From 2013 to 2022, I worked as a product manager at Byte and left after 22 years
After leaving my job, I went to the directing training class of Beijing Film Academy for a year
Why study directing? Because I’m curious about directors, I feel like directors and product managers are very similar:
Neither of these positions does work by themselves, they give feedback on the work done by others, but when the work is done, they will say that this is the work of the director and product manager
“Why does the screenwriter write the photography, the makeup artist and costume designer finish the actors, and the director shouts to start and stop, saying that it is a director’s work?” ——Huang Bo
“You don’t deserve so much, you haven’t made any products” – Jerry
Huang Bo doesn’t need to be introduced, let me introduce Jerry: this is the father of Apple co-founder and technical genius Watts
Woz made the world’s first personal computer for himself, which could be used when connected to the TV, at that time computers were generally large equipment, there was no personal computer, Woz made this computer was originally just for himself, and then friends asked Woz to make one for himself, and one of his friends, Jobs, persuaded Woz: Let’s set up a company to sell this
To achieve these three challenges, product managers will only continue to appreciate
Good product managers are very scarce, and product managers who understand users, business, and data are still in demand when they go out of the Internet. On the contrary, if you only do simple communication, inefficient execution, and shallow thinking, I am afraid that you will not be able to go through the torrent of the next 3-5 years.
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In other words, Jobs did not seem to have done anything, when Jobs was 22 years old, he was asked by Woz’s father to cry, and it was really not clear to explain, but Woz recognized Jobs and distributed 50% of the shares to Jobs
In addition to Apple’s original computers, Apple’s later products: from mac to lisa, from iPod to iPhone, are generally considered to be the work of Jobs – although he is not a hardware engineer, nor a software engineer, nor a designer, but he is a product manager, a director (+ screenwriter) of similar products.
Neither position has specialized skills and no specific threshold
“What is the easiest thing that doesn’t need Tongzi Gong? Music has to be practiced from an early age, right? Cross talk has been practiced since childhood, right? Then I thought about what was the easiest thing? It doesn’t have to be practiced from an early age – director, no one has practiced directing since childhood, and no parents said to sign up for a class at the age of seven or eight, let you learn to direct, which means that this is the easiest thing, so I went to the film school to learn this, and the result is really easy” – Gao Xiaosong
“I will tell you about the director, it is the best thing in the world, just tell others and it’s over” – Ma Weidu
“Everybody is a product manager” – that’s the name of a book, and there’s also a website that’s the name
Although film schools have the major of directing, accomplished directors come from various majors:
James Cameron studied physics, Nolan English literature, Michael Mann English literature, Zhang Yimou photography, Feng Xiaogang fine arts…… Spielberg wanted to go to film school at the age of 19, but he was not admitted, so he went directly to the Warner set to do middle school – as we all know, the director of China’s highest-grossing movie “Nezha 2” dumplings, studied medicine
As for product managers, universities do not have this major at all:
Not to mention Jobs’ English literature, Li Xingping, one of China’s most accomplished product managers, has never even gone to college, and many people may not know him, but many people must know that hao123 website navigation and 4399 mini-games are all works of Li Xingping. Li Xingping did hao123 because he was an administrator in an Internet café at that time, he found a phenomenon, many people who went to Internet cafes to surf the Internet did not know where to go when they opened the computer, or they had a note in their hands, memorized a lot of URLs, and entered the browser one by one, so he did hao123 URL navigation, this product was extremely successful, in the computer era the traffic was extremely large, the advertising revenue was super high, and finally it was acquired by Baidu
Because I don’t work and have no professional skills, it’s easy to mix these two positions
Woody Allen has a movie “Hollywood Ending”, in which the Hollywood director is blind, the photographer Chinese does not understand English, hires a translator to communicate with the photographer, makes a movie in such a mode, and finally wins an award – Woody Allen means to be a good Hollywood director, and blind people can ride blind horses
John Woo went to Hollywood for a while (I was impressed by his “Changing Face” filmed during that time), and he said that in Hollywood, as long as you become a director, the rest of the work is very easy to do – because every process, the actor’s art photography costume is industrial, and the director can do it without doing anything
If you are a product manager in a major Internet company, and then assign you a few product assistants, it is easy to mix, listen to what the boss wants to do, let the product assistant make a plan, say yes/no to the plan, let the product assistant and the programmer design communicate and promote, let the product assistant collect and summarize data to report to the boss – you can even do this without outputting any cognition and judgment throughout the process
But it’s hard to do it well
Although you can be a director, it is difficult to really make a good movie
And we will find that the director seems to have done nothing, but the director will really make the work present a very distinct personal style, Wes Anderson’s movies, Tasim Sheen’s movies, Tsui Hark’s movies…… The style is different
Although product managers have no threshold, it is difficult to really do a good product
And we will find that product managers can sometimes decide the life and death of a company, and when Jobs returned to Apple for the second time, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy, when Dell boss Dell publicly said:
“If I were Apple’s CEO, I would shut down the company and return the money to shareholders.”
At this time, Apple’s market value has fallen below 2 billion
Jobs returned to Apple and held an all-hands meeting as soon as possible and said to all employees:
「Fuck Dell」
Apple employee morale has been boosted
Then Jobs began the most classic return of the king in business history, he cut almost all of Apple’s product lines, drew four quadrants, and made only one product in each quadrant
Then music lover Jobs found the opportunity to play mp3 and made an iPod, which sold 100 million units in 5 years, for comparison, Sony’s classic Walkman sold 100 million units in 12 years
Then the functions of mobile phones began to increase, almost all mobile phones can play mp3, very naturally, since mobile phones will eat the mp3 market, then Apple simply makes mobile phones, iPhone comes out
Today is June 16, 2025, looking at Apple’s stock price, 2.93 trillion yuan
This is truly a brilliant victory for productism
If Apple’s board of directors had given Jobs 90% of the company’s shares that year, the deal would have even been profitable
Because they don’t work and have no professional skills, their careers in these two positions can be very long, and they can still do it when they are older
Zhang Yimou is 75 years old and is currently filming “The Three-Body Problem”; Clint Eastwood, 95, released “Juror No. 2” last year; Ridley Scott is 87 years old, has just released “Napoleon” and “Gladiator”, and is filming “Alien: Romulus”
In 1985, 30-year-old Jobs was interviewed by Playboy magazine and said:
“It’s rare to see an artist in his thirties or forties who can create something truly surprising.”
The iPhone was released in 2007, when Jobs was 52 years old
If you have to work on your own, it is almost impossible to continue such a long career, especially in industries with high requirements for creativity and physical strength, professional sports, e-sports, mathematicians…… They all started to produce results in their teens, and almost all of them retired at forty – your creativity, sharpness, reflexes, stamina, flexibility…… It is impossible to beat young people anymore
But you can continue to do professions that guide others to work, such as directors, such as product managers
Product managers and directors actually do the same thing: use technology to create
Film is an art that appeared relatively late, because photography technology must be invented first
With the advent of photography, it is possible to tell stories, express opinions, convey information, create spectacle, and experience dreams…… So performance, art, music, and literature are all integrated into this art form, and the director is responsible for the work as a whole
Or Jobs Playboy Interview:
I think great artists and great engineers are similar, they both have a desire for self-expression. In fact, some of the first best people who made Macs were also poets and musicians. In the 70s of the 20th century, computers became a way for people to express their creativity. Some great artists, like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, were also scientifically proficient in later times, and Michelangelo knew a lot about quarrying, he didn’t just know how to sculpt
Mac is the first computer with a graphical interface operating system with a mouse, before that, it was very inconvenient for people to operate the computer, only a few geeks could play, Jobs led the mac team to complete this product, and even asked the team members to sign it, because this is really a work of everyone
The famous mathematician Hardy (he was a common teacher of the famous Chinese mathematician Hua Luogeng and the famous Indian mathematician Ramanujan at Cambridge) quoted a poem in “The Defense of a Mathematician”:
Here, on the level sand
Between the sea and land
What shall I build or write？
Against the fall of night?
Here, what should I build or write on a flat beach between sea and land? To resist the falling night?
Hardy believed that a mathematician’s ambition was to build something eternal, and when a theorem was proven, it would be true forever, beating time
It’s similar in other industries, we all want to create and build something to resist the night and beat time
Therefore, the best product managers in the industry often have a literary temperament
Many years later, Gates and Jobs were interviewed at the same time, and the literary young man Jobs quoted a lyric from the Beatles on the spot:
You and I have memories
Longer than the road that stretches out ahead
The memories between you and me are longer than the road ahead
Gates, a man of science and engineering, was made into tears
“Interview with the product manager, everything else is qualified, and I have to ask again: Do you like rock music? Answer: If you don’t like it, don’t want it” – Zhang Xiaolong
Because the essence of a product manager is a kind of creation, it is to use technology to create
AI will further lower the barrier for product managers and directors
Although there is no threshold for these two professional skills, everyone can do it, but in fact, each has a high threshold
The class I took at the Beijing Film Academy impressed me the most was this sentence:
“The most important thing in making a movie is to know a rich big brother, because it is too expensive to make a movie, you must have a sponsor, otherwise you can’t afford to make a movie.”
The film industry is indeed very expensive, and it costs money to get a crew and coordinate so many people
In contrast, writing is very cheap, and a person can write at any time, Liu Cixin expressed:
“I am a science fiction fan, not a literature fan, I think science fiction is very suitable for expressing science fiction with images, and really using words to express science fiction, at least for me personally, it is really unavoidable.”
Now, technology is likely to allow one person to make movies, and Liu Cixin’s dream is not far away
In the tech industry, there is a saying that everyone knows:
“There is only one programmer left.”
This sentence is a ridicule of many people who have many product ideas, but they can’t write programs themselves, and they can’t find programmers to implement them
But things are changing, and AI programming tools are advancing rapidly (probably faster than previous video generation tools), with OpenAI CEO Altman recently saying:
“Technologists in the startup industry have long made fun of the creative guys: they have an idea and are looking for a team to build it. Now it seems to me that they are about to spend their day in the sun.”
In the era of AI advancing by leaps and bounds, many interesting things will happen, one of which is that we will see everyone being a product manager and everyone being a director
