Im a Product Manager 1yoe in a SaaS startup. I had a good experience in the first year. I got to build a product 0-1, competitor analysis, work on creating prioritization frameworks, UAT, content marketing, wireframing.
However, since January the compamy started their stabilization phase, and PM's are now taking care of Sales and lead generation(Content, Ads etc.). The nail in the coffin is we are getting dragged to follow up renewals( Customer Success) 🤢
Im currently motivated to building something new, and it feels like we are being dragged into everything as the company does not want to hire. With no pay hike or any adfitional benefit.
Please advice. Should I look for a new job?
@GlassIdiot33
Just working on the exciting part always doesn't make you a good employee/product manager. You own the product and hence, ideally you should be doing it as well (although not full time).
Handling the sales and lead generation will also help you in understanding how the potential end users perceive your product. At the end of the day, that's what matters and not how you perceive it.
Following up for renewal is not customer success. Having a proper customer success experience will benefit you in understanding how the users use your product.
On that note, while you're being required to followup for renewals, make use of the opportunity to understand why they're not doing it (which means it's a negative thing for you as a product manager).
At end of the day, you own the product and why can't you do the things that will make it good? Instead of crying, own it and do it, and further improve the product. This experience will definitely set you apart as a product manager.
I agree. At work, I do take things positively and give all the tasks mentioned above. But the justification we get is like xyz team does not have bandwidth PMs take it up.
That doesnt feel right to me sometimes.
But yes, thank you for taking the time to write this down and surely helps me think clearly.
I myself have been at a start-up and has done everything else except development (had that option as well, but skipped it).
You shouldn't really choose what type of work you want to do at an early stage startup.
But if you're there just for a work/salary, I've no comments
Depends:
Hope this helps!
Thank you so much! It helps, by building something new I meant pursuing PM role. Not startup om my own.
Sorry for the confusion
Although as a PM in a startup, I'd recommend you to be a generalist. I did the same, on some days I was creating designs, customer calls on some, coding also to some level. It's only in growth to late stage startups when these roles start to get specifically defined and pinpointed.
Launching a product is only 20% of the stuff. To take it through the product lifecycle, taking time to collect more perspectives, on ground research etc can be super leveraged over each quarterly/annual updates.
As a junior PM with execution as the main KRA to learn, I get your concern. You will keep getting the core product execution stuff to work, spread over the years, but the critical and hard to get skills like building a product sense, understanding evey need at a 10000ft level of org view, building a longer thesis etc - these get built with the more you observe, learn, understand other functions in the org and so. These later skills is what's gonna differentiatae you at higher role levels.
Also as one other comment here said - getting a shot at owning the PnL, like a GM can be a thing which sets you apart down the years.
Use the down time to do market and competitor research, show intiative and energy to your heads and eventually you will reap some benefits.
This is true. I am an early stage PM who was "Pursuaded" to look exclusively at Finance Numbers, Revenue and Ops functioning from a Product end. I literally lost a lot of Product sense, but the experience was extremely valuable for me to understand how to actually manage a product keeping general gist of things. This kind of learning is something done 10-15 years down the line by Strategy and Category heads.
Now, it just makes sense.
Thank you for the perspective!
This is an interesting conversation and has given me some perspective as well. I have 2 years of pure PM experience, my previous 7 year experience was primarily program manager. But after working at one of the good companies for 1 year as B2C PM has spoiled my mindset. Now, I am working in a B2B start up which is totally different ball game, I totally question my contribution to organisation and my learning curve.
But the above discussion helps understand that building products is only part of it but managing stakeholders with changing priority internal and external is totally different ball game.
PM in a start up is very wage role understood very differently by everyone, only thing that remains common is that if nobody is willing to pick up any task, it will fall to product. In these cases usually it all depends on your head of product.
So apparently company wants you to take some p&l ownership and make some money for them. Era of “growth over everything else is gone”,profitability is the buzz word.
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