
Ask HN: What should Product Managers spend most of their time doing? - apthnz
I&#x27;m a new Product Manager at a FinTech and spend most of my time either writing process documents or putting together models in Excel. I feel more like a Business Analyst, but was wondering what PMs out there spend most of their time on? Or if you employ a PM, what is the most valuable work they do for you?
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bitpush
Varies a lot depending on the type of product you're on. If you have a B2B
product, you're probably talking to the customer a lot, charting out plans
with sales and marketing. On the other hand, if you have a B2C product you're
looking at engagement numbers (which would hopefully in the order of
thousands/millions), running experiments and doing surveys etc.

It also depends on what phase of the product lifecycle your feature is in.
Early on, you're writing a lot of strategy docs putting together vision decks
to convince people. During active development, you're keeping track on day-to-
day activities, prioritizing features and putting out fires. You're also
hopefully figuring out a GTM plan. If your product is already launched, you're
thinking of v2, listening for feedback etc.

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smt88
My product people spend a large percentage of their time talking to customers.
They're the customer surrogate in any meeting we have, which is a role they
collaborate with salespeople to fill.

Is your product sold to external clients? Or is it internal?

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apthnz
External - and that's really good info, I don't spend much time at all
speaking with clients

