What's the difference between product and operation? Which will be more sought after in the future?

The article shares the author's understanding of the operation boundary, capability and future development, hoping to inspire you. In recent years, with the rapid development of the Internet, the demand for talents in various fields is in a blowout state. In the Internet industry, there are generally R&D posts, product posts and operation posts. Judging from the entry threshold of each post, the posts that do not need the threshold are product posts and operation posts. Never said that a product post must understand development and have a technical background. This is only a bonus, but it is not a necessary condition. The author's former leader is a former Tencent senior product manager with a liberal arts background, but it does not affect her super product planning ability at all. Around the product and operation, there are three kinds of problems, which are constantly discussed and never stop. Are all three philosophical questions. First, how to define products and operations, and where is the dividing line between them. Second, what are the core competencies of the two positions? 3. What are the future development prospects of the two jobs? The author has also worked in Internet-related fields for four or five years, and now I try to answer the above three questions from my own observation and perspective. How to distinguish between defining products and operations? Here I want to apply a classic theory called "The body is 1 and the others are 0". This theory says that having a good body, plus countless zeros, is the right way of life. In fact, the same is true of Internet products. A good product is like a good basic structure, and then countless zeros are superimposed through various operational means and methods, and finally the user experience is cool. As shown in the above figure, we assume that a company's product planning and product operation are scored, so the final score is multiplied by the respective scores of products and operation modules, not added. If it is to be subdivided, product planning can also be subdivided into three sections: successful experience, interactive experience and visual experience, and product operation can be divided into three sections: user operation, activity operation and content operation. If each of the above plates is not prominent, there will be many zeros, resulting in a huge gap. So, don't complain why the user orders of your products are thousands of times worse than others. What is the core competitiveness of products and operations? To tell the truth, I think their core competence is the same, because they think in the same way, thinking about user psychology and user needs, thinking about demand scenarios and scenarios, thinking about user experience and interactive logic, and so on. If two people have the same way of thinking, how much difference can the ability requirements be? The difference is only in the direction and content of the final realization. Products pay more attention to demand and logic, and operations pay more attention to processes and details. I still remember two or three years ago, before Zhihu was occupied by "three no users", I often saw the following similar questions: As a product/operation manager, what kind of ability do you think is the most important? At that time, many great gods in Zhihu answered questions one after another, and the answers were as follows: understanding users, empathy, communication and coordination skills, iterative trial and error thinking, competitive product analysis skills and so on. In fact, these answers are all right, no matter how repeatedly explained, they are basically within this range. But to be honest, there is a fatal flaw in the above ability and quality requirements, that is, they are all pragmatic. Take myself as an example. When I first graduated, I was rather ignorant. After seeing these answers from Zhihu, I showed them to myself, thinking that they were just talking about myself. In fact, the above ability and quality requirements are not only needed by product managers or operation managers, but also by people in the Internet industry. It can be said that in this ever-changing era, in order to become a strong person, people in every industry and occupation need to have the ability and quality. What are the future development prospects of the two positions? My initial career direction was also to be a product manager. I couldn't stand it during the interview and was fooled by the boss because the operation department was just short of people. I was promised that I could start from the operation and then transfer to the product position. I don't know if this operation post has been changed since it was done. Engaged in related work for nearly four or five years. However, in retrospect, I think the future of operation is not necessarily worse than that of making products. It is undeniable that the product positions in previous years were very popular, because in that era when the mobile Internet broke out, the user experience of a product was often very important. At that time, various emerging user experience ways emerged one after another. For example, as soon as the design of the Android desktop drop-down box came out, Apple's iOS system immediately copied it; Siri, an intelligent voice assistant, was first introduced in Apple's iOS4, and Android soon kept pace with GoogleNow in Android 4. 1. Apple first added fingerprint recognition to iOS7, and Android followed closely in Android 5. 1 So, two years ago, a product manager who knew how to copy was very popular. This requirement will even be reflected in many recruitment requirements, but it will not be directly pointed out. I love to experience and study other Internet products in this field. There is no derogatory term for plagiarism here. If there are good solutions in the market, there is no need to innovate deliberately. Nowadays, it is difficult for Internet products to win by product experience. For example, buying movie tickets, whether in public comment, in Meituan or Taobao movies, has similar buying experience. So what are the factors that determine the winning or losing of the above three products? What is competition? Which company has stronger pushing ability, product operation ability and brand promotion ability? The real barrier is established by operation, and operation needs to go deep into the industry. When the product homogeneity is serious, a product becomes more and more dependent on operation, and an excellent operation talent is very popular everywhere. One who knows the operation of the industry, one who knows how to write a good copy, one who knows how to plan wonderful activities, one who can maximize the input-output ratio, and one who knows how to serve users well will have a bright future in the workplace. The essence of operation is to continuously help the company save product costs and improve product efficiency, and directly take charge of KPI indicators such as transaction volume/user volume/activity. Because you need to be responsible for the results, many operations are also the role of the project manager, from requirements initiation and requirements review to design development and testing, and supervise the whole process. Finally, leave an open question for everyone to think about. Why do major Internet companies generally only have CEO/CTO/CFO/ COO, but not a CPO?