Product School

This has been a great class with many knowledgable people from very different perspectives, which helps enrich the entire experience! Our professor is a Senior PM at Google who really tells it like it is and offers very valuable insight into the Product... Read More Lifecycle experience. He also provides interviewing tips along the way, which has been very helpful. There's homework and reading and outside recommendations for other material as well, which can be a lot of work, but you get a lot out of it.

I VERY much enjoyed my time in product school. I forged some amazing friendships, networked and developed a relationship with a mentor that I know will be super helpful going forward with my career. The course information was well structured, the project... Read More goals were accessible, easy to follow and the support staff was very helpful.

I'd say this program delivers what it says it does, but sort of hides some of the downside of getting a job in product management. It's hard out there and as much coaching as is available through the classes, the mentorship and networking, it really depends on the individual taking the course and HUSTLING. That's not their job though, it's ultimately (like everything in this world) up to the person willing to put in the work. This job definitely draws a certain type of individual, but to say anyone can learn to do it in 2.5 months is a little bold.

But hey, if they didn't sell you on your potential, who will? 4 /5 stars!

Course: 8-week PM/Location: Santa Monica/Instructor: Gio

I just wrapped up the 8-week product course and am really happy with my decision. I had an awesome experience and would highly recommend it for anyone who is motivated to learn more and get a more... Read More formal framework/education for how to approach product thinking to advance their career, become more effective in your job, or transition into a product role.

Since product is really the intersection of design, business, and engineering let’s start there.

Business: If you don’t have a business background, Product School gives you a nice overview of some key frameworks that help you structure your approach to problems. You don’t go super deep but if you’re someone technical or just don’t have a formal education in business this is a great way to get it. If you have a business background (like I did) its a nice overview but don’t expect these pieces to be the real value add for you at PS.
Design: In PS you’ll do some wireframing in Balsamiq but that’s pretty much the extent of it. To be fair, PM’s don’t really need to design in most cases but it seemed like my classmates would have liked a bit more of this. Personally, I do the prototyping and design for my startup and spend a lot of time in Sketch and Invision so I’m glad we didn’t spend too much time on this. I think spending too much time on design takes away from the real ‘job to be done’/value to be added/purpose of a PM…identifying/validating opportunities and solving problems. I think PS does a nice job of focusing on these important aspects but also covering concepts like usability research, UX, and a touch of wireframing.
Engineering: I think this really depends on (a) your instructor and (b) your classmates more than the cirriculum. Gio always provided awesome examples from his experience at Yahoo and Snapchat that really helped paint vivid & tangible pictures of experiences and challenges as a PM working with engineers. I think this is one area PS could add some more umph with maybe some videos to watch at home or a required Udemy overview of coding class ahead of starting PS to help students come in with a little more confidence and color (or you could just do it yourself ; ). Again, you can only cover so much in 8-weeks but I think we had time to squeeze in more about concepts like front end vs. backend, common terminology, etc. There were a few of us with technical backgrounds but for the others I would imagine some things went in one ear out the other without having prior experience with engineers.
Project Management: I think this is sort of the ugly duckling/4th circle of the PM ven diagram that isn’t talked about as frequently bc its not as sexy and more administrative than anything, that said I think its pretty important. PS doesn’t touch too much on project management so I’d recommend (if you don’t have prior exp and aren’t detail oriented) to take an online class in project management to help fill that gap for yourself. Learning is much better on-the-job with real experience (as with everything) but a key PM skill is being able to take a goal, and turn it into manageable small pieces that can be sequenced and executed on which often can be complex with dependencies.
Some Qualitative KPIs from my experience at PS (in order of importance)

Instructor (A+): When it comes to product, I felt without a teacher with real, relevant, AND current experience, there was point in taking the course. Other courses at different schools (no names need be mentioned) had pretty weak instructors…not PS. Our instructor Gio has really deep product experience, is a PM at Snapchat, and was absolutely awesome. Every question brought up he had 10 salient and relevant real world examples to color his answers and was extremely articulate. Gio is also just an awesome and fun guy which made sitting in class for 2+ hours and giving up Tuesday and Thursday a lot more fun than it sounds ahah.
Cirriculum (A-): After taking PS I personally think this cirriculum should be taught in every business school and honestly every undergrad as a general requirement. PS does a really nice job of putting product knowledge into a logical flow that’s easy to understand, with a great reader filled with examples to help reinforce the lessons. The reason I didn’t give it an A+ is because I think there are a few areas that could be improved but overall was really happy with it and just what I was looking for.
Classmates (B++): To me this was really important so I researched literally every alumni that had gone through PS before taking the course. One of the big selling points of PS (for me) was that everyone was supposed to have some prior relevant experience and that it wasn’t an intro level 101 type of class and overall I was pretty satisfied along this criteria. We had a APM from Dollar Shave, Proj Mgr from Fox, PMM from Activision, etc which was great to bring various experiences into the conversations. The reason I give it a B+ is only bc I think there was still a little more variance in the experience and motivation levels than I was hoping for—but obviously this is going to be the case in any course (even was in business school). The people were great though and we all had a lot of fun together and I definitely hope to keep in touch with people afterwards.
If you have questions or want some personal advice on whether its the right fit for you I’m happy to reply on this thread or hop on a quick call. Overall I had a great experience and would highly recommend it for anyone who is motivated to learn more and get a more formal framework/education for how to approach product thinking. I truly believe this thought process and approach is the future of creating value in any business and applicable to everything you do in life so there’s no way to go wrong here.

Thanks for a great 8-weeks Gio and team PS!

My experience with Product School was really great. I moved from Spain to San Francisco at the end of September. And figured out that I wanted to became a PM without knowing much about a PM role. After this two month intensive course I feel like I know... Read More all the I need to know to start my career in that direction.
My teache Ryan Black made everything seemed easy, so even though a few times I felt a little bit lost, he immediately explained everything with examples so I could easily catch up.
The content was great and the project it self it was the best. We got to develop our own feature for a product and a company that we chose for ourselfs which gave as a lot of practice and confidence in everything learnt during the course.

Product School was an amazing experience, as it gave me the opportunity to learn about Product Management in a structured way and learn hands-on from very qualified teachers.
I attended the school in San Francisco and really loved the fact that together... Read More with the theory about product management, every week there were assignments that would give us the opportunity to try and test our knowledge on real projects.
I would definitely recommend this course to anyone who is trying to switch career path or wants to have a deeper understanding of product management.

The course is all about learning the best practices and insights from seasoned product manager. My cohort has a great instructor who would go out of his way and come up with more relavent materials to make sure he conveyed the concepts well. I believe... Read More the class experience rely greatly on the instructors.

The teacher was nice, but the material that we were learning could be learnt online. Most of the information the teacher was getting was online. Therefore, I didn't think the class was even that useful for me. Plus a girl in the class got a book to learn... Read More on her own and I think that people in the class eventually stop taking it seriously. You are only suppose to be absent once, there were people who were absence more than one time. I don't think it was really worth it.

Reason I attended: Long term, I would like to become a product manager. This course helped me build the confidence to apply to more jobs and gave me a project to spotlight on a website. With the support of the community, I finally felt motivated to create... Read More a live portfolio, write blog posts, overhaul my resume, and spotlight my work.

Pros: In person classes build a small community to support you. The coursework helped me assess my own skill-set and understand my strengths and weaknesses. For example, I have a design background, which is actually unique for the product management market and I can tailor my search accordingly. The teachers are very responsive and the Slack groups for discussions are very valuable - I'm still friends with a few people I met in class.

Cons: I would have liked more devoted time to resume critique and interview practice. It is built into the coursework with a "live" review and critique and the end, but more of that would have been helpful in securing a job. The coursework itself isn't necessarily "new" information. It's more about applying engineering, marketing, and design concepts from the perspective of a product manager.

I took a risk and moved to the Bay Area from the U.K without a job offer.

My plan was to solidify my PM knowledge, make sure I was using the cutting edge processes, Network and get a job.

Product School provided me with all of the above. Great mentor, high... Read More caliber of students and a jobs board that works.

Best risk I have ever taken

My instructor (May Allen) was an experienced PM who encouraged class participation and had the answer to any question we could think of. The class was engaging and I walked away with frameworks to execute a project and think through all kinds of challenging... Read More product decisions. I got lucky and already had a PM job going into the class, but there were some very helpful days towards the end of the course in which we learned the best ways to approach getting a product job.

Since graduating product school, I've successfully executed the biggest product launch ever at my company, and have a second product currently in development. Product School helped me thrive as a PM!