APM List

by Exponent

All of the links below are genuine recommendations; I don't recommend something I have not personally used or thoroughly researched. That means this list is short, but good.

Some of them are also affiliate links, meaning at no cost to you, I earn some extra money if you click through and make a purchase.

Communities
Places you can go to connect and interact with other (aspiring) product managers.

Exponent is a community of over 50,000 aspiring product managers that offers a peer-to-peer mock interviewing platform, PM course, and interview question database.

Coaching & Mock Interviews

Try Exponent's coaching to get practice mock interviews with former FAANG interviewers.

Interview Question Databases

Other than the below books, some people are looking for online question databases. Exponent has one of the largest collections of APM interview questions from Google, Facebook, and other tech companies.

Interview Prep Books
Great for practicing sample questions you might be asked during an interview
  • Decode and Conquer
  • Lewis Lin's frameworks and questions are useful and straight-foward. This is a great place to start for sample interview questions. It is at the top of my list because if you can only pick one of these books, you should pick this one.

  • Cracking the Product Management Interview
  • Gayle's counterpart to "Cracking the Coding Interview," but for product management. While the book is a bit dated, Gayle often is hired by companies to help train interviewers and establish interview practices. Understanding hiring from her perspective will certainly help you more broadly understand what interviewers are looking for. Additionally, since this resource is a bit older, you are likely to meet current PMs who have used this as their own study guides, and have stolen interview questions they now use directly from the book.

  • Cracking the PM Career
  • The latest book in Gayle's series, focused on more than just PM skills, but your career as a whole.

  • The Product Manager Interview: 167 Q's & A's
  • While not my top recommendation, if you are looking for even more interview prep questions, I think this is a fine resource to turn to. It's another book by Lewis Lin, but I think Decode and Conquer is better.

Resources to Invest in Your Long-term Product Skillset
While these aren't short-term resources to read right before an interview, they are all great long term investments in your product management skills.
  • The Design of Everyday Things
  • Great Product Managers are also well versed in "design thinking," and Don Norman is the founding father for this entire field of thought. Worth reading to help shape how you define good design, especially by giving structure and vocabulary to abstract ideas you might otherwise not know how to talk about.

  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things
  • Ben Horowitz's book is a classic, especially the famed section "Good Product Managers vs Bad Product Managers" (which is also available as a free excerpt from the a16z website). At minimum, you should read the aforementioned section, but the whole book is definitely worth the read.

  • The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution
  • I think Clayton Christensen has a lot of awesome ideas, across books, short essays, and podcasts. (If you are looking for something free, HBR has a great podcast with him.) His theory of "jobs to be done" has stuck with me over the years, and you'll hear many product managers use the phrase. The above books are some of his most well-known works. If you only have enough time or money to read one of the two, read "Solution," as it is the sequel to "Dilemma" and has an overlap in content.

  • The Lean Startup
  • While nearly a decade old, I think Eric Ries's book remains a great primer for understanding the mentality towards being lean and data driven. While many PMs may not use Eric's terminology by name, the this book has had a huge impact on product management as a discipline.

  • Zero to One
  • Perhaps less useful for those working on existing products at large companies, I think this is a must-read for those who are working on new products, whether at startups, BigCo, or even as a more humble side project or side hustle.