The Associate Product Manager (APM) program at Lyft is an 18-month rotational program designed to build Lyft’s future product leaders. In two nine-month rotations, Lyft APMs are given an incredible opportunity to foster a wide range of product management skills, gain exposure to many facets of the business, and build a strong network of peers as an early-career PM.

In August 2020, Lyft’s second APM class joined their 7 new teams… remotely. On that Monday morning, each APM logged onto their first meeting with the daunting task of onboarding onto a new team, at a new company, to start making an impact.

Even the most experienced product managers were once brand new to the field. While throughout a product career, you will accumulate transferable skills that make you more effective at solving new problems, it’s still a laborious process to get up-to-speed on a new product and space. Now two thirds of the way through the program and well into our second rotation, here are some of the lessons we as the APM 2020s have learned so far.

An APM hard at work on her Transit, Bikes, and Scooters (TBS) Rotation

#1. Build and trust in your product intuition. You are qualified to drastically change the direction of product, even as an early PM.

Don’t think that you’re too new or inexperienced to have an opinion. Weeks and months into the position, you’ll have thought about the problem area 10x more than your managers and directors. You’ll be the new expert in the space who people are trusting for decisions, so first off, it’s important to trust yourself. Don’t be afraid to bring independent thoughts and theses to the table that can significantly change the direction of your team.

Note, you should still spend the time to get up to speed with the team’s context, data, prior work, and rationales. However, with that in mind, every person comes to the team with experiences, knowledge, and paradigms that intrinsically have value when applied to a problem. As an APM, make it your goal in the early weeks to learn as much as possible about what’s happening and why. Then, leverage that to start contributing to the team, find a quick win, or start chipping away at the big problems systematically.

#2. Leverage your team’s strengths and collaborate as much as possible.

Lyft brings together some of the best talent in the industry to tackle the toughest transportation problems. As a Lyft PM, a key to success is to leverage the strengths of the team to get the best possible outcome. Your job in the product role is to understand, define, and prioritize the problems that the team should tackle.

• Need help understanding the problem? Pose the question to Data Science or User Research.
• Need help exploring the solutions? Bring Product Designers and Engineers into your brainstorms.
• Need help figuring out where to start? Talk to other PMs and bounce ideas.

You’re not alone in your goal to make a great product.

One of the benefits of being an APM at a company with so much talent, is the opportunity to leap-frog the learning curve by learning from others. Don’t work in a silo, even though you might feel pressured to know it all. Ask for time from your coworkers, even to onboard onto the simplest areas because you ramping up quickly to become an effective PM directly benefits their work in the future. Bring people into your brainstorming and product-thinking journeys, document your assumptions and share them with others, and parallelize your work by tackling problems as a team. Collaborating is the key to optimal outcomes. As an APM, focus on leveraging your team’s strengths — it creates stronger teams and the best products for our users.

#3. Take agency in your experience as an APM. It’s a rare role, so be flexible and grow as much as you can.

Lyft won’t give you a small product space. You’ll be thrown into a role that’s essentially always asking too much from you. This is where your growth can excel.

The APM program is a playground for aspiring product leaders. This is a rare (if not the only) chance where you have the flexibility of getting exposed to many different teams in a very short period of time, where you’re encouraged by your managers and mentors to fail, take risks, and try new things in a safe environment.

Therefore, you must have agency in the way you approach the program. Don’t try to fit the mold of product management. Every team will be different, but you quickly realize that there’s no 1-size-fits-all product management style, and in that ambiguity and discomfort of being clueless, you can take advantage of the flexibility to maximize your growth: for every new team, reinvent yourself as a PM in the way you think creatively and analytically, in how you approach working with your team, the tactics in which you communicate, and every avenue of growth you want to create for yourself. You’ll make the most out of the program by actively pushing yourself and setting your own destiny in your experience.

#4. Have fun, make friends, and invest in the community around you.

At the end of the day, the biggest memories you make from your work (aside from the incredible launches) will be the moments of glee, laughter, and inspiration from the people around you. You’ll enjoy the journey of your time as an early PM much more if you invest in the relationships around you from the moment you start and have fun in the process!

This job is not easy. You’ll make the closest group of friends from the APM program. These people will be your biggest advocates and support network, as well as the people you go to for office hangouts, kicks and giggles, and memories that make you cherish your time as an APM.

APM 2019s + 2020s on their trip to Jacksonhole while working remoteAPM Bonding on the slopes of Jacksonhole

You’ll meet incredible people at Lyft from your teams during your rotations. Especially while working remote, it’s important to make the effort to get to know people and visit in person when possible, and build relationships that make work special to you!

Our weekly APM 2020 hangouts