The following list of attributes reflects the expectations placed on Product Managers at many large organizations. These attributes are centered on a mid-level Product Manager (L5) but scale +/- 1 level pretty easily. You can find a table version [here](https://sean.horgan.net/pm-attributes-self-assessment-45) which can be very useful for self-assessments and career planning. I spent about 7 years working at Verily, which is a sister company to Google and they leveraged most of their internal processes when it started. At Verily we broke the PM job ladder into a set of categories based on those used by Google back in ~2016. I spent time on the PM Steering Committee with a focus on evolving our ladder and building community. I extended our ladder to include Entrepreneurship in 2019 to reflect the demands on PMs driven by startup nature of our business. I organized the categories in this stack to highlight the distinct layers **centered around leadership** with **culture** and **communication** as the 2 cornerstones. ![[Pasted image 20250829234503.png]] Beyond attributes, it’s important to guide your actions by clear principles such as those laid out by Brandon Chu in [The First Principles of Product Management](https://blackboxofpm.com/the-first-principles-of-product-management-ea0e2f2a018c). Attributes * [[Entrepreneurship]] * [[Strategic Insights]] * [[Product & Design Fundamentals]] * [[Leadership]] * [[Analytical]] * [[Communication]] * [[Creativity]] * [[Culture]] ## General product references - [Behind Every Great Product](https://svpg.com/assets/Files/productmanager.pdf), Marty Cagan - [Your product isn’t the product](https://blossom.co/index.html%3Fp=112.html), Dharmesh Shah - [What Seven Years at Airbnb Taught Me About Building a Business | by Lenny Rachitsky | Marker](https://marker.medium.com/what-seven-years-at-airbnb-taught-me-about-building-a-company-e1d035d49c56) - [What exactly is a Product Manager](https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2011/10/what-exactly-is-a-product-manager/), Martin Eriksson - [Top 1% PM](https://www.quora.com/Product-Management/What-distinguishes-the-Top-1-of-product-managers-from-the-Top-10/answer/Ian-McAllister?srid=3wR&st=ns), Ian McAllister - [Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager | Andreessen Horowitz](https://a16z.com/good-product-manager-bad-product-manager/). Ben Horowitz and David Weiden. Written in 1997. Lots of great themes but even the authors say that **it is dated** at this point. PMs **are not the CEO** of their product — that’s a catchy but misleading metaphor that has led to a lot of dysfunction in PM land over the years.