5 Lessons in Product Management

Dani Salonen (mpd2 '24) shares what it takes to be an effective product manager.

Dani Salonen (mpd2 '24) is a senior manager at Restaurant Brands International (RBI), where she oversees the post-ordering experience for the Popeyes mobile app.

She recently participated in a Northwestern Engineering Career Conversation event about product management that was sponsored by the school's Office of Professional Education, Engineering Career Development, and Northwestern Career Advancement.

During the conversation, Salonen explained what it means to be a product manager, what her work with RBI entails, and what advice she'd give to aspiring product managers. In the process, she also shared five lessons that any product manager should understand.

Alignment is imperative

Salonen enjoys that each day as a product manager brings about new opportunities — as well as new challenges. Her mornings often start with check-in meetings with engineers with whom she collaborates. While she is based in Miami, many of the engineers are in South America. Because they are in separate locations, she puts in extra effort to make sure she and they are aligned.

She also routinely has meetings with the Popeyes operations and marketing teams to let them know what she and her colleagues are working on with the app.

Knowledge outside of your expertise is critical

Salonen communicates with engineers on a daily basis, but she herself does not have a technical background. Despite that, she needs to understand the status of projects the engineers work on so that she can ensure timelines are being met and project estimates make sense. Spending time understanding different parts of the business — including the work others are doing — is a crucial component of being a successful product manager.

"Being someone who is a product manager who understands the business, that can do product discovery but can also get into the nitty gritty of technical details is amazing," she said.

Be mindful of what industry in which you want to work

Salonen's first job out of college was working in product management at McDonald's. She loved the opportunity and is grateful for what she learned in the role, but eating fast food was never something she craved.

She started to develop subject matter expertise about the quick-service restaurant industry, from point of sale operations to marketing. That knowledge made it easier for her to find another product management job within the fast food space, but she also thinks it made it harder to branch out to another industry.

"Product management is a very broad job, and a lot of people are very interested in it, so you have to have some sort of differentiator," she said. "Once you lock yourself into an industry, you'll learn that recruiters will (often) only reach out to you from those specific industries."

It's important to keep learning

One of the primary elements of Salonen's work is overseeing a machine learning algorithm that indicates to multiple stakeholders how much protein is being made per hour. Having to match protein sales versus the company's prediction of sales is a challenge, particularly when factoring in outside factors like weather and special events.

With no data science or computer science background, learning to understand the algorithm has been a stretch for Salonen — but it's a process she's grateful for.

"Luckily I have an amazing engineering lead who sits by me and guides me through a lot of the technical elements," she said.

Let others know your interests

Whether looking to land a product management job or wanting to expand responsibilities within a company, it's far more likely to happen if other people know what you want, Salonen said. It was that forwardness that helped her secure a product management role at Bain & Company.

Salonen was interested in working in the digital consulting space and saw Bain & Company was advertising for an open manager position. She knew she wasn't qualified for that role, but she reached out to the company nonetheless. She shared what she was interested in doing, provided a link to her online portfolio, and asked if there might be any other opportunities within the company.

That outreach led to a phone call, then an introduction to someone else at the company, and then an interview.

Salonen got the job and remained there until transitioning to RBI.

"It's about spreading your work to others," she said, "directly messaging folks you're interested in networking with and speaking with."