This essay is featured in November 2024’s issue of the Skiplevel: Tech for Product Managers newsletter. Every month I share a Tech Term You Should Know (TTYSK) and an essay to level up your technical chops and get the most out of dev teams. Subscribe now.
“You’re not technical enough.”
As a product manager, hearing these words — or even sensing them unspoken — can feel like a gut punch.
Have you ever walked out of engineering meetings questioning your competence? Or hesitated to push back on a technical decision because you didn’t feel “qualified”?
You’re not alone. I often hear from PMs about the challenge of juggling business priorities while navigating technical execution. And the truth is, it’s not about your ability to code or debug issues.
It’s about how you lead — technically.
This brings me to a LinkedIn post I recently came across that hit home.
Bosky’s post resonated with me because I’ve seen this struggle firsthand. It reminded me of Claire*, a product manager I worked with at Amazon.
Claire was a Senior Product Manager at Amazon Ads with eight years of experience in the advertising industry. She had previously served as a director and vice president and built a reputation for delivering impactful products and driving strategic initiatives.
Yet, after an engineering meeting one day, she came to me looking defeated. “I barely understood what was going on in there,” she admitted. “I felt completely out of place.”
Despite her impressive experience and leadership background, Claire found herself struggling when technical discussions veered into system architecture, APIs, and scaling strategies. The gap between her expertise in advertising and the technical depth required for her role was intimidating. What struck me most, though, wasn’t her lack of technical knowledge — it was her courage to be vulnerable and ask for help.
Over the next five months, I became her “tech mentor.” We spent time breaking down technical concepts, practicing how to ask better questions in meetings, and building her confidence as a technical leader. Watching her transformation was incredible. By the end, she was able to navigate technical discussions much more comfortably, and when she spoke, the dev team listened.
Claire’s story (and the one in the LinkedIn post) highlights a fundamental misunderstanding many PMs face:
Being “technical enough” isn’t about coding or knowing all the answers. It’s about demonstrating technical leadership.
Developers don’t expect you to solve technical problems for them, but they do expect you to bring clarity, alignment, and thoughtful guidance. They want a PM who:
- Helps them navigate trade-offs between product priorities and technical realities.
- Advocates for both business goals and sustainable development practices.
- Asks the right questions to uncover blind spots.
This is what technical leadership as a PM looks like. It’s a skill you can build, no matter your starting point.
Here’s how you can start developing technical leadership in your role.
Make things Easier and Clearer
After every interaction with engineers, ask yourself: “Did I make things easier or clearer?”.
As a PM you want to remove roadblocks and clarify requirements so that engineers can focus on doing their best work. This might mean:
- Providing detailed, unambiguous problem definitions and requirements.
- Asking questions to surface hidden complexities or dependencies.
- Proactively addressing potential misunderstandings to avoid misalignment later.
When you prioritize clarity and problem-solving in your conversations, you enable engineers to work more efficiently and make better decisions.
Embrace Curiosity over Certainty
Instead of feeling like you need all the answers, focus on asking better questions. For example: “How would this approach impact scalability if user traffic doubles next quarter?” or “What dependencies should we consider before committing to this timeline?” These kinds of questions show that you’re thinking strategically about the product and its technical implications.
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