Indonesian companies want local product managers. But hiring is a struggle

From Bukalapak to Binar Academy, increasingly companies and educational institutes are offering courses and training for product management. The existing talent—the few ex-consultants everyone is after—is almost too expensive, but hiring a PM overseas is far from ideal. Do the courses cut it?

The demand for product managers has surged on the back of outsized capital inflow into Indonesia-based startups

Unlike software engineers that startups can outsource, it pays to be local in product management. But the local product talent pool is shallow and narrow

And the talent is using this to their advantage—it’s not uncommon for talent to demand a 50-100% salary increase when pitched by a new company

Schools like Binar Academy, RevoU and Apiary, and initiatives like Bukalapak’s PM acceleration programme and Tokopedia Academy may help. But how much?

Do you want to be a product manager?

‘Yes’ would be a great answer if you have the right skills and experience and live in Indonesia. Everyone wants a product manager.

Search results for “product manager” in “Indonesia” show almost 3,000 openings on job portal Glassdoor alone. On LinkedIn, there are more than 1,700. And on Jobstreet, over 1,200. That’s comparable to, if not more than, the openings for software engineers—1,800, 1,500, and 1,400 results, respectively. While some results may not be relevant and the data isn’t comparative, people in the industry confirmed there has been a surge.

AUTHOR

Yunindita Prasidya

Based in Indonesia, Dita is passionate about tracking the country’s growing digital economy. Her coverage is sector-agnostic—she has written about e-commerce, edtech, fintech, venture capital, and publicly-listed companies, as well as stories on careers and workplaces. She was previously a business journalist covering banking and the stock market at The Jakarta Post, Indonesia’s leading English daily.

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