You Must Get Out - My Experience of 4 Years In Product
I know Grapevine is full of young and ambitious people that either planning to get into Product or are already working as a PM. I don’t aim to discourage any of you. Moreover, if you need tips to break into Product I would be happy to help you. I personally feel that knowing what you are doing is going to doom is better than normalizing it. So I will convey my experience in simple words, how I hated every single day of it, why did I still stick around for 4 years, why product decisions are random political bullshit, why you should not let anything that happens get under your skin and affect your morale. Finally, few words for sociopathic Head of Products. Lesson #1: Go through all stages of grief at once. Accept that product culture is broken and accept that it will not get better. Finally, you can’t fix it or improve it. Lesson #2: Ratings are political bullshit. I can tell you the years I was rated worse I was probably working harder and better at my job. It just depends on the results you get in the last month before ratings and whether your DOP is vocal for you. Lesson #3: Last piece of advice: do not let your Product years lower your self esteem or sense of self worth. Also, some words for sociopathic Head of Products. F’ you.
Dihaadi
Stealth
7 months ago
Heavily second this. I’m a tech focus generalist who stumbled upon PMing after multiple startup exits. Absolutely bonkers role with no role definition, metric ownership, impact driving. Anyone who disagrees, is lying to themselves. What I can define PM in Indian / many valley based companies with Indian founders -> glorified bhains charane wala.
+1 on the role being undefined. Currently trying to switch from sde1 to an apm role but the wide range and variation of JD expectations is crazy. One resume doesnt suffice at all
I have joined Product folks seminars and it just sounds like a job where you bullshit and make a lot of money.
bruh7
Stealth
7 months ago
That's why you're in Infosys bro. Pipe down
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TurningBrain
Stealth
7 months ago
Only way to have a chilled PM life is own a complete product line and don't report to anyone but a CPO or CEO.
Baby_yoda
Stealth
7 months ago
Disagree, if you are directly reporting to a founder in early stage startups. It becomes way too toxic as you need to manage their ego, anger and erraticnes
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But why did you stick around for 4 years? Was it the money?
I'm currently working in product growth success and I'm neutral about it.
But if I were to get out, which field to choose? I'm from a non tech background so being an SWE is off the record lol.
Thanks for this thread tho and all the best! Hope you start your own venture and bring about this change ☺️
PM as a discipline has existed for more than 2 decades at Microsoft, and it has evolved a lot but never seemed like going away. I haven't worked at Desi start ups as a Product Manager and I don't know what is the status there, but the PM role is here to stay. Only because some half baked randos are spoiling the role in India doesn't mean the domain is useless.
Majority defines and shapes what it means to be a PM. Not saying that MSFT does not have a good PM culture, what I’m saying is: you haven’t shipped anything worthwhile in the last year and neither have I. If you really think about it, we would be better off learning how to code to validate our heuristics rather than masquerading as hyper intelligent beings that pass commands and judgements left right and centre.
Why do you think coding and building the product is the only way to validate it? If that was it, then we would be bombed with useless MVPs all around.
The product with PM role in India is that a lot of folks, without any strong product skills, were able to get into the role during the free money years and are now engaging in politics to survive. These folks took PM as an easy way out to escape from hard SDE interviews, and also because of all YouTube 'gurus' who misguided them.
And this is not only true with PM, but with software engineering as well, a lot of them were able to get in because of low bar during last few years but are struggling to create value at the pay they were hired at (think of it as putting TCS support engineer at a big tech firm).
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I second this. Been feeling like this career path has too much politics and you need to manage optics very well. I hate the way it is coming about and I have a ton of fear about how the uncertainty will affect the way I move about in this field.
Hello Vidhyanchal can I ask you for a refferal for an Ops role in razorpay‽
4 years being a PM. Before that i was in growth, brand, content, creativity.
Becoming a PM was a mad move. It’s just too sad that in India PMs are expected to move mountains with shovels.
My CPO at an edtech startups used to shout at people in the middle of the office for random shit. And everyone just accepted his rants. Then he hired a VP who was on the most arrogant folks in had met.
Glad I got out of that. Took me a year to recover from all that crap.
Ps - Saying his name made me vomit at times. :)
Not sure if this is true for all companies / startups but completely agree that Indian startups have these problems. If you read up Marty Cagans “empowered product teams” one realises that none of the Indian companies have that kind of product cultures. Most of the Head of products / VPs are just yes men or get it done type folks rather than true product leaders who can come up with a product strategy and empower their teams.
Can confirm the same is true for other geographies. I think founders need to have the guts/foresight to hire someone smarter/more experienced than them when the company grows otherwise the yes-men-bully-I-know-what’s-best leaders are inevitable
yejsok
Stealth
7 months ago
I see where you’re coming from, but having worked in several companies and some reasonable product experience, I can safely say - it depends. Depends on the growth stage of the company, industry, suite of products, and so on. I can imagine working for Gojek (assuming thats where you work right now) can be tricky because you’re not building for India, it’s yet another hailing app, and is primarily b2c.
Not discounting any of your points or lived experiences, and all of them are valid. Why don’t you give B2B/SaaS a shot? Products built of India for a global market are your best bet.
yejsok
Stealth
7 months ago
*built out of
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StarTedLife
Stealth
7 months ago
Am a cohort PM in upraised, am about to complete the course. Will it be very hard to place or start as APM. Is this is the time to hopon.
SeniorImpostor
Stealth
7 months ago
bro don't you'll regret it for life
i switched from sde to apm to now back to sde.
good product teams are a hit or miss
good dev work is always to be found relatively easily
Harveyspecter
Stealth
7 months ago
How did you switch from pm back to sde?
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To all the product managers:-
“A product manager is very much like a marriage counselor.
They both just get people in the room and force them to talk to each other and listen to each other until the problem disappears.”
monkeman
Student
7 months ago
So what role are you trying to get into now salt, if product isnt something thats a good fit for you
Blahblah
Stealth
7 months ago
Yep totally agree! I mean people still cant explain what the role does after all these years. I feel this role is going to get devalued or totally dissolve after a few years. Anyway its a political mess and nothing more
MildMusic68
Stealth
7 months ago
Gatekeeping max
This field is massively gatekept for sure. People have crafted entire identities around this field.
I know your sociopathic head of product. Way too entitled. His tweets confirm he's narcissistic too.
SeniorImpostor
Stealth
7 months ago
Manas J Saloi???
Well, that post is a let down. I am giving interviews for MBA courses in several colleges, since I also went through multiple startups and honestly didn't feel like working there. Should I even proceed now or is it better to struggle in this market for a SDE role?
SeniorImpostor
Stealth
7 months ago
bro don't you'll regret it for life
i switched from sde to apm to now back to sde.
good product teams are a hit or miss
good dev work is always to be found relatively easily
In general, IT services folks need to pipe down on their Product Management views. You guys don’t know shit about consumer first product thinking simply because your life so far consists of meeting a client brief and your success metrics are oriented around the same. Now if you same folks want advice about shifting to PM, pls do take time to mentally pivot and possibly take a designation hit in consumer Internet companies if it means it allows you leeway to mentally shift to a new world view that you need to acclimatize to.
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