Decode and Conquer is not enough to prepare for Product Manager Interviews (2025)

This guest post is from Karthik Menta, a senior strategy and growth associate at McKinsey and Company.

Decode and Conquer, written by Lewis C. Lin, has long been a favorite prep book for those interviewing for product management roles.

The author, Lewis Lin, is widely impressive.

He was the Director of Product Management at Microsoft and worked at Google, where he was responsible for launching new AdWords products.

The Good Parts

Decode & Conquer is a great introduction to product management philosophies and interview approaches.

It is easily understandable even if you do not have a computer science background.

The book also offers a dialogue-style format for answering the example questions, which helps the reader get an initial feel for how these conversations might go in the interview.

The frameworks are light and digestible and offer a great place to start.

Beyond Decode & Conquer

Decode and Conquer was one of the first books on navigating interviews for a relatively new role.

The first edition, which was 179 pages long, was published in 2013.

Today, many thought leaders have deeply defined the functional role of a product manager.

Most companies covet and count on product managers as a multiplier force.

Understanding technology, domain expertise, knowledge of different functional teams, and the ability to work with engineers have become table stakes.

Product managers are expected to be highly rigorous in their approach and offer unique insights that few can produce, both in their day-to-day roles and in their PM interviews.

Frameworks are too simple.

The given frameworks (e.g., CIRCLES or DIGS) are at the surface level and will not suffice when answering an interviewer who confronts you with the company's complex and current issues.

Relying on CIRCLES will not help you identify the appropriate customer personas or emotional needs.

Instead, you must develop your mini-frameworks to give a compelling answer for the framework's ‘I’ and ‘R’ portions.

A mini-framework can be to “imagine a day in the life of” the customer persona you picked, so you can distill their emotional needs, common and frequent behaviors, touchpoints with technology or products they already use, etc.

Frameworks don't help with company values or quirks.

For example, if you are interviewing at Meta, I recommend you do not refer to 'users' as 'users' but rather as 'people' or 'individuals' because this displays a subconscious level of empathy you have for the people you serve with your products.

This is important for a company focused on building products around community building.

The example questions and answers can be misleading.

On the topic of product manager interview questions.

1. The provided answers can be misleading because they offer a lower level of depth than required to meet the rigorous standards in the hiring process. Or at other times, example answers include highly detailed information that you would never remember in an interview, like "5-7% annual market growth rate" unless you worked in that domain.
2. The book does not offer information on why a particular problem was solved in one way or another.
3. The answers feel over-rehearsed and mechanical–two adjectives you do not want your interviewer to ever use in their feedback form.
4. Since everything is presented as a dialogue, if you try to meaningfully engage with the content and come up with your own answers, you will not get an indication as to whether your answer was right or wrong unless it happens to match the fake candidate's.

PM Interview Prep

For all the reasons above, I suggest using Decode & Conquer to help you start with PM interviews.

However, to truly excel and to get the offers you want, such as an Amazon PM role, we recommend you go above and beyond.

How do you go above and beyond in your preparation?

1. First, set up and follow the recruiting steps and timeline we’ve built here.
2. Second, as you begin your interview practice, set up 1-on-1 mock interviews. Refer to other frameworks that other product managers have built. You can also refer to and review our list of product manager interview questions and answers.
3. Next, build your own frameworks. Build frameworks to help you move faster, think differently, brainstorm, and do anything you need to in an interview. To help you do this, refer to this.
4. Fourth, review, tune, and polish your frameworks and approaches by doing a few mock interviews with product managers at your target company.

At the end of the day, Decode and Conquer is still a good start for your product management interview journey.

It provides a simple overview of the topics you will be tested on in the interview and enough examples to orient you to how to communicate your answers.

Beyond that, we suggest that you go deeper and create frameworks by learning from other product management leaders or using our guide so that you can provide answers that are truly insightful and rigorously methodical.

PM Interview Advice

Landing a product job requires more than just applying!

1. Create an excellent PM resume: Companies like Google receive over three million applications yearly. 80-90% of candidates never pass the resume screen. Ask friends, mentors, or our tech resume coaches to review your resume. Use our PM resume template if you need help getting started.
2. Prepare for interviews: The product management interview process will test your product sense, product design, product strategy, analytical and estimation skills, and behavioral fit with the company. Review the most frequently asked PM questions and answers.
3. Review the company: Each company has a unique mission, products, and approach to PM interviews. Spend time understanding how they envision their place in the world. How could you help them achieve that vision? 
4. Practice: Even the most knowledgeable candidates can feel nervous during the interview. You can practice with Exponent's free peer-to-peer and AI PM mock interview portal. Every day, PM candidates role-play in 1:1 mock interviews and give feedback.
5. Interview: All the preparation and hard work you've done have led up to this moment! It's time to turn on your camera and nail those PM interviews!