道路工程结构计算软件

by Sari Harrison

莎莉·哈里森(Sari Harrison)

我从软件工程到产品管理的道路 (My path from software engineering to product management)

以及一些有关如何自己做的建议 (And some advice on how to do it yourself)

I am often asked how to make the move to product management. By software engineers, project managers, product marketing managers, data scientists, people in QA… I wonder if they know what they are asking for.

经常有人问我如何转向产品管理。由软件工程师，项目经理，产品营销经理，数据科学家，质量保证人员……我想知道他们是否知道自己的要求。

Here’s how it happened for me.

这对我来说是怎么回事。

一见钟情 (Love at first program)

My father bought the family a computer when I was 12. It came with a BASIC programming manual and I dove right into everyone’s first program — Hello World! Then moved onto copying the code for the “Sorry!” game from the manual, finding and fixing a bunch of bugs.

我父亲12岁那年给家人买了一台计算机，它带有BASIC编程手册，我喜欢上每个人的第一个程序-Hello World！然后继续复制“对不起！”的代码手册中的游戏，查找并修复许多错误。

As a kid, I always loved doing puzzles, and programming was like solving puzzles to make the computer do what I wanted. I was instantly hooked and I decided that I was going to major in computer science. Yes, at 12.

小时候，我一直喜欢做拼图，而编程就像解决难题一样，使计算机能够完成我想要的事情。我立刻被迷住了，我决定要去上计算机科学专业。是的，在12点。

I look back at that and marvel a bit. So decisive… Such great listening to my intuition… Why can’t I do that all the time ?? I’ve only experienced that kind of clarity a few times in my life. Another one being the move to PM. But I’m jumping ahead.

我回头看，有点惊讶。如此果断……听见我的直觉真是太好了……我为什么不能一直那样做？我一生中只经历过几次这种清晰度。另一个是转向PM。但是我向前迈进了。

苹果第一回合 (Apple Round 1)

After college, I landed my dream job as a software engineer at Apple, back in the days of John Sculley. I worked on the Apple Internet Router under Alan Oppenheimer, who literally wrote the book on Apple’s networking stack.

大学毕业后，我回到了约翰·斯卡利(John Sculley)时代，在苹果担任软件工程师，这是我梦dream以求的工作。我在艾伦·奥本海默 ( Alan Oppenheimer )领导下的Apple Internet Router上工作，他实际上是在苹果的网络堆栈上写这本书。

I was practically the only female engineer on the team. The guy that was setting up my phone asked me if I was “supporting” Alan. Took me a few minutes to realize he thought I was Alan’s new admin. But again, I digress…

我实际上是团队中唯一的女工程师。设置我手机的那个人问我是否在“支持”艾伦。花了我几分钟时间才意识到他以为我是艾伦的新管理员。但是我又离题了……

I worked at Apple for 8.5 years in round 1 (we’ll save round 2 for another time). I had 4 CEO’s. After John Sculley, there was Michael Spindler, Gil Amelio, and then the return of Steve Jobs.

我在第一轮在Apple工作了8.5年(我们将另存第二轮)。我有4位CEO。在约翰·斯卡利(John Sculley)之后，有迈克尔·斯宾德勒(Michael Spindler)，吉尔·阿梅里奥(Gil Amelio)，然后是史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)的回归。

When Steve came back, he laid off huge parts of the workforce and canceled many projects, including the one I was working on. I didn’t manage to get a severance package though, which at the time, we all considered the better option (what did we know?).

史蒂夫回来后，他解雇了大部分员工，并取消了许多项目，包括我正在从事的项目。不过，我没有设法获得遣散费，这在当时我们都认为是更好的选择(我们知道什么？)。

I continued on at Apple for a few more years, delivering the first version of the Apple Keychain and the first ever Internet API suite (Subwoofer). The iMac launched. I spoke at WWDC 3 times. I was successful by most definitions, including my own.

我继续在Apple工作了几年，提供了Apple Keychain的第一个版本和有史以来第一个Internet API套件(Subwoofer)。 iMac发布了。我在WWDC上发言了3次。根据大多数定义，包括我自己的定义，我都是成功的。

全面质量管理(TQM) (Total Quality Management (TQM))

Apple didn’t have product management back then (or now, for that matter). There was a very lightly staffed product marketing team that hypothetically wrote “Market Requirements Documents” (MRDs). But if I ever saw one it was done after we had written the engineering specs and added ~0 value.

苹果当时(或现在)没有产品管理。假设有一个人员很少的产品营销团队，他们撰写了“市场需求文档”(MRD)。但是，如果我看过一个，那是在我们编写了工程规格并增加了〜0值之后完成的。

Fortunately, I was born a first principles thinker. Simon Sinek was probably still in grade school, but I was starting with why anyway. My need to figure out the right thing to do next and having no one to guide me, lead me to something called TQM.

幸运的是，我是第一个原理思想家。西蒙·西内克 ( Simon Sinek )可能还在读小学，但无论如何我还是从为什么开始。我需要弄清楚下一步应该做的正确的事情，并且没有人来指导我，这使我想到了一种称为TQM的方法。

There was a TQM consultant floating around Apple working with other teams that I got wind of. And I had him come teach it to the routing team.

有一名TQM顾问在Apple周围徘徊，并与其他团队合作。我让他来教路由团队。

As it was taught to me, TQM was basically design thinking but solely focused on technology. And to be honest, there are elements of it that are above and beyond design thinking (sorry IDEO). In particular, the focus on having the whole team develop empathy for the customer, as opposed to just the designers.

据我所知，TQM基本上是设计思想，但只专注于技术。老实说，它的某些元素超出了设计思维范围(对不起IDEO)。特别是，重点在于让整个团队为客户发展同情心，而不仅仅是设计师。

So I was off and running doing customer visits and gaining product insight through empathy. Back in 1995. This lead me to my first product idea — the Apple/IP Gateway. It was a big success until IP took over most existing networks and AppleTalk was deprecated.

因此，我开始奔波进行客户拜访，并通过同理心获得产品见解。早在1995年。这使我想到了第一个产品创意-Apple / IP网关。在IP接管大多数现有网络并且不赞成使用AppleTalk之前，这是一个巨大的成功。

And it wouldn’t have come about without customer empathy. Especially since this was a B2B product. Our customers didn’t “ask” for it. I just saw the problems they had first hand and that tunneling IP through AppleTalk would help.

没有客户的同情就不可能实现。特别是因为这是B2B产品。我们的客户没有“要求”它。我刚刚看到了他们的第一手问题，并且通过AppleTalk建立IP隧道会有所帮助。

直接负责人(DRI) (Directly Responsible Individual (DRI))

After my time in routing, I moved onto the Cyberdog team which was developing a suite of Internet apps. FTP, Telnet, Gopher, SMTP, and HTML … I’m guessing many of you need to look some of those up ?. We did all this with a team of about 25 or so and I was one of the engineering managers.

在路由之后，我转到了开发一系列Internet应用程序的Cyberdog团队。 FTP，Telnet，Gopher，SMTP和HTML…我想你们中的许多人需要查找其中的一些内容吗？我们大约有25个左右的团队来完成所有这些工作，而我是工程经理之一。

After our first release, I was anointed “DRI” of Cyberdog. This concept is unique to Apple and is why there is still no product management there to speak of. The DRI is usually an engineering manager and includes both product ownership and running the engineering team creating the product.

在我们的第一个版本发布之后，我被膏了赛伯狗的“ DRI”。这个概念是Apple独有的，这就是为什么现在还没有产品管理可言的原因。 DRI通常是一名工程经理，包括产品所有权和负责创建产品的工程团队。

It is a great gig if the team is reasonably small. I loved it. Except for the minor detail that I still had to write code.

如果团队规模很小，那将是一次很棒的演出。我爱它。除了次要细节外，我仍然必须编写代码。

I liked writing code well enough, don’t get me wrong. But it required me to be completely focused, which is not always possible in a fast-paced environment. And I much preferred the rest of my job.

我很喜欢编写代码，不要误会我的意思。但这需要我完全专注，这在快节奏的环境中并不总是可能的。我更喜欢余下的工作。

I got pretty cranky sometimes. I remember the feeling when my primary tester came to my door when I was trying to figure out a super tough bug. It would take all my energy not to scream “leave me alone — I’m working!”. In hindsight, this was really good data ?.

有时候我很奇怪。我记得当我试图找出一个超级棘手的错误时，我的主要测试人员来到我家的感觉。我将不遗余力地大喊“让我一个人呆着，我在工作！”。事后看来，这真的是好数据吗？

All in all, I was a decent coder. Better at iterating on someone else’s code than starting from scratch. But I was a great DRI. I loved making tough prioritization calls. I loved user research. I loved driving the team forward, cutting through the ambiguity. I even loved writing specs.

总而言之，我是一个不错的程序员。比从头开始更好地迭代别人的代码。但是我是一个很棒的DRI。我喜欢拨打艰难的优先级电话。我喜欢用户研究。我喜欢推动团队前进，消除歧义。我什至喜欢编写规范。

Microsoft程序管理 (Microsoft Program Management)

As the DRI of Subwoofer (first ever Internet API suite), I went to Microsoft one day to see if we might want to do some code sharing with their Mac Internet Explorer team.

作为Subwoofer的DRI(第一个Internet API套件)，我有一天去了Microsoft，看看我们是否想与其Mac Internet Explorer团队进行一些代码共享。

I sat down in one of their conference rooms and in comes this guy who introduces himself as the program manager. I’m thinking “uh… can I talk to someone technical, please? Where’s the dev manager?”

我在他们的一间会议室里坐了下来，这个人介绍了自己作为项目经理。我在想：“呃...我可以和技术人员谈谈吗？开发经理在哪里？”

But it turned out he was technical and understood the business. Interesting, I thought… what is this role exactly?

但事实证明，他是技术专家，了解业务。有趣的是，我想……这个角色究竟是什么？

Side note for those that haven’t worked at Microsoft. Program management is product management. The discipline started there when other tech companies had product marketing and product management as a single person. Microsoft was the first to split them up. The first to have someone completely focused on what we should build, why, and a little bit of how. And they call it “program management”.

对于那些尚未在Microsoft工作的人的旁注。程序管理是产品管理。当其他技术公司将产品营销和产品管理作为一个人的时候，这一学科就开始了。微软是第一个拆分它们的公司。第一个让某人完全专注于我们应该建造什么，为什么建造以及如何建造一点点的人。他们称之为“程序管理”。

In 2001, I got a call from a friend who used to be at Apple with me and whose company (WebTV) had been bought by Microsoft. “Sari,” he said, “we need program managers here and I thought of you.”

2001年，我接到一个朋友打来的电话，他曾经和我一起在Apple任职，其公司(WebTV)已被Microsoft收购。他说：“纱丽，我们这里需要项目经理，我想到了您。”

He knew, before I did, that I was a PM. Even though we had both spent most of our careers at Apple where they didn’t exist.

在我这样做之前，他知道我是PM。即使我们都在苹果公司度过了绝大部分的职业生涯，但他们都不存在。

I joined the team (leaving a ton of Apple stock behind, whoops…). My friend left for Google shortly thereafter. But I had found my calling from a discipline perspective and never looked back.

我加入了团队(留下了大量的苹果股票，哎呀……)。此后不久，我的朋友离开了Google。但是我从学科的角度发现了自己的呼声，再也没有回头。

最后的想法和建议 (Final Thoughts and Some Advice)

My story is one of someone who is a PM at heart and found her way to it organically. So my first question for you is exactly that:

我的故事是一个发自内心的PM并有机地找到自己的方式的人之一。因此，我的第一个问题就是：

Are you a PM at heart?

您是内心的下午吗？

Look hard at why you want to be a PM. It’s hard to understand what the role is if you aren’t already doing it, so how do you know? Why are you drawn to it? Read some of my other blogs. Are you sure?

认真思考为什么要成为一名PM。如果您还没有做过这个角色，那很难理解，那么您怎么知道呢？你为什么被它吸引？阅读其他一些博客。你确定吗？

Are you doing the job already? Without the title?

你已经在做这份工作了吗？没有标题？

If you are in an engineering, project, program, or design role today and you don’t have a PM, who is doing the work of the PM? The work — defining the product, driving things forward, being the catalyst for hard decisions getting made — has to get done. By someone.

如果您今天担任工程，项目，程序或设计职位，但您没有PM，谁来负责PM？必须完成工作-定义产品，推动发展，成为做出艰难决策的催化剂。由某人。

If it’s you, and it’s your favorite part of your job, then that’s a good sign it’s the right role for you. It’s also how you can pitch yourself in an interview.

如果是您，并且这是您工作中最喜欢的部分，那么这就是一个好信号，它对您来说是正确的角色。这也是在面试中宣传自己的方式。

Try it where you are.

在您尝试的地方尝试。

If you do have a PM, ask them if you can help in some way. Most PMs are going to jump at the chance because they are overwhelmed with work. Yes, you’ll have to do it in addition to your day job. Sorry ?‍♀️.

如果您有PM，请询问他们是否可以提供某种帮助。大多数PM都会抓住机会，因为他们不堪重负。是的，除了日常工作外，您还必须这样做。抱歉？

Making the switch in your current organization is what I recommend, if at all possible. You already know the product and the technology and that is a tremendous help.

如果可能的话，我建议在您当前的组织中进行切换。您已经知道产品和技术了，这是极大的帮助。

Let your PM leader know you are interested. Find out what they look for. Ask for ideas for how you can practice the skills required or prove you have them.

让您的项目负责人知道您有兴趣。找出他们想要的东西。询问有关如何练习所需技能或证明自己具备技能的想法。

Take a class.

上课。

Get some training. There are a bunch of product management classes you can take. I’m not going to recommend any particular one. Ask around. The main thing a class will help with is getting you exposed to what the role is and give you some vocabulary. And show hiring managers that you care enough to devote time and energy. It will also extend your network.

得到一些训练。您可以选择许多产品管理课程。我不会推荐任何特定的。问问周围。课堂将帮助您的主要事情是让您了解角色，并提供一些词汇。并向招聘经理表明您足够在意您的时间和精力。它还将扩展您的网络。

Speaking of network… What I don’t think helps all that much is “networking”. What I mean by that is attending networking events, meetups, or conferences. The relationships you start there may help you in a couple of years if you nurture them. But they won’t help anytime soon.

说到网络……我认为对网络没有多大帮助。我的意思是参加网络活动，聚会或会议。如果您培养了这种关系，那么从那里开始的关系可能会在几年内为您提供帮助。但是他们不会很快提供帮助。

Use your network.

使用您的网络。

I do think your existing network can help. That’s how I landed my first PM role without really even intending to. Someone thinking of you as a great option is the best way to get any job, including PM. So let your existing network know you want to make the switch. And no, I don’t know a short cut to building a good network ?.

我确实认为您现有的网络可以提供帮助。这就是我什至没有打算就担任我的第一任PM职位的方式。有人认为您是一个不错的选择，是获得包括PM在内的任何工作的最佳方式。因此，让您现有的网络知道您要进行切换。不，我不知道建立一个好的网络的捷径吗？