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Chat with Mikul Patel (Program Manager 2 at Microsoft)

This week I got a chance to talk to Mikul Patel, and we talked about various aspects of his career and Program Manager role at Microsoft. Here's the transcript of the chat:

[Rajdeep Paul]: Tell us a bit about your journey, from IIT Roorkee (Electronics and Communication Engineering) to Microsoft (Program Manager 2)
[Mikul Patel]: Basically things just kept on going spontaneously. I never planned to be a Product Manager but somehow what happened is, I started my journey at Qualcomm as an Engineer, and early on I realized that doing just coding is not my cup of tea, though I love being close to technology and solving user problems. So later on I did my MBA from IIM Ahmedabad (IIMA), even there I was quite interested in mental health, so I started my own venture called Moodcafe - there we worked on two and half years trying to help folks with their mental health but eventually we had to shut down because of the revenue issues. Definitely, it was a great learning experience and what I realized is, the thing I loved the most is, solving customer problems, solutions that can help customers at scale. So that was the most interesting part while working as a CEO in a startup and wear different hats. Then I joined the startup called BrowserStack, that's where I started my formal Product Management journey, it was a very steep learning curve in BrowserStack as I got the chance to work with CEO and CTO there. And then Microsoft opportunity came in and I couldn't say no to this. So yeah, now I'm a Program Manager at Microsoft.

[Rajdeep Paul]: Tell us about your role and responsibilities as Program Manager in Microsoft.
[Mikul Patel]: Microsoft calls this role Program Manager but it's analogous to the Product Manager role outside Microsoft. The idea is that Microsoft expects Program Managers to handle everything, right from understanding customer problems to working towards the execution. See, Microsoft is a big organization and there is a wide range of products, and how things are divided is, you take care of a particular scenario or part of a product and you own it completely, and that's a good level of freedom given, and it happens everywhere, be it BrowserStack or Microsoft. So you now know that this particular part within a product is what I'm going to take care of and take it to the next level. You see, Program Managers work very independently, right from figuring out what the current flow is, talking to customers, understanding their problems, and prioritize based on what the strategic goal is. From there you focus more on what would be the best solution, making mockups, discussing with developers, see the feasibility of solutions and then implement the appropriate one.

[Rajdeep Paul]: I'm sure there were a lot of opportunities right in front of you when you were doing MBA at IIMA and when you were working in your startup, why did you choose Product Management in particular?
[Mikul Patel]: Interesting. So in my case, I never thought I will be a Product Manager. In fact, when I got into IIMA, I knew that I'm never going to get into finance, Product Management, or consulting. The reason being it was quite technical in nature, and I thought it's for folks who are better in Software Development, so that was my understanding of Product Management at the time, I didn't know what it was exactly. And interestingly, when I graduated from IIMA, still I never thought I will be a Product Manager. In fact, when I started working on my startup, I used to wear different hats like I was handling marketing, sales, operations, strategy, so that's where I realized that this is something that resonates with me and I found this passion, like focusing on users or customers and solving their problems. So that is when I decided to go for Product Management. 

[Rajdeep Paul]: What is Product Management from your point of view? In which ways this role is unique and different from any other role? 
[Mikul Patel]: So the thing is, this position is not as well defined as other roles e.g. if you are a software engineer, you will be good and focused on developing software, and if you are into sales, you will be focused on sales, basically you have the expertise in your role. In the Product Manager role, you work with developers, customers, leadership teams, sales, etc. So while individuals are doing their job well, your job is to connect the dots and make sure everything works in sync with each other while keeping the customer at the center. So that's what this function or role requires, a little bit of everything and being able to sustain in that uncertain environment where you like a fool i.e. sales folks know about sales more than you, your engineers know code more than you, and you ask questions and try to make sense out of the partial information. And the other thing which is also associated with this is, you get to be the voice of the customer, no one works under you, no one reports to you, but you convince everyone to be on the same page, do whatever it takes to get the product or feature done.

[Rajdeep Paul]: How easy or challenging do you think it is for a Software Developer to transition to Product Management? Is MBA necessary?
[Mikul Patel]: Product Management is a function that doesn't require any pre-requisite skill set per se, rather it needs a lot of commonsensical approaches. I would say, MBA helps, and alongside software engineering background is also advantageous, none of these are necessary but they do add value. Where it plays an important role is, as Product Manager you are going to work with engineers or developers, so being a developer yourself, you talk their language, you are able to understand how they think and you can make sure that you guys are on the same page. So being an engineer or developer helps in your Product Manager role. Similarly, in MBA you generally learn better people management, stakeholder skills, strategic perspectives, and leadership skills, so that's where MBA comes into play. From the recruiter's perspective, they prefer candidates who do have these skillsets, but there's no black-and-white rule that you have to have an MBA degree to get into Product Management role.

[Rajdeep Paul]: If you were to hire a Product Manager, what attributes will you look for in a candidate?
[Mikul Patel]: I would say, the candidate should be able to focus on the goal i.e. whatever he/she does should be aligned with what his/her objective is. And when I goal, it also links to the problem at hand. The person should be able to play in the problem space, focus on what he/she is doing and why he/she is doing this. Another thing is, being able to make friends out of your situation and ask questions without any assumptions, this sounds simple but when it comes to action, it's quite difficult. You should be okay to be seen as someone who doesn't know things but then keep on asking questions to get a very clear sense of what the situation is - this is something I will evaluate for sure. And if you are talking from profile perspective or resume perspective, I think I would like to see one or two of these skills - an experience of working as an engineer or with engineers, and some managerial skills i.e. he/she understands how to translate a strategy into an actionable item. Some sort of startup or consulting experience definitely helps, basically he/she should be comfortable working with different stakeholders. 

[Rajdeep Paul]: What are some of the challenges of Product Manager during this pandemic when everyone is working from home (WFH)?  
[Mikul Patel]: I was completely onboarded virtually, and all the conversations are more work-focused and slightly formal. So the challenge we face is, building those real relationships with colleagues. The exact element that's really important to us is, to know people around and build a rapport with them to coordinate and get the work done. However I wouldn't consider it a serious problem, we put conscious effort and build relationships with all our stakeholders.

[Rajdeep Paul]: Since you have worked on your startup (Moodcafe), BrowserStack, and now Microsoft, do you follow any framework when you take any product decision (be it strategy, vision, or design)? If yes, what factors/parameters do you look for?
[Mikul Patel]: I will divide my response into two parts. The first part is, understanding the problem really well - what we are doing? why we are doing it? Why this is important? who are our users or customers? what matters to our users or customers? How does it align strategically? i.e having a very good clarity on what needs to be done. Focusing on the question first is more important than the solution. Once that is clear, the second part i.e. coming up with a solution is relatively much easier. We can follow whatever we are comfortable with - talking to customers, analyzing how competitors solved a similar problem, and then you have your intuition, knowledge, and research to figure out what alternative solutions are there. Most of the time, you make trade-offs with few options to come up with a solution, you will invent something from the ground up in rare cases only.

[Rajdeep Paul]: How did you prepare for the Microsoft PM interview?
[Mikul Paul]: To be honest, I didn't prepare anything specific as such, it's like 1-2 days of understanding the company and role. But let me talk about how I had prepared for my first PM job at BrowserStack - I went through two books, cracking the PM interview and Decode and Conquer, and then I worked with few friends of mine to do mock interviews. Over time, mock interviews helped me gain a strong sense of how the PM interview works.

[Rajdeep Paul]: Finally, what advice would you give to PM aspirants?
[Mikul Patel]: If you want to get into Product Management, do something where you can get a similar experience, do a side-project, build something of your own, it needs not to be a startup, it could be creating your own blog, making a small project where you can collaborate with people. It will help you both from the learning perspective and from your profile perspective. Keep a curious mindset on how a Product Manager would have designed this and what trade-offs he would have made. So over time, subconsciously you will keep on building a repository of interesting ideas and trade-offs, and once you do it for N number of times, in (N+1)th time it is very likely that the solution would come from one of those ideas that helped you before.