One Month of Product Management

I think career changes are generally good. I am saying this because I recently changed careers and I am biased. I am one month into my new job as a product manager at Vareto after leaving my prior role at Bread. Before making this decision, I made a google doc on the advice of a friend titled “job-criteria” where I wrote down what were the things I most valued about any job. My list:

1. Learning Opportunity - I believe there is a direct correlation in my happiness while working with how much I am learning and the rate I am exposed to new ideas and new information. I prioritize learning first above all else because in order for a career to be a good learning opportunity it must follow that:

   a. I am working with smart people

   b. I am working on interesting problems

   c. There will be natural career growth through my exposure to a and b

2. People and Culture - I want to work with smart people, but more than this I want to work with a group of people whom I find admirable and who share mutual respect with one another.

3. Compensation - Money is not the most important thing to me but I do care that I am being paid commensurate to the market. I care that my salary and title reflect the importance of my contribution. I also want to be able to afford to continue to live in New York City and feel financially secure.

4. Mission - The mission of the company is also important but it is definitely my last priority in this list. All else being equal, I will prioritize the opportunity that I think gives back the most to the world around me but I will not do so at the expense of learning opportunities, people, or compensation.

I think this exercise was extremely helpful. It made me realize that I was ready to make the switch into product management after mulling the decision for almost two years. I was ready for a change, but also I knew that taking a role in product would be a bigger challenge and thus a bigger learning opportunity for me. Once that decision was made, items 1-4 became my criteria for evaluating different product roles and different companies.

I also spoke to a lot of people who worked in product or had made similar transitions to the one I was contemplating. Some of the most interesting takeaways I had from these conversations:

Product sense is knowing what to build and knowing how to build it so that it gets used.

A senior AWS PM reflecting on his experience writing PR FAQs and Andy Jassy’s “jedi” product sense.

I can find anyone who can optimize, can you execute?

Head of Product at a Series A startup reflecting on the skills that make or break PMs especially at startups and small companies.

You are responsible for driving outcomes. Accountability is the most important character trait a PM can have.

My friend who convinced me to write out my job criteria - also a Product leader.

The projects are bigger and they have a different level of urgency.

The husband of a close mentor who is now a senior product leader after having transitioned from a data leadership role.

Success has many fathers and failure is an orphan.

A quote attributed to John F Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco although the original origin is debated. Advice given to me by a senior AWS PM.

So I am one month in and what have I learned? For one, product management is constant context switching. So much so that, I now find that I have adopted a pattern of blocking out my calendar on certain days of the week just so that I can have dedicated time to think on one problem deeply. This was a habit I had noticed of PMs I worked with in the past that I now have come to appreciate. But the context switching isn’t without a benefit. Especially at a smaller company like Vareto, I find myself in the room on almost every important decision.

Second, being a product manager means having an opinion. You’re constantly asked and challenged on your opinions. Its ok to admit when you don’t know something but if no one in the room knows the answer to the question, you are accountable for following up and figuring it out. Also, its important to form your own opinion and to think without limitations always keeping in mind the bigger picture. There are a lot of “Zero to One” problems where you need to make a call and give everyone a direction to move towards. It’s ok if you end up somewhere completely different than where you first imagined so long as you’re able to recognize when your decisions have one-way vs two-way door consequences and can reasonably justify the ROI of your decision. Just be ready to be challenged on your thinking. I think the best product teams make a habit of challenging all assumptions even those that they already agree with.

Finally after one month on the job, I can safely say that I think I have made the right personal choice. This last month has been filled with new people, new ideas, and new challenges. I feel both incredibly proud of the personal work I’ve done to get to this point and also incredibly hopeful for where the rest of this journey takes me.