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355: Should I Be a Product Manager?

July 15, 2020

This week, we attempt to answer the age-old question every designer will someday face: should I be a product manager? In this week's Sidebar, we share our first impressions of macOS Big Sur, covering our favorite changes and what we hope to see updated before public release.


Golden Ratio Patrons:

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Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!

  • Hannah
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The Sidebar:

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.

In this week's Sidebar, we dig into our first impressions of macOS Big Sur. We dissect our favorite parts, and the things we hope will change by the time things go public.


Follow up:

  • Hugo Tunius did a deep dive into how the new iOS 14 pasteboard alert works behind the scenes.
  • Keep tweeting at Yitong if you enjoyed last week's episode!

Listener Question:

Rachee Jacobs asks:

I am a product designer and I work with very talented designers on my team. I constantly find myself trying very hard to push myself up into higher level product discussions and decisions with the product managers since I feel it is part of my job to not just get product requirements handed down and design then, but to be part of the definition. But it seems like no one else on the design team really cares as much and are happy to get very specific requirements and flows.

So I wonder, is it just my company who doesn’t value product designers role or is it the state of the industry? Would I be happier as a product manager?


Cool Things:

  • Brian shared Folklore.org, shoutout to Gabriel Valdivia for the recommendation! Folklore "is a web site devoted to collective historical storytelling. It captures and presents sets of related stories that describe interesting events from multiple perspectives, allowing groups of people to recount their shared history in the form of interlinked anecdotes."
  • Marshall shared Cult Favorite, a high-quality source of pantry essentials, created by our friends Bryn Jackson and Sarah Marie. Buy the first batch, we promise it's good!

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