WANT A NON-CODING JOB AT A TECH COMPANY? Interested in product management, marketing, strategy, or business development? The tech industry is the place to be: nontechnical employees at tech companies outnumber their engineering counterparts almost 3 to 1 (Forbes, 2017). You might be worried that your lack of coding skills or tech industry knowledge will hold you back. But here's the secret: you don't need to learn how to code to break into the tech industry. Written by three former Microsoft PMs, Swipe to Unlock gives you a breakdown of the concepts you need to know to crush your interviews, like software development, big data, and internet security. We'll explain how Google's ad targeting algorithm works, but Google probably won't ask you how to explain it in a non-technical interview. But they might ask you how you could increase ad revenue from a particular market segment. And if you know how Google's ad platform works, you'll be in a far stronger position to come up with good growth strategies. We'll show you how Robinhood, an app that lets you trade stocks without commission, makes money by earning interest on the unspent money that users keep in their accounts. No one will ask you to explain this. But if someone asks you to come up with a new monetization strategy for Venmo (which lets you send and receive money without fees), you could pull out the Robinhood anecdote to propose that Venmo earn interest off the money sitting in users' accounts. We'll talk about some business cases like why Microsoft acquired LinkedIn. Microsoft interviewers probably won't ask you about the motive of the purchase, but they might ask you for ideas to improve Microsoft Outlook. From our case study, you'll learn how the Microsoft and LinkedIn ecosystems could work together, which can help you craft creative, impactful answers. You could propose that Outlook use LinkedIn's social graph to give salespeople insights about clients before meeting them. Or you could suggest linking Outlook's organizational tree to LinkedIn to let HR managers analyze their company's hierarchy and figure out what kind of talent they need to add. (We'll further explore both ideas in the book.) Either way, you're sure to impress. Learn the must know concepts of tech from authors who have received job offers for Facebook's Rotational Product Manager, Google's Associate Product Marketing Manager, and Microsoft's Program Manager to get a competitive edge at your interviews!
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The book is an easy read and a great primer to technology for most people. I'm clearly not its target audience (I've worked in Tech for almost 2 decades), but I still enjoyed reading the “case-studies” and I learned a few things along the way. Probably the most education part was the one dedicated to emerging markets, as I wasn't familiar with the dynamics between the various players in regions like SEA.
I know this book is touted as a potential prep resource for Product Management interviews in tech, but I definitely don't see how this can be true - the book is pretty shallow and doesn't go in any depth when it comes to Product Management. It does reference many resources for interview preparation, though, and the authors have a “deep dive” follow-up book. At any rate - I think that PM candidates will need additional resources to learn what the job is about.
In the end of the day I'll say that the book certainly achieves one thing - reminds you of all the awesome things that technology can do for everyone, and inspires you to follow-up in the footsteps of the companies that changed the world.
