break even (which we did, and a year later bankrupted).

During that time, Hackathons were my thing. I was thrilled with the concept of creating an MVP in 24 hours. Also, I launched a product which was successful but decided to continue studying.

Eventually, I joined a new promising bootstrapped startup as the first employee. Again as a software engineer, but this time also helping shape the company’s culture. After a year, we were serving huge retail customers and the company had grown to 30 employees. However, there wasn’t a clear product direction and we were struggling to keep up with sales and customer demands. We were simply answering requests without having a strong vision or a strategy behind it.

There weren’t any product managers in the company, and the founders knew that a product-focused approach was needed to take the company to the next level.

I was in the right place, at the right time. In the founders’ eyes I was the best candidate for the job:

→ I understood how our industry worked (which was really intrincated).

→ I knew our customers and users well. I felt their pain points, and understood aspirations.

→ I was an expert in our product. I helped build it, and explained to others how to use it.

→ I was already making business decisions (startups!).

→ There was clear evidence that I loved doing product work.

I got offered the “Head of Product” role, which was my first official product management job.

Did you ever build or lead any side-projects outside of work before becoming a PM?

100%. Building things outside of work helped me get into product management. I strongly believe that building side-projects is the best way to learn or sharpen your skills - whatever your job is. From my personal side projects, I’ve got better at writing, and prioritization.

The challenge

What was the biggest challenge in your first year as a PM?

Transitioning from a Software Engineer into a Product Manager mindset was my biggest challenge.

I used to measure my productivity in code. I used to translate new features into how well I was doing at the job. With some mentoring, I realized my internal KPIs had to change. I would have to measure my productivity and the impact I was contributing in a different way. Realizing and internalizing that was my challenge.

Connect with Kevin J. Hanna on Linkedin

How Kevin J. Hanna Got Into Product Management

Aspiring PM?

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