Product School Santa Monica - Santa Monica, California

Sneha Y.

I would highly recommend this certification to anyone who is looking to transition to a PM role. The course is designed for people who have little/no experience in product management roles. The course gives you a lot of the tools to understand what goes into being a product manager. This certification will help you develop a lot of product managerial acumen just in 8 weeks. This course is not your traditional lecture class, and the course is structured to have an experience of going through the product development cycle with a lot of in-class discussion and exercises. You have to pay attention and complete all the assignments on time to get a benefit from the classes. Since the size was small, we got a lot of time to brainstorm an idea and get everybody's perspective about a problem or a topic.

Rich was an excellent instructor and mentor. He gave us honest advice and critiqued our project/Assignment constructively, which motivated us to be on track. Rich's engaging and excellent delivery skills made the class enjoyable. Rich always encouraged to share our ideas and gave constructive criticism and areas to improve for each one of us. Rich tried to squeeze in topics related to product management outside of the syllabus so that we could be well-equipped product managers when we become one.

Overall, this certification is worth every penny, and Rich, as your instructor, will be the perfect guide to land at a PM role.

Cameron D.

Product School was a fantastic experience, it really solidified the functional experience as well as the foundations of Product Management success. Rich Headley was an excellent instructor, both engaging as well as informative on the daily rigors of being a PM. He provided candid feedback as well as gave good guidance on how to navigate the program and the impending job market. I would definitely recommend taking his class. A major bonus was the smaller class size. It allowed for more hands on attentive work for the time we were in class as well as HW review and feedback. All in all, the material was great and very conducive to experiential learning.

Inayat I.

I absolutely loved my experience with Product School in Santa Monica. Our instructor Ryan Mick was amazing. He has a passion for being a PM and his passion was shown through his teaching. He consistently brought in his own experiences and related it to the concepts we learned in class, which I think is very beneficial when teaching a course in product management. Before I took this class I knew that I wanted to have a career in product management, but I still wasn't sure what product management really meant. So, I decided to take the course. In the end, Product School and Ryan's teaching solidified my career plans to be a PM. Is the price worth it? Yes, it was for me. If you are looking into a career as a PM I would highly recommend this course. I took the course for two days a week in the evenings and it was the perfect amount. There are assignments that need to be completed, however, each assignment builds upon itself for the final project. Ryan was always willing to help us with our assignments or anything related to PM. He was always available to us whenever we needed him. In the end, I would highly recommend this course to anyone looking into product management.

WK A.

I took the 8 week Software Project Management course in Santa Monica with Rich last summer and at first I was pretty hesitant. I was making a major shift in my career and I did not have programming experience.

From the first class and onward I never felt like a fish out of water. There were people with strong PM backgrounds as well as others shifting careers, and the fast pace had everyone collaborating and working to his/her utmost potential. I was really encouraged by the fact that others liked my ideas and promoted them during group presentations. Outside of class, Rich was easy to reach and he pointed me in the right direction whenever I had a question. Product School also helped me pinpoint areas where I needed improvement, and I moved on to receive Agile certification as well.

I started applying to PM jobs, and was recently granted a 2nd interview after beating out 1000+ other applicants. The job proposals we learned in class really helped me stand out. I would highly recommend Product School to anyone!

Jamie H.

Let’s start by saying that just because you take this course (or _any_ course) does not mean you will be guaranteed to get a Product Management job. If you want a guaranteed high paying job, put in the time to learn how to be a software engineer, there’s a million places hiring for that. This course is perfect for professionals who are thinking about making a career change to product management from another field.

The real value from the class came from our instructor Lenworth. The class was highly focused on the practical side of Product Management rather than the theory side, which I preferred as I had already read a few books on product management before signing up for the class. As someone currently working as a software engineer, it was really helpful to be able to ask questions to someone who actually made the transition from software engineering to project management to product management and to hear the pros and cons from working in each field. Also, the people in the class were all generally motivated, friendly people who were easy to get along with, which makes sense considering they had given up their evenings to learn this.

The content is definitely something you can “learn” from reading a book or two, but the course gave me the motivation to actually go through the process of finding an idea, creating an PRD, creating a presentation, and actually presenting it. Having the class be in person and seeing other people work on their projects really helped us push each other to do a good job.

All in all it’s a great course. If your company has an education budget I’d definitely apply it to here. But even the little bit of advice I received about negotiation and asking for a raise is going to more than pay for the entire class. Perfect if you’re thinking about making a career switch but want to test the waters first.

Kofi A.

I took the 8 week in-person course and had a great experience.

Rich Headley was an awesome instructor and I learned a lot from him. Rich was able to tie various concepts to real-world examples from his experience as a PM, and took genuine interest in helping each of us students identify and improve upon areas of weakness. Rich challenged us to think critically, and ensured we hold ourselves to a high standard.

The homework/ongoing project were definitely a time commitment, but also a lot of fun since you're doing real PM work. I think all of us students were proud as our final projects came to fruition and more confident in our ability to build successful products.

The class size was small and I liked that everyone is interested in product management, but comes from varying backgrounds. Everyone was engaged, and I looked forward to coming to class each day.

Definitely recommend Product School for anyone looking to boost their PM skill set. If you're in the LA/Santa Monica area, I suggest taking the class with Rich -- it's worth it!

Casey M.

I just completed the Coding for Managers course, my second class with Product School. Our instructor, Daniel Iwao, made it clear that we weren't going to become code ninjas in 8 days; we were going to be exposed to the many frameworks and concepts that engineers think through to create the products. And Dan was right.

Yes, we wrote some basic code for web apps using html, css, javascript -- everything that is notated on the syllabus. But I'd say my biggest takeaway is understanding HOW to work with engineers better. I have a deeper understanding of architecture, processes, and how git repositories work. I already feel empowered when talking to engineers about my projects, so that's definitely a win.

Side note: one thing I do appreciate about Product School is the size of the class. With a small cohort, I was able to ask every single question that came to mind. Dan answered all of them while sharing his real-world, real-time person experiences. (Thanks for all the help, Dan!)

Ultimately, my experience with the class was positive.

Aerwin A. P.

The product management course from Product School was an amazing experience and well worth the money. The course is very informative on the fundamentals of product management and the exercises at the end of session help connect the theoretical with the practical knowledge. Also, I highly recommend taking the course with Rich Headley. He was an amazing instructor and offered a lot of feedback during the whole entire course.