Lore

Product Judgment Mentorship Pathways (Internal, External, Community)

A taxonomy of how product judgment gets cultivated, scaled to how much senior product depth an org already has:

• Internal mentorship — in a mature org with enough seniority depth, a senior PM directly coaches a junior PM. This is the default once it's available.
• External soundboard — smaller or less mature teams (e.g., 2–4 PMs at similar experience levels) have no internal senior mentor to pair with, so an outside person is brought in temporarily as a soundboard/mirror to review decisions and judgment.
• Community-based growth — absent both of the above, product people build relationships with more experienced product leaders through external communities, forums, and events; Golubovski notes experienced leaders are generally willing to help.

The throughline is that judgment isn't trained by process or documentation alone — see Scale Judgment, Not Control — it's transmitted person-to-person, and the org's job is to make sure someone is playing that role even when no internal senior PM exists. Related: Personal Board of Directors (individually-driven version of the same instinct), Learning from Adjacent Colleagues.

Из тем: Product Leadership and Career Craft