What I've Learned Early in My Product Career
# What I've Learned Early in My Product Career
The first few years in product management are humbling. You realize how much you don't know, how many skills you need to develop, and how different the reality is from what you read about in books and courses.
Here's what's actually helped me.
Ask More Questions
Early on, I worried that asking questions would make me look uninformed. The opposite is true. Asking clarifying questions—about business context, technical constraints, user needs—demonstrates engagement and prevents wasted work.
The best questions I've learned to ask:
Understand the System Before Changing It
It's tempting to come in with ideas and push for change. But systems exist for reasons—sometimes good ones, sometimes legacy ones. Understanding why things work the way they do helps you propose changes that actually stick.
This means talking to people who've been there longer. Reading old documentation. Asking about decisions that seem strange. Context matters.
Ship and Learn
Perfect is the enemy of done—but more importantly, you learn more from shipping something imperfect than from endlessly refining something that never launches. Real users reveal problems that internal reviews never catch.
This doesn't mean shipping broken products. It means accepting that v1 will have gaps, and that's okay if you're set up to learn and iterate.
Build Relationships Before You Need Them
Product managers depend on others to get anything done. Engineers, designers, stakeholders—your effectiveness is largely determined by how well you collaborate. Building genuine relationships early, before you need to ask for favors, makes everything easier.
This means showing up for others' work, not just your own. Celebrating team wins. Being reliable on the small things.
The Takeaway
Early career is about learning—about the craft, about yourself, about working with others. The frameworks and best practices matter, but so does the messy, human work of figuring things out with imperfect information.
Stay curious. Stay humble. Ship things. The rest follows.
Vidhika skipped presentations and built real AI products.
Vidhika Chakravarti was part of the August 2025 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 15 other talented participants.