The job market has dried up for senior product roles. Do you think the situation will improve soon? What's your overall outlook of product management as a career beyond 10 years? Do you see yourself doing this for another decade?
Asking mostly from a supply and demand point of view. Also, has seen that the role is becoming more and more vague and replaceable.
Context: Leading a 6 membered product team in a series B funded company. Managing the ceo/cpo opinion differences, moving to wfo from remote, high work pressure and too much reporting. I have been working with series A, series B companies throughout my career.
I’m in a similar position, managing a team of 4 PMs @ a Series B startup B2B pure tech domain.
For tech PM roles - Head of product roles are majorly moving to US/Europe due to greater % of revenue from these markets. You’ll get till Principal level roles in India.
For B2C PM roles - There is a lot of scope in the market as you can’t hire a Ivy product grad and expect them to build for users which they don’t even know exist. But, there is a lot of hubris in this space due to investors / stakeholders looking for Airbrushed resumes to project Value instead of actual working chops.
The outlook doesn’t look grim to me at least, because -
Most US product based companies would have a India site in the next 5 years, if not already. PMs would generally take up General Management roles going forward, as most tech giants are moving in that direction. The site leaders / cost centre leaders would be mostly folks from a PM background.
There would always be crappy gray areas in execution which would only be done by PMs, engineers wouldn’t do it due to sheer entitlement and business folks can’t do it due to lack of skills.
True. The head of product roles are moving to the US. Whatever is remaining is moving to PMs from large orgs (faang, Microsoft etc) who were otherwise stuck in their career. The role and scope difference between VP and GPM is not clear in series B companies.
But interesting viewpoint that the PM role might transition into a general management role for US tech companies installing their RnD in India.
That's little concerning, I would like to understand mindset of people who are having 10+ years of experience, few questions I have are
About me- 6 years of work experience
Why is this concerning?
1 I’m balancing both IC and PM mgmt atm.
2 If folks <8-9yoe and get 80L, it’s not a pay cut , it’s Market correction. But, would prefer 4-6 months gap as opposed to pay cut and the psychological turbulence it brings
3 Family / Other responsibilities should not stop you from learning. If that’s the case, talk to your partner/ family and carve out at least 2-3 hours of focus time / wk, for starters
4 Who wouldn’t :P. Tried - organic farming, franchising, markets but realised that you need to go all in for a steady income stream at least for an year or so, I couldn’t give that time and hence refrained from side hustles. Moreover, I’ve seen side hustles are only possible for people who don’t have a main hustle ;)
5 Expectations are like Entropy , infinite and ever increasing.
6 Since the past couple of years, I’m spending at least 1-2 months / year in total with them, would like to spend more but they’re also working and uprooting them from their place isn’t possible right now. Probably when they move closer to home..
This post is becoming very interesting, people sharing insecurities and getting support is only possible on an anon channel. In real life, we all have to present ourselves smart & confident.
To add some of my learnings - Yes, market is dry as of now. I see one of the reasons is - Companies moving to maintenance mode. I can tell so many companies are trying to save cash by not investing for future. Can this be a status for long? No, not at all. My overall outlook is - This field will evolve and people will start wearing additional hats or move slightly deeper in tech as Tech PMs. Yes, I am pretty much planning to stay in a similar role as I’ve been part of such teams where product moves the company goals.
My guess on your situation - I’ve been part of series-A start up in India. Now thinking back, I feel in such startups product team majorly involves in covering the feature-gap against the competition. The CEO/CBO/COOs keep asking if they are doing it, why can’t we. Honestly, if you move to a market leader or platform product role, you will see your contributions much more beyond the conflict resolutions. Just for my curiosity, if your company have document culture?
With over 10+ years of experience in Product management within the insurance and Fintech sector, I’ve realized that product management is still not understood/defined well as a role. I’m open to all sort of queries.
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