TCW #050: Understanding PxM roles in Tech (project, program, and product managers)
Key differences: prime directives, metrics, challenges, daily tasks, and more. Learn which role is the best fit for you and how to leverage colleagues in these roles.
Hey, it’s 📣 Coach Erika! Welcome to a 🙏 paid subscriber edition🙏 of The Career Whispers. Each week, I tackle reader questions about tech careers: how to get one, how to navigate them, and how to grow and thrive in your role.
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⭐️ Milestone! It’s long-form post #50 in TCW, which means I’ve been writing this newsletter for you for one full year. I wanted to make article #50 particularly juicy, and as I thought about the most charged questions I field as a coach, this topic (TPM vs PM vs PgM vs Project Manager) jumped out. People often come to me asking for help debugging dynamics with colleagues in these roles or for help debugging a PxM job search.
I hope you find this post useful today and in the future as you learn how to master your own role or get the most value from colleagues in these roles.
Before I became a newsletter writer on Substack, I made YouTube videos about getting into tech careers.
One of my most popular YouTube videos is a simple video that concisely explains the differences between three oft-confused roles in tech:
program management (TPM and PgM)
product management (PM)
project management (proj mgmt or “PM” in companies that don’t have product managers)
Note: For brevity, in the rest of this post, we’ll refer to these roles collectively as “PxM.” I hope that’s okay with you.
I created the video above to help people pivot into tech from other industries. The intent was to explain each role and help them decide which would best fit them.
Many non-PxMs commented on the video: “Finally, I can understand where my PM is coming from!” I realized that the content could help more than just folks in these roles, but their colleagues, too.
Today's post covers these four PxM roles: project management, program management, technical program management, and product management. I cover them in more depth and detail than in the original video and respond to comments and questions posted on the video.
I’ll walk through how each role measures success, their daily tasks, who they work with, what they produce, their challenges, how to help them help you be more successful, and which personalities enjoy each role most.
If you’re a PxM reading this, I hope you’ll feel seen 👀
If you’re thinking about becoming a PxM, I hope this will help you select the best role for you 💡
If you work with PxMs, I hope this helps you better understand and leverage them 👯
Let’s dive in.
Every team is a small company.
I like to imagine project teams as small companies. Someone plays the CEO role, getting buy-in and resources and setting the vision. Someone makes the trains run on time (COO). Someone else scopes what needs to be built (Chief Product Officer). Someone else figures out how to build it (CTO).
To help your brain map these job roles, I will frame each role in terms of the leadership role within a small company that represents the cleanest analog to the PxM role we’re discussing.
It’s important to remember, though, that there is a lot of dynamism in both the roles I’ve listed and in the individuals who hold them. It’s a rough metaphor, not a perfect match.
Project Manager (Proj Mgr)
Project managers get things done, plain and simple. They usually focus on one major project at a time (though some manage more than one concurrent project) and ensure that it gets across the finish line ON TIME and ON BUDGET (or under!).
Prime directive: Project managers are laser-focused on a specific initiative with a defined scope, budget, and timeline. Think: launching a new mobile app, building a core feature, announcing a new product, or planning a big event.
Their job is to ensure that prioritized projects reach the finish line. Their minds are fixed on the triple constraint: time, cost, and scope. When one gives, another pulls. Their job is to consider and present all tradeoffs and keep everyone on the same page about what is happening.
Key metrics: On-time and on-budget completion, percentage of project scope achieved, risk mitigation success rate, team satisfaction.
Daily tasks: Project managers live in the details. They plan work, track progress, manage resources, mitigate risks, report to stakeholders, and ensure project delivery within scope. Great project managers also acknowledge wins and milestones and build a sense of team and community.
Artifacts: They document the journey—project plans, work breakdown structures, budgets, risk registers, status reports, and communication logs.
Core skills: Organization, communication, resource management, risk management, and time management.
Who they work with: their project team and stakeholders of their project.
Their love language: proactive communication
How to make their day:
raise risks as soon as you see them
alert them as soon as you know a task is slipping
thank them for their work now and then (it’s often a thankless job with long hours and misplaced criticism)
What’s hard about the role: Project managers get a lot of gnarly problems to solve (people, process, patterns) and are often on the bottom of the totem pole of power and influence. This can leave them under-resourced without a forum to raise risks and issues to get out of the hole. Those who communicate most clearly and concisely (with data!) are the ones who end up with sufficient resources and leadership support to keep their sanity while solving big problems and delivering their projects.
Two ways colleagues can get the most from their project manager:
Build uncertainty into your estimates. Avoid being overly optimistic (“I know what I’m doing, and nothing will do wrong. It’s deterministic work”) and also overly pessimistic (sandbagging or throwing your hands in the air when asked to make an estimate, i.e., “this is impossible to scope because there are too many unknowns”).
Force them to understand your work. Help them help you by detailing upfront how you arrive at your work estimates (“It’s four weeks to write a PRD because it will take me two weeks to gather data, do market research, and develop one or two hypotheses to test. One week to gain conviction by testing with users. One final week to refine the feature design and write it all up for the team.”) Explaining the underlying work or unknowns helps them build intuition and a deeper understanding of what’s behind each task estimate. Teaching them this will save you loads of time later when issues pop up: while you’re in the trenches debugging the issue, they can manage upward and buy you space and resources to solve the problem.
You’ll enjoy this role if: you thrive on structure, organization, and seeing tasks through to completion. Are you someone who creates checklists so you can feel the accomplishment every time you tick something off the list? You will love this job.
Income: The least of all the roles on this list.
Career tip: project managers are more common at smaller tech companies than at FAANG, and getting a project management role is often considered a great stepping stone into a more strategic PxM role: program management.
Program Manager (PgM)
Program managers own multiple projects connected by a common strategic goal. Their job is to ensure the strategic objectives are met. They do this by managing the underlying efforts (projects).
Prime directive: PgMs oversee multiple interrelated projects contributing to a broader program goal. Think: managing three different projects aimed at improving the customer experience.
If they were a chief executive, they’d be: the COO. PgMs focus on getting strategic goals delivered through aligned projects.
Key metrics: PgMs are measured by the metrics for their managed programs. If they are driving a COGS reduction program, those cost reduction metrics carry to the way they are measured. Same with any other kind of program: the program's metrics are the metrics for this role.
Daily tasks: PgMs are busy bees. They align individual projects to achieve broader strategic goals, manage dependencies, optimize resources, and report on program progress. Their job is to see the forest through the trees while also tending to the trees themselves.
Artifacts: Program roadmaps (lots of timelines!), launch plans and checklists, process flow diagrams, retrospectives, and stakeholder updates.
Core skills: Strategic thinking, program and project planning, collaboration, communication, and change management.
Who they work with: Program stakeholders and project managers. If the PgM manages one or more projects in their program, they also work closely with the project team, just like a project manager.
Their love language: buying into their bigger picture strategic objectives —or— telling them openly why you don’t buy in (so they can improve)
How to make their day:
explain your work in the context of the program goals
thank them for their work now and then (it’s often a thankless job with long hours and misplaced criticism)
What’s hard about the role: Very few program managers just oversee projects. Often, they scope the entire program and all of the sub-projects, and then they run all or most of the underlying projects as the project manager. This can be a strain on their time as well as on their ability to shift gears from tactical to strategic when needed to ensure the success of the program. They risk being consumed by tactical quicksand while managing their projects rather than driving the overarching strategy. The best program managers set aside time each week for strategic planning, and they hold it sacred.
Two ways colleagues can get the most from their PgM:
(strategic part of the role) Be a thought partner. Their job is to make the strategic goals happen, but day-to-day, they live in the details and trenches. Having teammates who hold them accountable to the bigger picture is invaluable. Help them get their heads out of the sand and stay intellectually honest about whether the work you’re all doing will bring those strategic goals to fruition.
(tactical part of the role) Because many program managers run the projects in their program, see this section in the Project Manager description above ⬆ to get ideas on how to help with this part of their job.
You’ll enjoy this role if: You’re a bigger-picture, strategic thinker who also relishes in the details. You love managing complexity: you know how to break it down, and it doesn’t stress you out. Aligning the incentives of diverse teams and individuals sounds fun to you, and you can keep your eye on the bigger picture while diving in to debug small details.
Income: More than a project manager, less than a TPM or PM
Career tip: at most FAANG companies, program managers aren’t hired straight out of college. You first need 2+ years of project management experience before most larger tech companies will consider you for program management roles. If you want to get into program management without paying 1-2 years of dues as a project manager, consider shifting into a PgM role from within your existing company and function, for example, moving from an events marketing role into a marketing program manager role.
Technical Program Manager (TPM)
TPMs are a special type of program manager embedded within technical teams. They often bridge between product and engineering and other cross-functional teams seeking engineering input and updates.
TPMs learn the lingo of their cross-functional stakeholders and translate to and from technical language to keep stakeholders aligned and informed.
Put simply, TPMs help technical teams get products over the finish line. They are concerned with HOW things get built and delivered.
To make engineering work more sustainable and repeatable, they often design the processes by which delivery happens (testing, launch and release processes, security and privacy reviews, and more).
Prime directive: Bridges the gap between product and engineering, translating product vision into technical reality. Think: designing and running a launch war room for a critical feature launch.
If they were a chief executive, they’d be: the COO or the chief of staff to the CTO.
Key metrics: TPMs are measured by the metrics for their managed programs. If they manage an engineering velocity project, those project metrics carry to how they are measured. Same with feature launches, retrospectives, eng culture, and other project types: the program's metrics are the metrics for this role.
Daily tasks: TPMs are masters of collaboration and translating technical and non-technical goals and terminology. They facilitate technical discussions with engineering and product, design operating rhythms that efficiently use engineering time and resources, and they monitor and manage technical risks.
Artifacts: Technical roadmaps (lots of timelines!), launch plans and checklists, process flow diagrams, post-mortems, and abstracted architecture diagrams or technical specs for cross-functional stakeholders.
Core skills: TPMs are distinguished from non-technical program managers (PgMs) by both their domain expertise and the fact that their roles are fundamentally technical. Otherwise, the list of core skills is largely overlapping (communication, collaboration, resource management, process development).
Who they work with: TPMs work closely with their technical teams, PMs, and other stakeholders, including gatekeepers who run oversight processes for launches (security and privacy reviews, for example).
Their love language: bringing them in early and often, not just when everything is on fire or after the postmortem.
How to make their day:
Help them stay technical. Bring them into technical discussions, and not just to take notes. Ask their opinions.
Recognize that they are outnumbered. It’s easy to forget that many companies' average ratio of engineers to TPMs is well over 10:1. Give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they have a lot on their plate and don’t have a lot of backup (trust me, they don't).
Tell them when they are doing a good job. It’s often unclear to them where they are winning in the eyes of the team, especially when they have many projects on their plates. Telling them directly will help them understand where you place their value (so they can decide if they want to double down).
What’s hard about the role: Technical people will never think they are “technical enough” — which is true. It’s unlikely that they will be as up-to-date technical as a practicing engineer. If they let this criticism get to their heads, they may face crippling imposter syndrome. I’ve seen it many times.
If they manage to avoid that, the other tricky thing about the role is that no one knows everything they’re doing, which can result in peers misunderstanding their scope or full set of responsibilities. To solve this, they must communicate more, not less, about their scope and workload.
Two ways colleagues can get the most from their TPM:
(strategic part of the role) Remember that their job is about making things run more smoothly, so don’t be shy about bringing up areas of waste or inefficiency and asking them to work on operating rhythm changes that make your work more sustainable. They can’t know all the ins and outs of your daily work and instead rely on team members to help them identify areas of opportunity.
(tactical part of the role) Because many TPMs run the projects in their program, see this section in the Project Manager description above ⬆ to get ideas on how to help with this part of their job.
You’ll enjoy this role if: you’re curious and technical but prefer breadth over depth —or if you love building products but enjoy working more cross-functionally.
Income: More than a project manager or PgM, usually less than a PM (though at some companies, the same as a PM).
Career tip: Historically, TPM roles were reserved for engineering and product development. As the tools for other functions require more technical know-how (marketing teams needing data pipelines and real-time dashboards are a good example), I’m seeing TPMs emerge in other parts of organizations (finance, marketing, growth, and sales). Because TPMs usually make more than PgMs, pushing for a TPM scope (and salary) is reasonable if your program work is fundamentally (or even frequently) technical.
Product Manager (CEO)
Product managers are responsible for defining WHAT we’re going to build. Their ears live on the ground, collecting and synthesizing feedback from user focus groups, analytics, logs, competitive intel, and more — all to define and drive the team toward a more successful product. They own strategy and execution, yes, but they are ultimately responsible for the product's success.
