Associate PM	Start here. Start here if switching. More companies should have these roles. Pair with a senior PM. Give them the coaching they need. Create the senior people you need by giving junior people a chance.
PM	Ideate & build the right solution for users (with tech & design) Talk to users. Synth data. Make decisions on features. Enough strategy to craft vision of features. How they fit into product: tactical enough to ensure smooth execution; skew to more operational than strategic. Responsibilities are typically shorter-term impact and delivery of features. Quarterly time horizons. If they focus too much on tactical work, they fall behind on strategy and visioning work. Should also be feeding data up to more senior PMs. If you call this role a PO, then you’re missing the strategy piece, tying feature work to the product vision.
Senior PM	Same as PM but with more scope or complexity Still an individual contributor. Balancing being highly strategic and operational. Good for people who want to work on difficult product problems. Have entrepreneurial traits.
Product Director	Important for scaling – when too many people report for head of product, scope of product and WIP ramps up. Strategic alignment + operational efficiency Connect products back to portfolio vision People management – oversee PMs of a portfolio or product line Responsible for strategic product roadmap. Time horizon of a year. Operational effectiveness of a team Aligning PMs to goal, working on the most important things
VP of Product	Strategy and operations for an entire product line Connecting company goals to growth of product line Set the vision and goals for the product. Responsible for the financial success of their product line – not just the delivery of features Align the strategy and purpose to a portfolio of products Entrepreneurial – great at launching and growing new products Successful VPs are more strategic, hire people to do the tactical
Chief Product Officer	Oversees a company’s entire product portfolio – on the exec CPOs are usually added when a company adds a second product Driving economic success of the business through portfolio of products Interface at board level. Inspire confidence (in the vision), empathize (peers and team) and are relentless and resilient.

Graph taken from Melissa Perri’s book ‘Escaping The Build Trap’

Types of Product Work

Tactical	Short-term. Getting features out the door. Breaking down work for developers and designers.
Operational	Tying the strategy back to tactical work. Create a roadmap connecting the current state of the product to the future state that aligns the teams around work.
Strategic	Positioning the product and company to win in the market and achieve goals. Future of the product and company, what it will take to get there.