Data & Products

Every once in a while I come across PMs giving up on an opportunity because the designation was marginally below their expectations. How do you build your career for long term success?

Are you leaving what could have been a great opportunity because the designation was a PM instead of a Sr. PM or a Group/Principal PM instead of a Sr. PM. When you are early in your product career, it is great to be aspirational for personal growth – designations often a measure of that growth.

PM careers are now built faster and richer outside of the big tech organizations – making it important to assess them with limited public information. And PM designations are rarely standardized in the startup world – especially if you are a PM in India.

Here is a framework that can help you decide your next career move and if that designation you are after really matters:

1. Is the area of ownership and the business impact meaningful?

PM success is directly linked to business growth; even better if it was product-led. If the product you will own and grow has a direct path to growing the business, just go for it. Your individual growth is guaranteed if the business grows, any delay will be well worth it.

It will help if you can validate this with PMs on the team on how they have had sustained success in driving business growth through their work.

Warning signs: PMs having very short stints on their projects and not able to articulate growth/retention impacts are signals that product does not have a meaningful business impact and is considered mostly as an execution shop.

2. Is this an experience that you would otherwise not find elsewhere?

Some companies are solving unique business problems and building products there can be very rewarding. Is it worth giving it up because a mediocre organization is offering you a better designation?

A PM at an AirBnB or a Stripe would have build their product craft much better and faster than one in a more stable state travel or payments company. Letting this opportunity would not have been worth it.

Warning signs: If the business appears unique, how driven are the PMs towards the vision? How clearly can they communicate about their customer segments and personas?

3. Are you ready to meet the expectations from this role?

When making a career move, the most important thing is for you to be successful as soon as possible. For this to happen you must clearly understand the expectations of this role. Some questions you should ask:

1. Is the problem still ambiguous and do you have the necessary tools and experience to resolve this and drive progress with clarity?
2. What are the deliverables expected from you in the first 30/60/90 days?
3. Is your craft ready to meet the expectations and clear the ambiguity?

4. Do I need a designation to have a seat at the table?

Some organizations, especially bureaucratic ones, operate on designations where product planning, customer engagements, executive decision making has limited audience. Understand clearly what you need in order to be successful and whether all the relevant decisions will give you an opportunity to be engaged and often drive the decisions.

I once had a strange situation where a Director of another function refused to engage with a Principal PM on my team because they felt the PM is not a peer – all driven by the rather silly understanding of attending a particular recurring meeting which only had directors and above. For obvious reasons, I did not entertain this and was clear that the only way forward is for folks to work with each other. While this is a clear red flag on the culture of the company, you need your product leader to “quash this culture bug” when it happens.

Warning signs: If the PMs seem helpless on areas of decision making, the company most likely operate on a command-control model and PMs may not have a seat at the table.

The challenge of PM outside the big tech is a lack of standardization in designations. If you are a PM in India, it gets worse and there is absolutely no way you can compare designations across companies without looking at the stage of business, size of the company and organization building maturity of the leadership. Missing a great opportunity because the designation was a bit off has not helped anyone in the long term.