Decode and Conquer: Answers to Product Management Interviews

I highly recommend this book if you are are starting your product management journey. The examples are practical and easy to use for your upcoming interview. The books a variety of examples for multiple industries! Definitely make the purchase.

Decode and Conquer is no doubt a must read for anyone who wants to be a Product Manager. It gives a plethora of different example PM interview questions like "Design a new iPad app for Google Spreadsheet" complete with extremely strong example answers. This book is much stronger than Cracking the PM Interview in that regard.Lin also does a great job teaching something called the CIRCLES framework which helps prospective PMs think more clearly and compose well-structured, logical responses to the sort of questions they will get asked in PM interviews. As someone who conducts PM interviews at a FANG company though, please be warned that if you are using the framework too closely, you will come off as robotic-almost as if you had been told the question beforehand and were reciting a memorized answer. That is not what the interviewer is looking for. Use frameworks as a reference point to make sure you aren't forgetting anything but do NOT use them verbatim. You want to give organized responses to questions that seem to be coming organically as that is what you will need to do everyday on the job.Overall, this book is very strong. The only reason I am giving it four stars is because it seems to downplay open ended strategy questions. Sure, Lin touches on this with things like "You're the CEO of the Yellow Cab taxi service. How do you respond to Uber?" however this book doesn't give you industry insight in the strategy's of the top tech companies or how their products work at a high level for less technical PMs.For that reason, I think Decode and Conquer is one of two must reads for getting PM offers. The other book is called Swipe to Unlock. This book provides considerable insight on the tech and business strategy side to enable you to have the context you need to understand the full implications of what you may be asked. It covers things like why does Google let Yelp & Uber (which are competitors to Google reviews and Waymo) use Google maps or why does Facebook let other apps which are competing for precious user time spent to log in with Facebook credentials instead of making them create their own logins which would cause more friction and probably result in more people using other non-core apps less overall and just defaulting to using Facebook more. It also gives a high level overview of how core tech like search algorithms or machine learning actually work under the hood which may be helpful if you are a PM without a strong computer science education.Between Decode and Conquer and Swipe to Unlock, you should have everything you need to ace PM interview.

Interviews have been raised to the next level in today’s job market. Decode and Conquer appeals to anyone who wants to up their interviewing game, whether they are being interviewed or giving the interview.The book’s main focus is on how to succeed in the product management interview, which tests analytical, design, and technical know-how. But Decode and Conquer’s frameworks and approaches can be used in many analytical or case-based interviews outside of product management.This book’s strengths include: 1) revealing the types of common (and even uncommon) questions asked in these interviews, 2) providing frameworks for answering these questions, and where the book really shines, 3) giving many sample answers (good, bad, and ugly ones) with accompanying critiques.I personally learn more from failures than successes, and this book shows some answers that may on the surface sound good, but upon closer inspection, fall apart. Walking through these answers, Lewis shows how bad answers can be made right and good answers made better. While many other interview books provide frameworks and theories, Decode and Conquer provides practical advice from scores of real world interviews the author has conducted.Lewis also provides useful soft skills for the interview from asking for feedback to pausing to collect your thoughts before diving into an answer. These are often neglected by many interviewees who may jump too quickly to conclusion. I would like to see additional material on soft skills in the next edition of the book.Any prospective product manager should get this book and even seasoned product managers will find valuable insight into their roles and up their game with Decode and Conquer.

I've never seen a book quite like this that focuses so much on answering a wide variety of interview questions. I applaud the author for taking so much time to record so many answers and give little critiques of the answer positives and negatives at the end. The primary strength of this book is the structure the author provides to presenting your interview in a logical, easy to understand way. By doing this over and over again, the reader really starts to "get" how important and easy it can be to start with structure. However, I found the actual answer quality uneven. I've spent 1 year as a PM hiring manager and been involved in interviewing PMs for 4 years and there were a few cases where the "candidate" gave answers that I'd give a thumbs down to that the author claimed were great answers. But I should also caveat there there are a couple great answers as well.I also read Cracking the PM interview and would recommend that book over this one. Crack the PM interview is more of an overview with only a few answers to PM interview questions but higher quality. I think an issue for me was that I love Solving Product Design Exercises. That book approaches design questions in a similar way providing a framework with real questions and answers. But the answers in that book are all extraordinary so the bar I was expecting for this book was not met.

Worth getting if you are looking to become a product manager

I was sent a pirated copy of the book by this Delhi based seller after paying 550/-. You can imagine the guts these folks have. Telltale signs of a poorly copied book, see the attached images. Bent from middle, Blurred and blotted B&W images, broken fonts, improper text formatting and exceedingly big fonts (just meant to increase number of pages) and even a shameless sticker on the cover to denote that the book is "new", probably they themselves get confused on the genuine copies and pirated ones.On a cursory look, the book content itself is average. You would do better to Google for such questions (and the CIRCLES framework) to get better replies/explanation. For the amount of content covered, I wont pay more than Rs.50, let alone Rs.550/-. The funny thing is that the author has chosen to include multiple 2-3 page replies which he later criticizes as "bad replies". Most questions/usecases relate to LinkedIn, for reasons unknown. IMHO, "Cracking the PM interview" is way bettery a book by contrast, in terms of width and depth of topics covered.

Really helped me

Here are my 2 cents:1. Read the book twice not once. There are subtleties inbetween the lines2. It's a badly drafted book,so have patience while reading it3. The book isn't a suitable solution to all or most of your product management interviews (let's face it straight)4. Many framework that are mentioned in the book are not adhered to while answering the questions5. Haphazard way of approaching a problem. No holistic framework provided and also it doesn't give you any logical thought process why a particular problem is solved 'this' way and not the 'other' way6. Questions mentioned in the book are really very impressive but the solution given isn't very robust i.e. many answer lacks depth (quality) and breadth (of coverage)7. At times a tad technical,but that's not an issue. You can comprehend it quite easily even if you're not a Comp. Science graduate8. The chapter on estimations looks redundant. There are better books like case in point which handles the topic in a much better way

Brilliant book ! Lots of practical examples and the CIRCLES framework to solve product problems is a great tool. The author has put in a lot of effort into keeping the examples real and conversational , so some "bad" examples are also cited.The paper quality is bad though but for the value this book has delivered i am willing to overlook the paper quality.Get this book if you are interviewing for a product manager's role or have been a product manager for a while and looking for some fresh ideas. Mobile design and web design questions are covered as well.I would even recommend someone who is thinking of transitioning to product management to read this book, to get a sense of what the field entails.