Product School

After completing the 8-week Product Management course, I confidently recommend Rich Headley to be your next instructor at the Product School, Santa Monica. Prior to the course, I was under the impression that to be a Product Manager, hiring companies required candidates to have a high technical knowledge/background. As a Psych grad with a sales background, I had a lot of reservation in enrolling for this course as I thought I would struggle to understand concepts/hold my class back and not find many uses for the course.

From the first day of class and to the very end, Rich fostered a safe & interactive learning environment that simplified concepts while connecting them to real-life applications through in-class exercises. A typical class looks like this: after teaching us that class' content, Rich would break up my class into smaller groups so we can practice what we learned using a case study and present our findings to the class. After we presented, Rich would give the group constructive feedback that I felt instilled confidence in us that we understood the concept and encouraged us to practice on our own for the final project.  

I greatly appreciated Rich's availability throughout the 8 weeks. I ended up missing Week 3 due to illness and had to catch-up. Instead of being upset that I was behind, Rich made himself available on Slack and by coming in early/leaving class late so I could ask questions & for feedback. Without that, I probably would've been discouraged to continue and probably wouldn't be writing this review today.

In retrospect, I was surprised at how many translatable skills I got to develop and sharpen through the 8-week course. Although I don't have plans as of right now to pursue a career in PM, I'm confident that when the time comes, I'll be able to draw upon what I've learned but also leverage the Product School's network to accelerate my journey. 

Thanks Rich for pouring in so much of your own free time to share a real-world perspective/honest view of what PM life is like and practical insights/best practices to be a successful PM!

Read less

Professor Joel Palath easily made my experience unforgettable and invaluable at Product School. His knowledge of the field, along with his ability as educator, pushed our class to learn much more than we could have on our own. I came to the class with experience as a product manger and was not too sure what to think of the course but left with immediate results. The material we covered helped me revamp the way I am approaching products at work and helped kickstart my own startup. Professor Palath presented solutions to real problems that PMs face on a day to day basis by not just reviewing material from a textbook/slides but by weaving the course material with his own real world experiences as PM. This made the course much more enjoyable  and made the concepts much easier to grasp. The class was a very tight knit group and our support has survived outside of the class. I am meeting with a classmate this week to work on our personal products and have done this with various other peers. The Product School is worth the cost for any aspiring product managers and I would absolutely recommend taking Professor Palath! A+++

Read less

I definitely recommend Product School if anybody is looking to start a career in product management. Speaking of course material, it is very well organized. The beginners will understand it easily as it covers all points in details. It does includes two in class activties in each class. It s a great platform where you interact alot. Each activity will explain the purpose of the elements discussed in the slides of the course material. My instructor was Roman Dzadzic, He is an amazing professor. He not only taught us in an effective manner but also helped us in the homework. I remeber i had number of questions and he never failed to answer even a single time. I had diffculties in public speaking. Specially this stuff was completely new for me to talk about. I would say I ould take out my fear of public speaking with this class. 

 

 

Read less

As a person relatively fresh out of college, I have not had much exposure to the PM world. I have a peculiar background that allowed me to work in design and software engineering, but had no real exposure to put those skills to test. While taking the course, I worked as a visual designer, bringing a more design centric perspective into the PM class, and was able to practice my knowledge and collaborate with fellow students in the class. I knew that being a PM is something I wanted to do, but needed more experience to get the foot in the door. From this experience, I was able to meet my instructors, and fellow students who I have joined to partner with in product design and development.

Taking this course is like any other prep-course; you get what you put into it. Not only that, you are able to grow a network of people in various industries. I learned a lot from the class, and from people’s experiences and stories that led them to where they’re at.

This class is meant for everyone, those who have experience in Product Management, or those who are looking to transition into it. There are many stories that congregate into each cohort, and it enables us to broaden our vision of what an effective PM can be by learning from each other, and from different industries.

Read less

This course is great! Indeed this is the best PM class I've ever taken so far. Never feel so productive on a Saturday. I enjoyed the course material as well as the interaction with instructor and classmates.

The Class Notes are well-written and very practical. I am sure I will refer back to the material again and again as I grow in my PM career. I also developed a deeper understanding of core PM concepts: user persona/opportunity validation/etc.

My instructor is Arjun. He is very helpful not only in class(answer a lot of questions we raised in class) but also helped us connect with his network and reviewed our career plan outside of class. He is also very humorous :)

As a PM, sometimes I feel lonely (you face a lot of engineers daily but few PMs). So here really gives me a sense of community. My classmates helped me get out of my comfort zone and speak about my wants and thoughts. I am also glad that I am updated with the latest trend in PM framework/tools/thoughts so I don't feel left behind.

Read less

I attended the Product Management class taught by Dr. Joel Palathinkal at the NYC Product School in October-November 2017. Overall, the 8-week course was very good.

Joel is an excellent instructor. He is very knowledgeable, professional and courteous. I found his style of teaching very effective. The class format was very interactive and dynamic, especially when we did case studies. I really enjoyed the classroom discussions. In addition, he consistently made himself available outside of class hours to provide input and feedback on the class assignments, as well as career-related items (e.g. resume feedback). 

I feel that the course has provided me with the tools and knowledge to transition into a Product role in the near future. Product School also seems to have a strong network which I plan to tap into. I definitely recommend this course for people interested in pursuing a career in  Product Management.

Read less

I definitely recommend Product School if you're looking for a place to start your career in product management. I've worked a lot with product managers in my previous experiences and I felt like I had a grasp of what they do, which is why I was very interested in taking this course. Even though I have an idea of what they do, I still felt like I wanted something formal to prepare me for a career in product management. 

I completed the course in the first week of August. There were definitely concepts in the curriculum that felt like review, which is mostly because I have worked closely with product managers in the past. But I was also introduced to a lot of new tools and concepts. The reading assignments I did for homework were excellent in terms of preparing me for the upcoming lectures. Each chapter introduces a new concept and at the end of each chapter, you see how those concepts are applied to a mock company's idea to help them meet their business goal. 

My instructor, Shendi Wang did a fantastic job in presenting the materials and answering the many questions I had. Her real life examples from her current role as a Director of Product Development and Innovation at Mastercard and her previous roles were invaluable to the class. She is a great network to have, very knowledgable in this space, and is able to give honest and constructive feedback on your work. I highly recommend Shendi if you have the opportunity to take a class that is taught by her.

Read less

Looking to hone my unofficial product management skills, I enrolled in the Product Manager course at Product School. The course was well structured and delivered a concise plan to get students to the next step in becoming a PM. Through a combination of lectures and class exercises we learned and actually used techniques applicable to a job in product.

Shendi Wang was a great instructor. She was knowledgeable and passionate about product management and delivered the material in an easily digestible manner. Shendi leveraged her vast experience as a PM to give the class examples of what we can expect to encounter and how to approach challenges. Her classroom environment was encouraging and made you feel ok to venture out of your comfort zone.

I’m excited to now have the tools to take the next step in my career!

Read less

If you are interested in understanding how products and services are successfully implemented on Mobile and web platforms , Product Mgmt @ Product School(PS) is the place to start.

Before PS, I had no clear understanding on how to Ideate, validate, build and publish a great product.

Ashok Bania (PM at Spotify), our instructor for April 2017 cohort, is a brilliant and pragmatic instructor, who along with PS tools and course material, efficiently translated concepts and best industry practices of Product Management.

He cited multiple real world challenges and solutions, which has been great add-on to my learning. And, it was excellent class cohort, with almost all of them having distinct professional background. So their inputs enriched our learning process.

So, while there are no shortcuts to be a Product Manager, this course has definitely set me on the right path to transition to a Product Manager. Also, PS has good post course support system: weekly events and training program perks for students. 

Read less

Product School have bought so many ideas and potential opportunities which I didn't know exist.   Joel, my instructor have bought introduce me to so many platforms/tools to help me to become a product manager.  I feel that the course is very valuable/informational for people who want to become a product manager and am not sure how to. I also love the smaller class and the group work we do in class.                

Read less

Instructor - Dr. Joel P

f you're trying to transition to product management from a different career, I highly recommend product school. 

The only reason I'm removing one star is I'm reviewing this course mid-way. I have a feeling that my review would change to a full 5-star if I had reviewed at the end of the course because some of my expectations of the course are likely to be fulfilled towards the end of the course. 

Pros: 

-  Dr. Joel P. is very responsive and helpful both during class to clarify concepts and outside of class in case of questions on job leads/resume review etc. (full 5 stars to him)
- Product School certification
- Diversity of experience in class 
- Help with resume review
- Job leads on Slack
- Great talks with existing PMs and provide opportunities of networking (You don't need to be product school student for this)
- Slack (Where you gain access to network of current and aspiring PMs and recruiters - you don't need to be a product school student for this!)
- Curriculum is well designed for a generalist software product management role

Cons:

- Help with mock interviews and preparing for various types of questions asked during interviews 
- Strategies for targeting different companies - large sized, mid-sized and early startups
- Additional help on more technical product management roles where knowledge of SQL and programming languages/algorithms is needed

Read less

I enrolled in Product School's 8 week long Software Product Management (PM) course to facilitate my transition from legal practice to the legal tech space. The curriculum is robust and provides an excellent overview of prevailing Product Management philosophies, methodologies, workflows, toolkits and challenges.  

Dr Joel Palathinkal, the instructor, is an excellent educator - he is very adept at translating concepts and populates lessons with various case studies gleaned from his extensive experience in product management across various industries. I am very impressed with how responsive Joel is to queries not only during class but also out of class via Slack. He routinely supplements the course curriculum with articles, video clips and PM tools that he uses at his workplace.

Read less

I had a great experience learning at the Product School. They have a hands on approach where I was able to apply the concepts in real time. The Product School created a great balance between theory, group work to individual projects that proved to be a excellent learning experience for me and allowed me to really get value out of the class.

My instructor, Ryan Black, was excellent. He experience starting his own tech company, working at Facebook and now a startup as a product manager gave me confidence that I can learn from him. He was able to provide the class with excellent real life stories to drive home all the concepts we were learning. He was able to give us a peak into the various ways PMs apply what we were learning. Ryan has a very flexible teach style, which allowed him to go in the direction that served the class best. He also gave great feedback on the work I did. He was very detailed yet concise in his feedback, which allowed me to create quality work when writing my PRD or thinking through my prototype and go-to-market strategy.

My classmates were amazing. Outside of the instructor I was able to learn a ton from my classmates. Some of my classmates were PMs, engineers, designers, marketers and consultants, so I was able to learn from their perspective when thinking about improving a product and how to empathize with the customer when thinking about solving a problem.

Overall, as a career switcher I have gained much confidence in my ability to take on a product manager role. The confidence came from putting in time on the individual project. The project allowed me to put everything I learned into practice. I did everything from hypothesizing, writing user stories, validating my solutions, prototyping the product/feature to understanding the correct success metrics to use and much more.

The only thing I would change about the class is the allocation of topics. There is a lot of time spent at the end on resume building, interview prep and job search. I think that part can be cut shorter and more time spent learning more about product management.

Read less

I had an amazing experience of attending Product Management course at Brainstation. The course was structured in a way that made it easier to understand and grasp the concepts even for a naive like me in products space. The slides were very informational along with videos which made it more interesting. A big shout out to our trainer Ms Andrea who really explained the concepts well and helped us throught this journey.  Read less

Oleg is an amazing instructor, he went above and beyond and was always happy to ensure that every aspect of the course and every idea was explored to its fullest. The course was well designed and gave us ample opportunity to put it to practice. My fellow cohort mates were amazing to collaborate on different projects with and learn from as well. Read less

I graduated Shilpa Vir’s PMC cohort recently. It is very rare to find a charismatic and  motivational instructor with exceptional product expertise. I was very fortunate to attend a class full of joy and meet new friends. Product school’s programming and Shilpa’s unparalleled big tech product expertise will help you get up and running with confidence. Thank you Shilpa and product school for having me. Read less

I attended Product Leadership Certificate program in 2021 and enjoyed it very much, especially thanks to our fantastic instructor Shilpa Vir.
Shilpa brought a lot of practical knowledge to the classes, and live discussions with the diverse group of professionals from various domains were inspiring and informative.
The curriculum covers many aspects of the PM role - from business strategy to deeply technical areas, which makes it feel rushed a bit to fit into 8 6-hour long classes.
Nevertheless, a highly recommended course with lots of applied knowledge and a great diverse cohort, enjoyed it a lot. Read less

The Product School has a great Product Manager course, but having Shilpa Vir as an instructor made all the difference.  Her experience, examples and detailed answers to our questions helped me not only learn the frameworks, but also learn how and when to apply them.  I really enjoyed the course and happy to start applying all my learnings.   Read less