When I reached the front of the line at the career fair, I handed my resume and promptly said “I am looking for a Software Engineering internship for the summer!”. Luckily for me, the person reading my resume happened to be a Lead PM at Redfin who after spending a couple of minutes glossing over it simply asked me, “Are you interested in the Product Manager role? I think you would be a good fit!” At the time I had no idea what a Product Manager does or why I would be a “good fit” for the role. Fast forward a few months and I was sitting in Redfin’s Seattle office for New Hire Orientation starting off as a Product Manager Intern. By all accounts, I had stumbled into this role!
The biggest question for me coming in and the one, I consequently ended up getting asked the most after getting the role of a Product Manager intern was “So, what exactly do you do?” I was told that PMs “lead teams”, “sweat the details”, “design stuff” and “deliver what customers want”. Apart from being great phrases, before the summer, I still had no idea what exactly all of these meant.
As I found out a PM does, not one, but all of the things above. I dug deep into the features to understand the problems our real customers face and the solutions they want to see. I brainstormed multiple iterations of feature ideas with designers to create wireframes and mocks. I obsessed over the choice between a dropdown and a radio button while at the same time working on the long-term vision for one of the most used features on Redfin. I wrote and discussed specs for features that are today affecting all of the Redfin users.
When Redfin calls it an Internship with an Impact, they mean every word of it. I had the opportunity to work with passionate individuals across teams on real projects that started affecting the lives of customers the moment they were shipped into production. Over the summer, not only did I learn what a PM does, I lived it every day. My Redfin internship gave me everything I wanted and more.
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