How Yosef Sukenik got into Product Management

Yosef Sukenik

Technical Product Manager

First product job

🐣 Joined a company as a PM in 2017

Before becoming a PM

💼 Project Manager

💻 5 years of exp. in tech companies

🎓 Industrial Engineering

The Story

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

I moved from a consulting firm to an early stage startup and was a jack of all trades. I learned to apply project analysis & management skills to a host of things, ending up running a team of analysts turning user behavior and feedback into actionable product recommendations. With my current job, I shifted from being the person recommending product work to being the person doing the product work. It’s great having end-to-end ownership of a product.

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

Before and in my first years working in tech, I was in education as a side-light. I was an instructor in the military, taught in a college, and worked with teens. The people and storytelling skills from that era have served me well in my professional life.

The challenge

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

Estimating resources and balancing them between multiple projects. Project A needs 20 hours of design time (but only if the client supplies x and if not, 40 hours) while Project B also needs 20 hours and both clients need delivery estimates. In my first few months, I often ended up either short on resources or with slack capacity.

As my UX skills improved, I was able to better envision the needed solutions and got better at estimating the work needed.

Did you have an MBA before getting your PM job? How did it help?

My degree was in Industrial Engineering which covers much of the same ground and yes, understanding the broader business concepts helped immensely in translating stakeholder business needs into defined product features.

Connect with Yosef Sukenik on Linkedin

How Yosef Sukenik Got Into Product Management

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