Product School

I took the 8-week part-time Product Management course at Product School. It was a very good investment in my career. I was a QA Engineer and I wanted to become a Product Manager. I would not have been able to do this without taking this course. Well,... Read More technically maybe I could, but I don’t think I would have known what I was doing without this experience. It has been invaluable to me.

After researching the various schools in San Francisco that teach Product Management, I selected Product School because they were professional, passionate, and reasonably priced. What I got was more than I even expected. The course was life-changing, they provide tons of connections, and they are constantly providing perks, discounts on professional tools, and opportunities for networking and job openings. Carlos, the CEO, is very passionate. You can’t listen to him talk without feeling excited and motivated. For me, this had a huge impact and I now feel that I can really do my future dream, which is to start my own startup with my husband (an unintended side effect). Since CEO's are essentially their own Product Managers at early startups. I learned so much from this course and it gave me a lot of confidence about my decision to become a Product Manager.

Some things I loved about the course:
- The course is part-time so you can take it while working a full-time job or going to school
- There are week nights or weekend classes (I took the week nights)
- The course is just 8 weeks, so it is packed full of information but I liked that I could be finished and start on my next step sooner
- It’s very hands on, meaning that you will be creating your own product
- You will also work with others in your class and build a great network of other Product Managers
- It’s very cost effective, compared to other Product Management courses
- Product School actually takes the time to mentor you, help with your resume, and public speaking skills
- They help you in the job search process, in every step, throughout the course and after
- Food was provided, so that you didn’t have to worry about making time for it between work and class
- My favorite class was the day we had resume reviews and mock interviews because this feedback was excellent and so helpful
- Carlos’ connections are amazing. Everyone who was brought in for class was extremely knowledgeable. Although Carlos taught our class himself, he also brought in a Senior Recruiter from LinkedIn, and other Product Managers from top companies and local startups.
- Several of my classmates got PM jobs before class was even over
- The school has weekly Meetup events, which once a student, you can attend for free for life

I think that this course is the best Product Management school around, and I would recommend it to anyone coming from a technical background who is thinking about becoming a Product Manager or is already a PM and wants to become a better one.

This review is for the 16 week coding & product management course. I just finished my entire 16 week course. Casey, Hamid and Carlos were my instructor and they are one of the best instructors you could get for this course. I did come from a non-technical... Read More background so I am impressed with the course and myself to be able to have a good understanding of product management at the completion of the course.

The best part about the course is the instructors and what is amazing the energy, passion and keenness they share to teach this course. Carlos and Hamid are available at any time of the day to guide and answer questions. What I really like is how I met other students who are in the same boat as I am and being able to share experience and frustation even after the class.

Highly recommended for people for are looking for career change in the field of PM. Great stepping stone.

This review is for the 14 week coding & product management course. I finished the 6 week coding course and it was INTENSE. Jason was my instructor and he has a very caring soul. I came from a non-technical background so I was very impressed with the course... Read More and myself to be able to have a very good understanding of coding at the completion of the course. Jason is able to take a complex concept and break it down into very manageable pieces.

I am currently in week 1 of the PM portion of the course and I have to say I LOVE Carlos' teaching style. It is very obvious within 10 minutes of the course that you can tell he has the passion for teaching this subject. Carlos is not only a very knowledgable instructor but he is also very caring as well. He definitely has your back throughout the whole program and you can sense that on day 1.

I took the 8-week Product Management course at Product School and have very positive feedback for anyone looking to take the course. When I took the course I was Technical Director at Realsec, Inc and wasn’t really looking for a new job but I wanted to... Read More improve my Product Management skills. I was doing my job but I couldn’t help to feel that I wasn’t performing at 100%. The course greatly exceeded my expectations mostly because I wasn’t looking for a technical training or tons of literature on the subject of Product Management (I can google that myself.) I was more interested in all the other (soft) skills required to become a great PM, I also really liked how everyone in class had a technical background.

After the course, I co-Founded Twister Labs, the company behind GoProover.com, a platform that helps people improve their lives while overcoming fun challenges in a variety of fields, no matter what their goals are.

This is definitely not a traditional course where you are overwhelmed with piles of mostly pointless literature. It is instead a course where you learn best practices for any aspiring PM from actual PMs. It’s not the kind of course where the instructor tells you exactly what to do in every situation, but a course where you get guidelines, general rules and tricks that you only obtain through years of experience. It’s a very practical course, plenty of group activities.

About the course itself, here are some facts:

- The network that you have access to is really amazing. In my class (I took the Weekend course) there were engineers from Google, Cisco, Symantec, PwC and Microsoft among other companies. At least half of the class drove every weekend all the way from Silicon Valley to San Francisco just for the course and we all made it to the end. No dropouts.

- The instructors and guest speakers were all experienced professional in their own fields and work for some of the best companies in their area. For example:

- Carlos, taught most of the course. He has co-founded at least 3 companies related to education. One of them got into 500Startups and won the best startup prize at Startup Chile. He was also an instructor at General Assembly.

- AB Testing was taught by a Product Manager at Optimizely

- Online Marketing was taught by a Product Manager at ReTargeter

- Our resume was personally reviewed by a Senior Recruiter at Linkedin

- We did mockup interviews with recruiters from at least 3 companies looking for PMs at that time

- The Demo Day was hosted by Riviera Partners (recruiting firm in SoMa) and they invited several companies looking to hire PMs

- We were asked to provide a few names of companies that we’d like to work for and the Product School team helped with personal introductions to these companies

- We all got our resumes reviewed by Hired.com and were offered to publish them in their site

- We got access to a platform called PerkHub where you find hundreds of discounts and free versions of apps like JustInMind or Balsamiq (Prototyping)

- You get access to the weekly meetups where Product School brings experts in different fields to discuss hot-topics in the Product Management area. I absolutely recommend this meetups, not only for the guest speakers that are always relevant (Founder of Do.com, Nir Eyal author of Hooked, etc), but for the networking.

- We receive every week - even after the course is over- the PM ToolKit, an email with job offers, news, tools and other resources to keep us up to date in the trends in Product Management.

Summarizing, this is probably the best Product Management course you can take in the Bay Area and, at a very reasonable price for a 8-weeks course. It’s even cheap if you think of all the perks included in the tuition. Only the resume review and mock up interviews would cost hundreds of dollars. Not to mention the privileged treatment in some hiring processes at selected companies.

I would recommend this course to any engineer looking to transition from Engineering into a Product Management roll.