Product School

I was a student at Product School NYC during the summer of 2016.  I learned a ton, and not only from the instructor but from the other students as well as the guests that were brought in to help teach, share their experiences, and provide feedback on our projects/resumes/etc. 

 

I would highly recommend Product School to anyone who has at least a couple years of work experience, but has never worked directly in a product management role.  My classmates came from all backgrounds, but everyone had relevant work/professional/life experiences that give them a different perspective on the PM role. 

 

The course provided an overview of every aspect of a software PM's job, and introduced me to the tasks, the terminology, the software that a PM needs to be familiar with.

I found out about Product School through one of my mentors. After doing quite a bit of research, analyzing the curriculum, attending a meetup hosted by PS, and reaching out to the CEO, I came to the conclusion that this was he right program for me. I applied and very soon got an interview over the phone. The phone interview was to see if I as a right fit for the program; despite being younger than most of the program applicants, my experience and my future goals aligned very well with the curriculum and program mission. My goal in attending Product School was to apply a methodology to the product I am building as well as be prepared for any future career opportunities or endevours. Product School went beyond my expectations. In my opinion, the price of the program is far below its actual value.

I attended the Saturday cohort taught by Ben Shanken, Product Manager at Lyft. Ben is an amazing instructor with amazing talent and evident passion for product. I now consider Ben one of my great mentors and hope to continue learning from him. Ben related the Product School curriculum to all of his past product experience. This is where Product School excels above their competitors - relating methodology to actual real life product management; theory is nice, but when you introduce people, teams, and unique problems, this is where theory falls apart. I learned more from Ben’s experiences than I have ever learned in all the PM books I have read. Thanks to Ben and the PS team I feel a lot more confident in tackling real company problems in the future.

Throughout the program I was also able to learn from Carlos, the CEO. I also joined in on a few courses of the week cohort. This allowed me to meet different product managers with different backgrounds and unique experiences. The Slack community of product managers is also available to me and one that I will continue to tap into for support, knowledge, and mentorship. I am big on having mentors and PS has expanded my network of mentors tremendously.

The curriculum covered everything from customer interviews, to metrics, to thigs like public speaking and team communication. It re-inforced a lot of the things I have read on my own and taught me some new tools and techniques to apply to my product carreer. Product Management methodology is so new and it is such a niche carreer that it is sometimes vey difficult to find all of the information you need all in one place - PS succeeds at this too. The past few years I have done Product Management for several companies without the title or standarized methodology, PS helped me consolidate my experiences in order to advance my carreer opportunities. I now feel extremely confident of my skills as a PM thanks to Ben and the PS curriculum.

Overall, Product School has been an amazing and very rewarding experience. My classmates are now people I can reach out to for support. I will forever be thankful for the program, curriculum, staff, and mentors; I highly recommend the program for anyone wanting to begin or accelerate their product management journey.

I took the Product School class in New York, taught by Rayyan. Each week, we tackled a different aspect of product management, from scrum/working with developers to product marketing. The discussions were engaging, and I met a lot of great classmates. For me, the best part of the class was learning about common tools product managers use (Marvel, Sketch, etc.) and then using them in my course project. Pretty cool!

The team at Product School puts on great extracurricular events and has a strong network in NYC that you become a part of after you complete the program.

Product School is not only for people who want to transition to be Product Managers, but also for experienced product manager to reinforce their skill sets and advance their careers.

I signed up for the Summer weekend cohort started in mid-June 2016 in its new Silicon Valley location. The reason I signed up for Product School was to learn the latest tools and skills for a Product Manager. I have been in Product Management in the past 5-6 years in an enterprise cloud company. I had taken Pragmatic Marketing many years ago; but that's more focus on outbound PM skill set. And I wanted to focus more on product design as a product manager. That's why I like the curriculum of Product School to complement what I already learned.

My instructor, Alok, was very knowledgeable about the consumer and enterprise software space as a PM. He was very supportive and helpful throughout the class. The material and the exercise were very good and useful. I think the money was well spent on this class and I highly recommend this training to anyone who wants to be Product Managers.

I highly recommend Product School to those interested in furthering their product management skills. Product School will provide you with a solid foundation in product management within 8 weeks. Like others have said, the course is demanding, and you get out of it what you put into it. 

I attended the evening course in San Francisco.  My class was professionally diverse, consisting of current product managers and those aspiring to be one (like me). The class size was small, interactive, and collaborative. The course materials are excellent and our amazing instructor (Michael Rosenthal) shared his real-world experiences and molded to course to the requests and experience levels of the class. The classes consisted of a balance of lecture and practical exercises, combined with project-based homework. 

In addition to being there for you during the course, Product School, my instructor, and my classmates have kept in touch to provide support and encouragement since completion. Also, students receive free, lifetime access to a wide variety of Udemy courses, Product School and class-specific Slack channels, and Product School’s weekly seminars.

In writing this review, I hope people leave with not only a better understanding of the product management landscape, but also discover how effective Product School is at setting up their students for success in a product management role.

I joined Product School's weekday cohort under the tutelage of Greg and haven't looked back since. My product management journey began when I co-founded my company and built our mobile app so I started off knowing a few things about building products. However, it wasn't until I went through my first week with Greg did I realize that Product School could be the game-changer I needed to successfully begin my career in product management. 

The on-boarding process was very professional and personable. Jake, the campus director was always there to answer questions, provide updates, and in general guide me through the process. The next step was to have a 1-to-1 with the CEO so that he could have some face-time to determine whether or not I'd be a good fit. Everything went seamlessly and I couldn't be happier with the process. There were a few changes in instructors for the cohort I chose due to scheduling problems but it was completely understandable because these instructors do have full-time jobs and things tend to just pop-up sporadically. In the end, I'm glad things happened the way they did because I couldn't have asked for a better instructor. 

Greg knew exactly what he wanted out of each class and from each student. He took the curriculum and personalized it with his own experiences and thoughts. Product School provides a great blend of the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge that product managers need on the job. However, what really sold me was their use of hands-on activities, group work, and projects. We were assigned a final project to build a new product or product feature, and our homework every week accumulated into the necessary steps to develop our final project presentation. I thought this was a great way for us to commit to the program and allow us to manage our project well. Throughout the entire course, Greg was always there not only for questions and advice about our in-class work, but also for networking and interview help outside of class. He connected us with recruiters, gave us tips about approaching other product managers, and helped immensely with interview prep all throughout the course. All in all, I'd have to say that Product School does a great job of finding extremely talented, intelligent, and passionate instructors that genuinely want to see you succeed.

Another great aspect of Product School is their ability to diversify. As a product manager, you'll most likely have to work with engineers, designers, other PM's, etc. My cohort was great because I got to work with professionals of all backgrounds. The diversity provided many perspectives and insights that ultimately created a great environment for us to learn as aspiring product managers. 

With all this being said, product management is a very difficult and competitive career to jump into without any prior experience. I won't guarantee that Product School will get you a role instantly upon graduation. What I can say 100% confidently is that Product School will set you up in the best way possible with the technical skills, network, and confidence to succeed as a product manager. Product School truly seems to care for each of their cohorts and it's shown by their ability to foster an ongoing community, their numerous weekly meet-ups/networking events, Jake's follow-up e-mails, and their numerous resources such as their newsletter, and free courses to help sharpen skill-sets and best practices. I can guarantee you that I don't regret my decision of joining and graduating from Product School.

Let me tell you about the time I went to Product School... I signed up for the weekend cohort that started July 9, 2016 on the San Francisco campus.

I doubted between the weekday cohort and the weekend cohort for a while, but finally decided on the weekend cohort for 2 reasons:
1. the better mix of backgrounds of co-students
2. the resume of the instructor (Josh Anon)

Now, I am transitioning from a Project Management background to a Product Manager role and was looking for a structured and hands-on way of learning a framework for Product Management. Because I was already doing PM work in my current role, but realized I was not reaching my full potential and that there had to be a better way. And I didn't get disappointed.

Our instructor (Josh Anon) is absolute GOLD when it comes to teaching Product Management. He has a long track record with big name companies, and applies everything he's learned along the way (especially at Pixar), which shines through in his teaching methods. 

Josh has completely overhauled/updated the curriculum and used our cohort to beta-test it. Now the curriculum has a better structure and is more cohesive, and as a result it sticks better. For homework you'll read chapters of his soon to be published book "Product Book: How To Be An Awesome Product Manager" as a preparation for class. The lecture materials are very cohesive and consistent with the learnings from the book. I really enjoyed reading the book (it's an easy read), and will read it again soon.

In every class there will be exercises where you apply what you've learned in a group assignment, which really helps to make it 'stick'. AND, this is a great way to get to know your classmates better too. (I would recommend the weekend cohort from a networking perspective too, since you get to spend a 1 hour lunch with your classmates every Saturday).

And you'll work on a Final Project during the first 6 weeks, wherein you go through the entire life-cycle of Product Management, right from distinguishing your customers/personas to creating the best product/market fit, determining the MVP and your launch plan.

Now, I know, a lot of people are saying you can probably learn most of this by searching the internet and reading everything available. And I am sure you can... But do you really want to spend that much time scavenging the internet and just reading (and taking for truth) whatever you can find? And how much do you think will actually stick if you read it without any structure? And are you really going to apply all that knowledge to a real product to really experience the whole process?

I really wanted to learn in an efficient and structured way and believe Product School (and their instructor Josh Anon) has delivered on that. Besides that, the instructor is highly available for any questions or help you need throughout the course and even afterwards. And the instructors will share personal experiences when using examples or to elaborate on any questions the class asks them, which helps you learn too. And I really connected with some of my classmates and we'll try to meet up on a regular basis for drinks or dinner and exchange experiences and learnings.

So, for me it was money well spent and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking to transition into Product Management or wants to learn a structured framework. I do agree that it would be even more awesome if they would go more in-depth into certain topics (i.e. User Research), but that is not feasible within this time-frame and I believe that at most companies this work (i.e. User Research) will be done by experts anyway, so you can learn that from them in your next PM role.

Whether you're a rookie in the tech scene or a seasoned veteran, if you want to get a jumpstart into product management then Product School is for you!

The role of a Product Manager varies from company to company, and even though many of us work with them on a day to day basis, there's still a lot left on the table for understanding what value they bring to the product/organization. My Product School instructor did an amazing job to explain the role of a Product Manager, what tools he/she can use to make decisions, and how they become the perfect advocate for the customer. The lesson plan was maximized to cover the key concepts in 8 weeks time, and homework was given to reinforce the teaching.

Product School does a great job at selecting the best candidates. I am still in touch with all of my classmates, and we are all supporting each other on our paths to become a Product Manager. 

Now, this program doesn't guarantee you'll be a Product Manager the second you graduate. Product School is all about providing students with the fundamentals they'll need to begin their product management journey. If you put enough time and effort into fully understanding the teachings, and continue on your education path post-Product School, then you'll walk into your interviews with a major advantage over the competition.

It's been 4 weeks since I completed Product School, and I am getting calls back from companies. It's only a matter of time before my education pays off!

Product School, like any continuing education course, is a significant investment. The return truly depends on the work you're willing to do. 

 

Key Benefits

- Small class size

- Professional instructors who take time to get to know you. JP Park was indispensable to my experience with the program.

- Learn how to "speak the language" necessary to be a working product manager while solving real-world case studies

- Students are more experienced in their career and there's a lot of diversity despite the small size

- Students are vetted by Product School staff, there's a bigger emphasis on "fit" when compared to their competitors

- Lifetime access to expensive online courses on Udemy

 

Opportunities to improve

- 4 out of 16 classes are focused on job prep/ interviewing skills. While that's a stumbling block for some, I was personally more interested in learning about concepts and solving case studies.

I took the class in New York, taught by Adam. I having an engineering background, wanted to learn about product Management. This class is designed to give you a hands on experience about each step in the process.

After each class that is being taught, you get to implement it. You get assignment to implement what you learnt and also at end of each class, you get to work with other students in the class on group project. At the end of the course, you need to do a final project, which require you to use all the things that you learnt from class, assignment and group project.

In the final class you also need to give demo on the project you worked on. You get to meet people from the industry and get feedback on mock interviews and your resume.

Finally, Adam was really a good instructor, he was always available for any questions, and used to spends time after the class to explain the concepts and very approachable.

I had fun, while taking the course. 

About a year ago we (my team) decided to create a product that is in the NYC real estate field. Through out the months I had to step up my learning until I realized that I was a product manager for my team. Having done a bit of research to see if I can further uplift my learning curve, I ran into Product school and immediately applied. 

  The Instructor (the instructors are pretty damn good btw!), course work, the staff and class mates were all amazing. The evening weekly classes made it very convenient for me so that I can balance the day work with the school work and not feel overwhelmed.   It's safe to say that the product school teachings have significantly helped me to make our product much better and go in the right direction.    Although my case was a bit different from everyone else's, the course did also prep the students to better chance their hunt for a product management position.     I would sincerely recommend the course to anyone that is passionate in becoming a PM or that love to create products that users will want!    Best,   - Jon A   PM at High Art and Room'Em