Product School

I took the 8-week Product Management course at Product School and have very positive feedback for anyone looking to take the course.  When I took the course I was Technical Director at Realsec, Inc and wasn’t really looking for a new job but I wanted to improve my Product Management skills. I was doing my job but I couldn’t help to feel that I wasn’t performing at 100%. The course greatly exceeded my expectations mostly because I wasn’t looking for a technical training or tons of literature on the subject of Product Management (I can google that myself.) I was more interested in all the other (soft) skills required to become a great PM, I also really liked how everyone in class had a technical background. 

After the course, I co-Founded Twister Labs, the company behind GoProover.com, a platform that helps people improve their lives while overcoming fun challenges in a variety of fields, no matter what their goals are.

This is definitely not a traditional course where you are overwhelmed with piles of mostly pointless literature. It is instead a course where you learn best practices for any aspiring PM from actual PMs. It’s not the kind of course where the instructor tells you exactly what to do in every situation, but a course where you get guidelines, general rules and tricks that you only obtain through years of experience. It’s a very practical course, plenty of group activities.

About the course itself, here are some facts:

- The network that you have access to is really amazing. In my class (I took the Weekend course) there were engineers from Google, Cisco, Symantec, PwC and Microsoft among other companies. At least half of the class drove every weekend all the way from Silicon Valley to San Francisco just for the course and we all made it to the end. No dropouts.

- The instructors and guest speakers were all experienced professional in their own fields and work for some of the best companies in their area. For example: 

- Carlos, taught most of the course. He has co-founded at least 3 companies related to education. One of them got into 500Startups and won the best startup prize at Startup Chile. He was also an instructor at General Assembly. 

- AB Testing was taught by a Product Manager at Optimizely 

- Online Marketing was taught by a Product Manager at ReTargeter

- Our resume was personally reviewed by a Senior Recruiter at Linkedin

- We did mockup interviews with recruiters from at least 3 companies looking for PMs at that time

- The Demo Day was hosted by Riviera Partners (recruiting firm in SoMa) and they invited several companies looking to hire PMs

- We were asked to provide a few names of companies that we’d like to work for and the Product School team helped with personal introductions to these companies

- We all got our resumes reviewed by Hired.com and were offered to publish them in their site

- We got access to a platform called PerkHub where you find hundreds of discounts and free versions of apps like JustInMind or Balsamiq (Prototyping)

- You get access to the weekly meetups where Product School brings experts in different fields to discuss hot-topics in the Product Management area. I absolutely recommend this meetups, not only for the guest speakers that are always relevant (Founder of Do.com, Nir Eyal author of Hooked, etc), but for the networking.

- We receive every week - even after the course is over- the PM ToolKit, an email with job offers, news, tools and other resources to keep us up to date in the trends in Product Management. 

Summarizing, this is probably the best Product Management course you can take in the Bay Area and, at a very reasonable price for a 8-weeks course. It’s even cheap if you think of all the perks included in the tuition. Only the resume review and mock up interviews would cost hundreds of dollars. Not to mention the privileged treatment in some hiring processes at selected companies. 

I would recommend this course to any engineer looking to transition from Engineering into a Product Management roll.

Recently finished up my Product Management Certificate course and had a great experience with our instructor Shilpa Vir. I didn't have a technical background and was able to learn a lot and gain many valuable skills in the class with Shilpa's instruction and through our productive discussions. The group homework and assignments were nicely tailored to teach me main PM skills and examples our instructor provided have been very helpful to understand the topic even if you have not worked in tech companies before. Learned a lot over the last two month in our class and working on landing my first PM job.

I got what I was looking for with the Product School Certification. I am so glad I took the Class with Instructor Shilpa Vir as her feedback is always honest and objective. She is able to be quick on her feet and is clearly highly experienced, which makes her reasoning when solving a problem extremely insightful. She made sure everyone felt heard and followed through with extra office hours. The Students in the class were very supportive as well and we learned a lot from each other. Highly recommend it if anyone is looking to shift careers or go more in depth as a PM. 

Just completed the Product Manager certification course.  WOW.  First and foremost - Shilpa the instructor was amazing. Her resume looked impressive which is why I decided to dedicate my Saturday nights for two months for the course. She dished out knowledge and expanded on the course material whenever she felt that she can bring added value.  She held office hours TWICE a week for both European and U.S. timezones and provided deep feedback to all assignments.

It was a privilege and an honor to learn from her.

The course material was also fantastic and immediately applicable. As a student, you can get out of the course as much as you put it.  With reading assignments and homework, you should plan on investing at least 8 hours a week if not more and use all the resources that are added in the class notes.  It's a great tool for both those who are trying to get into product management and those who are looking to round up their skills.  My 19 cohorts included many who will make amazing product managers and will have a great career.  And this is the last great thing about the course: the class.  It was such a fantastic mix of cultures, backgrounds, ages and a vey healthy 50/50 female/male ration, one could not have asked for a better cohort.

Highly recommend.

My experience with product school was great. Management is very flexible and tailored the course material to cover all aspects of product management.  Our instructor Shilpa Vir came with a strong background in Product Management with many years of industry experience. She is very knowledgeable and gave many practical examples from her own expertise. Under her guidance and with the knowledge we gained in the class, we were able to successfully deliver our final project starting from setting the product goal & Business objective to GTM strategy & Market funneling. Our classes were very interactive, and she encouraged all students to participate in class discussions and share their insights. I would highly recommend Shilpa as instructor to anyone who is interested in taking a course at Product School.

 I enrolled for an 8 week part-time Product Management Certificate and attended the first-week session but decided to withdraw from the course. 

Just keep in mind, they are very unsupportive (although understandable) when a student wants to withdraw. And it goes against fundamental ethics in Product Management.

My advice to anyone wanting to enroll for any of the Product School Courses is

• Do your research very well before paying the tuition amount. I mean really well.
• Most of the reviews here are written by students who are made to write reviews after 2nd week and final week class. 
• Topics taught in the course doesn't get you the job, not even a call if you are trying to transition into PM. Knowing concepts and a mock project is just like reading a book on swimming and mock project is your bath-tub.
• I withdraw from the course because, I strongly feel, this course makes more impact when you just transitioned to APM/PM Role from your current role or from school. 

Ask as many people as you can, read reviews not just written by Product School students but look for opinions on Blind as well. 

I was a part of the Product School cohort in 2017 for its eight weeks Product Management course.

Prior to joining the course, I had served as an associate PM for a year at a startup in the Bay Area but I wanted to learn more about product management to gain an overall understanding of the field.

The first best part of the program was the instructor who was also an active PM at a company in Silicon Valley. So I got to learn what a day to day life as PM entails and what are some pitfalls to avoid and how to approach various situations. The second best part was the diversity of the batch itself. My batch had about 10 students from varied backgrounds such as engineers, designers, and marketers.
Overall it was a great experience that helped me understand what I need to learn in the future to pivot my career in product management.