Do Product Managers Need to Know How to Code?

Do product managers need to code? The truth is, knowing how to code can help a PM communicate with the Engineering Team better. As someone who wants to break into Product Management, knowing how to code can help one land a tech role in the field, but it’s not always a requirement. 

In other words, if you know how to code, it’ll work in your favor. If you don’t, it’s not a deal-breaker, but you may need to be more selective with choosing which jobs to apply for. Today, let’s dive into the subject to find out if coding for product managers is really necessary.

As a Product Manager, Should You Learn How to Code?

To cut the long story short, it depends on your current situation – more specifically the stage of your career, career goals, and education.

For instance, in our article “Technical Product Manager vs. Product Manager” we share the following:

A “regular” product manager is likely to have a business degree but can come from any background including Marketing. Any type of education that allows a regular PM to establish relationships with teams and bring products to market is generally accepted.

Technical Product Manager vs Product Manager: What’s the Difference?

Let’s assume you’re a regular Product Manager with a business degree and three to five years of on-the-job experience. One option is to stay on your current career path. On the other hand, if you want a change of pace and environment, your other option is to transition to become a Technical Product Manager (TPM).

It’s generally up to you but if you’re willing to make this change, learning how to code is never a bad thing. 

What’s a Technical Product Manager (TPM)?

A technical product manager is a product manager who focuses more on the technical aspects of product management. They generally work within larger product management teams since the size of the unit allows for greater levels of specialization. While they have specific skills and talents that distinguish them from standard product managers, their focus is still on product management rather than exclusively tech-related issues. Generally speaking, they have a greater understanding of the products’ technical components and inner workings.

Technical Product Manager vs Product Manager: What’s the Difference?

In this case, does this type of Product Manager need to know how to code? Not necessarily. This doesn’t mean all technical product managers need to know how to code. But what it does mean is that these professionals should have a good understanding of the technical side of building a product. This allows them to have meaningful, deep conversations with engineers.

What’s the Difference Between a Regular PM and a Technical PM?

Unlike a technical product manager, a regular PM doesn’t require as much technical knowledge or experience. For example, user-facing SaaS products don’t require as much technical expertise. The same holds true for consumer-facing companies like Facebook. 

But that doesn’t mean you can forget about technical knowledge altogether when you’re a regular PM. It’s still needed, to a certain degree, so that you can understand what’s happening with your product.

If you would like to learn more about what a Technical Product Manager does and what the differences are between this role and that of a regular PM, we recommend reading “Technical Product Manager vs Product Manager: What’s the Difference?”

Why Would a Product Manager Want to Learn to Code?

Aside from shifting to a more technical role, there are PMs who choose to learn how to code because it can contribute to their career success. Even if a Product Manager is not dealing with a technical product, understanding the technical side of the product development process will allow things to flow more smoothly.

Of course, Product Managers are not required to build an app or create an algorithm, but there are plenty of benefits to learning how to code:

Understand Your Engineers Better

Engineers speak a different language than everyone else within the organization. Knowing how to code allows you to speak the same language as them which will, in turn, allow you to relate to them better. This improves your working relationship which could result in a better product, not to mention a harmonious collaboration between the teams involved.

Build Better Products

Let’s say you already speak the same language as your engineers. At this point, you understand the technical requirements of building a product. This will help you gauge enhancements or create new features with regard to your timeline and available resources.

Improve Your Problem-Solving Skills

Coding is basically communicating with machines. To do this, the goal needs to be broken down into smaller pieces so machines can understand. The process is similar when you solve problems, especially in Product Management – you take a goal and break it down into manageable and actionable steps.

Make Better Decisions

Critical thinking is one skill that’s valuable for a Product Manager. When you know how to code, this skill sharpens leading you to make the right choices. You’ll also be equipped to answer why you made the decision you made, making it easier for stakeholders to understand your vision for the product.

It’s a Confidence Boost

In a general sense, knowing how to do something always gives you a confidence boost. In this instance, knowing how to code makes you feel more confident about developing a product and communicating its specifics to other teams, customers, and upper management. You’ll know why the product works and how it works that way.

You’ll likely be Entrusted with More Projects

If you’ve covered all of the above plus you communicate the HOWs and WHYs of a product in a way that’s easy to understand, leadership will eventually see that you’re more than capable of handling projects. And will, therefore, entrust you with more projects in the near future.

Do product managers need to code if they’re just breaking into Product Management? If you’re an aspiring Product Manager or a professional who would want to make the shift, you may want to learn how to code because you can gain the following benefits:

Looks Great on Your Resume

If you want to break into Product Management, it’s always a plus for you to know how to code. As mentioned in this article, it’s not a requirement but it could help you do your job better. If you want to land a technical role, knowing how to code will also give you an advantage over other PM applicants because it tells the hiring manager that you possess an understanding of the tech industry.

Help You Answer Technical Questions

Whether you apply for a regular PM or a more technical PM role, you’ll have to go through technical questions during your PM job interview. Of course, you can get away with practicing and going through a PM interview prep course to answer these types of interview questions properly but it will be easier if you have the foundational knowledge.

Do product managers need to code? FREE Resources 

If you’re seriously considering sharpening your technical skills, you can do this in a number of ways. You can take a few university-level courses to strengthen your technical knowledge of how programming works, emerging programming languages, frameworks, and related subject matter. 

What’s great is that there are plenty of paid sources and free sources online. We recently made an article that lists down all of the free online resources you can access when you want to enhance your technical skills or pick up a new skill.

Read: Free Product Manager Resources to Sharpen Your Tech Skills

From books, and courses, to templates, you will hopefully find the resource you need to get you started. You can also check out the PMExercises YouTube channel for weekly videos about Product Management and prepping for PM Interviews.

Tips for Choosing the Right Resources

What skill you choose to learn will be dependent on your job and the kind of product you’re working with. 

• Start by choosing a skill, language, or subject that relates to the type of role you want to land if you’re an aspiring PM (as in regular PM or TPM). 
• Go through your selected course at your own speed.
• As you gain knowledge, experience, and confidence, try building your own product. Or you can look for relevant side projects that you can collaborate on and help out in. This tip is great for those who want to break into Product Management. 

Even if you never end up regularly using your newfound coding knowledge in your job as a Product Manager, you never know when it could save you time or help you maneuver through challenging circumstances.

Do product managers need to code? Final Thoughts

If you’re striving to land a Technical Product Manager role, a deeper understanding – such as the ability to read code – is generally necessary to get your foot in the door.

Conversely, as a product manager, you should have the ability to understand and communicate technical concepts. You still need a strong analytic and UX background because:

• A strong analytic background allows you to measure the progress of your product as it relates to solving the problems users are seeking a solution to. You’ll also use data to identify issues, and changes in user behaviors, and make better estimations. 
• A strong UX background enables you to understand the perspective of your product designers. It also helps you identify user pain points and to take an independent view on how to address them. 

This goes along with strong communication skills that allow you to understand your more technical colleagues, such as engineers. You must be able to accurately and effectively convey the information they share with you to others.

In both instances, it’s helpful to know how to code or understand the technical basics but again it is not a requirement.

Prepare for a PM or TPM Role with PMExercises

Whether you want to be a PM or TPM, you can expect plenty of technical-related questions during your job interview. For example:

• You found that only 10% of the allotted slots for databases are being used by your customers. What would you do?
• You’re part of the Google Search web spam team. How would you detect duplicate websites?
• Design a simple load balancer for Google.com. What data structures would you use?

These questions are part of the 2500+ Product Manager Interview Questions with sample answers from our PM community in our database. After you sign up and become part of the community, you can contribute questions and answers to the database, and have other members give you feedback.

Note: For some questions, you need to upgrade your account to view the complete answers.

You can prepare for these types of questions by reading the sample answers. It’s also essential to understand why technical questions are asked and how to answer them. In both circumstances, you might want to check the database as well as the PMExercises Interview Prep Course.

Along with our prep course and database of questions, we also have a Practice feature where you can find other product managers who are also prepping for their interviews to practice with.

We understand how challenging it may be to prepare for a PM job interview so these resources that we consistently update will hopefully aid you in your journey to landing your dream Product Manager job.

FAQ: Do product managers need to code?

What programming language should product managers learn?

There’s no certain type of programming language a PM is required to learn. It will solely depend on the kind of product that’s being developed. Some of the most common languages are PHP and Ruby, but again it will depend on the product and the company you’re working in.

Do Product Managers know Python programming language?

Not necessarily. PMs are not required to know Python. It might be helpful if the company the PM is working for uses this language but it’s nonessential for a PM to understand the language at the same level as data scientists or engineers do.

What type of coding skills should a product manager have?

Product Managers are not required to have coding skills. On the other hand, having a basic understanding of programming languages and technical principles may help a PM do his or her job well. There are plenty of free technical resources a PM can refer to if he or she wants to learn more about specific coding skills.