Understanding Tech

An A-Z guide on how to navigate technology for Product Managers/ Aspiring PMs with no prior experience in Tech

I have always believed that knowledge should be free and shared freely. And though YouTube has liberalised the knowledge economy, there is often no structure to most learnings. I faced the same problem when I attempted learning tech a few years back. Where should I start? What all should I learn and to what extent? What are the building blocks? Most importantly, what should be the roadmap?

Over these years, I have dumped a lot of things in my notebook, struggled with them and have tried to create a repository sans noise. If you are an aspiring PM/ APM, then the below guide to Tech should be useful for you!

Here we go! Geronimo!

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Index

1. Foundation

2. Basics on how internet works and information gets transferred

3. Python and other links

4. Basics of System Design

5. API Fundamentals

6. Designing Database Schema

7. Basics of SQL

8. GIT Hands on

9. Dev Environments

10. Data Structure and Algorithm Basics

11. OS Basics

12. Books - will keep adding to this

13. Full course on CS basics: CS50 by Harvard

14. Exercises

15. Drop me a mail if you want more detailed notes on any of the above topics

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Note: Whatever you do not understand, keep googling the terms, asking your friends or those in your network. You would learn a lot this way. We live in a rockstar age of learning.

Important Stuff

Start with

1. http://highscalability.com/blog/2017/12/11/netflix-what-happens-when-you-press-play.html

More readings

1. https://medium.com/@divyadhar/how-to-prepare-for-googles-product-management-technical-round-when-you-are-not-technical-474de3ee01b3

2. https://www.departmentofproduct.com/blog/technology-skills-product-managers/

3. https://www.pmtechlessons.com/

4. https://medium.com/@lulu_cheng/getting-to-technical-enough-as-a-product-manager-5b372513cd1c

What happens when a user types a URL and presses Enter

About HTTP

HTTP Methods: Post/Get/Put/Delete Calls -

Watch System Design tutorials (Google stuff as you don't understand, but go on nonetheless and complete the series)

1. SudoCode

1. Gaurav Sen -

API Fundamentals:

A to Z of API's for Product Managers

1. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/01/api-based-platforms-product-managers/

2. https://www.departmentofproduct.com/blog/apis-explained-for-product-managers/

1. Rest API Contains practical examples:

Designing Database schema [IMP for PMs]

Basics of SQL here [IMP for PMs]

1. https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming/sql

2. https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/sql

3. https://mode.com/sql-tutorial/

Learn about some terms devs would use here [For some terms like GIT Pull, Push, Merge, PR that developers folks would use]

GIT [Hands on]

1. https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-the-basics-of-git-in-under-10-minutes-da548267cc91/

About Development environments [Staging, QA, Production etc.]

1. [Hindi]

I recommend that you do basics of HTML here (No need to be an expert, just understand how it works)

http://www.dontfeartheinternet.com/

Learning Test

Post all the above, If you can understand this, you are good to go

More:

Data Structure and Algorithm Basics

1. https://medium.com/basecs/tagged/data-structures

2. https://www.interviewcake.com/data-structures-and-algorithms-guide

3. Book: Common–Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms

Operating Systems Basics

1. https://medium.com/computethecloud/operating-system-concepts-4dff340775ab

Books -

Vinay Trivedi (Author) - How to Speak Tech - The non-techie's guide to Key technology concepts

Ashwin Pranam (Author) - Product Management Essentials

Purchase on Amazon/Flipkart or Check on → libgen.is

If you want to do a full course in CS basics

Course - CS 50: https://online-learning.harvard.edu/course/cs50-introduction-computer-science?delta=0

Exercise for you:

Exercise 1:

Design the post checkout systems in an e-commerce company (Myntra). It should have the following use cases solved. Please provide the schema (table names, column names where data will be stored) of the tables that would be involved and how they would be linked to each other.

1. Order receiving

2. Order fulfillment

3. Order delivery

4. Order Accounting

Bonus: Cover return item use case, multiple orders use case, return 1 item among multiple orders use case etc.

Exercise 2:

Design the DB schema for content system for Facebook.

Cases to cover

• Posting Images, texts, videos

• Profile information

• Friend connection information

• Personal data

• Newsfeed browsing

(some cases may use already created schema, but would require understanding how schemas will be connected)

Exercise 3:

List down potential APIs that would be used in Swiggy Home Screen, with some request and response. <Discuss this with your tech friends>

Exercise 4:

Think about System design for Whatsapp. Take a cut on it and then look for answers on Youtube/ Google

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For more detailed notes, email me at gauravjain.iimk@gmail.com. Cheers!