You Are The Product
A personal reflection replete with lessons learned in 2022
Before we get going, a small announcement: As of today, On Product and Silly Business is turning into ✨ You Are The Product ✨, a monthly newsletter for product people looking to become product leaders. Every month, I’ll share my own experience, material, and advice on how to move up the career ladder and have fun while at it. Please like, share, and subscribe!
If you asked me to give you a personal summary of my 2022 work year, it’d go something like this:
a new job,
a company merger,
layoffs,
starting to write about product online,
people starting to engage with what I write,
starting this product newsletter,
guest appearances on a few podcasts,
a couple of promotions, and
many many new product acquaintances and friends.
2022 was nothing if not busy. A year full of personal and professional growth and unique challenges, it taught me lessons I believe are worth sharing.
So grab a cup of something hot, get cozy, and read on…
Volatile Times
You could say I started 3 jobs in the middle of the pandemic.
In 2021, I joined a company whose product I continue to admire, but we simply weren’t a match. In that sense, jobs are a little bit like relationships. Sometimes you can respect and see the value in each other, but still decide it’s not the right fit.
9 months later, there I was again, moving to another job, starting to worry a bit about job hopping quite so often, if for no other reason then that some employers don’t seem to look too kindly at that.
Nobody judges companies for rotating through staff. But we readily judge employees when looking for better opportunities, trying to find a win-win fit for all sides involved.
But I was lucky, and in the end found a great fit. In the process, I learned (or remembered) the importance of company culture.
A few months later, my company merged with another business, and the rollercoaster started again. Soon, like many others, we experienced a round of layoffs and several challenging months learning to adjust to our new collective reality. We made it in the end and came out stronger for it in some ways, but not without first earning a few battle scars.
Lesson #1
In times of volatility and change, a company’s culture is the most important predictor of your success at the company.
After three years into a pandemic, followed by an economic downturn that suggests another 2-3 years of instability, I’ve learned that understanding how a company might respond to change is now more important than ever before.
How likely are they to lay people off? Will they expect you to do more work for the same pay? What are the chances you will move up the career ladder?
The truth is, it doesn’t matter what the cause of crisis in your company may be — the company will often react in the exact same way.
— Field Guide to Organizational Change
I’ve explored this and more in a recent article discussing how organizations handle change and what employees can do to manage this risk.
In fairness, this was not the first time I had lived through an M&A and layoffs. I had had the experience several times over in previous companies, so I felt better prepared for it than others.
Still, what struck me was how emotional the journey was, for me and others, because we put so much stock in our jobs. After all, we spend a third of our lives working, so it’s of little wonder extreme changes affect us outside of work and can impact our personal lives as well.
Which got me thinking about the role that my career plays in my life.
Writing About Work
As product people, we already spend so much of our time thinking about work. With a job that requires you to be as plugged in as most of us are, it can be hard to disconnect at the end of the day.
I realized I was already spending a lot of my free time reading, writing, and thinking about product, but I wasn’t sharing that with others. So I started to post more regularly on LinkedIn.
At first, my posts were like a lot of the product writing out there: bubblegum content chewed so many times over, they added little original value to the product and tech community at large.
But writing these posts helped me process my work life, think about my work in a more structured fashion, and eventually led me to a few nuggets of gold that helped me make forward strides professionally.
Lesson #2
Writing about product will make you a better product manager.
Writing about product on social media got me thinking about product in new ways and helped unblock me on work challenges.
Eventually, folks began to engage with my posts, and I started gaining followers, mainly on LinkedIn where I invested the most time and effort. What really got things going was the 30-day PM writing challenge I agreed to, where I pushed myself to write about product daily.
It didn’t start out as a quest for likes and followers. But I don’t deny they’ve become a booster that motivates me to continue writing.
Followers create a sense of accountability and responsibility for the content you are producing, as you suddenly realize you’re no longer writing into the void.
Followers mean community. And community means belonging. There is more to it than vanity metrics or dopamine hits that feed the ego.
This increased visibility has likewise led to more job offers, partnership pitches, podcast invitations, getting featured in product management newsletters, and a lot of new contacts alongside some professional friendships.
Lesson #3
Making yourself visible online will make you more employable.
In a world saturated with product folks just made redundant, making yourself more visible is the surest way to stand out from the crowd.
It’s both the toughest and the best time to be a product manager. Competition is fierce, but the field has never felt as mature as it does today.
The proliferation of product content creators is a sign of that.
In my opinion, people’s motivation to share product content online is a combination of reasons that range from survival (get a job, make yourself more employable) to reputation (feel respected) and personal growth (go deep and wide within your field).
I support everyone’s decision to write about product.
While I’ll scroll past the occasional pithy post (including some of my own), I try to look at it as people growing and learning in public, sometimes awkwardly so. I respect them for putting themselves out there.
Career Diplomacy
Writing product content is yet another part of developing and growing yourself and your career.
We are in a new era of personal branding in which we have more control over the image we send out to the outside world than ever before.
Social media has amplified our voices, for better or worse, and we are now able to not only represent certain versions of ourselves, but also engage in ongoing dialogue with a global community of product people.
In a sense, we are career diplomats, navigating the complex waters of the global tech industry.
For a lot of folks, this online footprint has become another trust signal with prospective and current employers. It has become possible to show another side of yourself as a professional that for this or that reason is not possible to show at work.
Lesson #4
Promotions are as much about merit as they are about career diplomacy and grabbing the opportunity in front of you.
If back in the day you had to “dress for the job you wanted,” today you have to build the brand you want to become.
That’s not to say that merit and hard work won’t get you places. I still believe in hunkering down and getting the job done. In product management, nothing else can teach you how to be great other than actually getting your hands dirty. No certificate, no coach, no listicle.
But lessons of old still apply. Promotions are not something to be given to you, something you should wait for and expect as a result of your hard work. You need to recognize and even create opportunity for yourself, and grab it when it’s in front of you.
It requires a bit of confidence, perhaps audacity even. But it ultimately comes from a place of humility. Why is it even important that we continue to grow and move forward in our careers?
This has never been in doubt for me — it starts from the basic human need to survive, but as you grow, it morphs into the human need to thrive.
Promotions and upward career mobility are about so much more than money and titles. They are about fundamental human needs, and when looking at it all from that perspective, you learn there is a lot to be humble about.
Mentoring and Pacing Yourself
One of the most rewarding and humbling experiences of the past year has been mentoring others.
Over the course of the past year, I’ve become a member of a few groups and networks dedicated to helping young folks from all over the globe thrive and develop:
IEEE Innovation Nation, a fellowship program providing training and funding for young Bosnians & Herzegovinians with startup ideas, with whom I worked as mentor in 2021 and startup advisor in 2022
ADPList.org, a global mentorship network, where I became a product management mentor in July 2022
2hearts, a network offering resources and mentoring for young immigrants in tech, where I joined as a community member in April 2022
Offering my time to mentor budding product managers, people looking to break into product, and young people with startup ideas, I’ve learned that mentorship is one of the most valuable activities product leaders could afford themselves. There is so much to teach, and yet more to learn from these brilliant minds.
But after dozens of sessions and thousands of minutes spent talking to mentees, I’ve learned it’s important to pace yourself.
Lesson #5
Mentorship is a two-way street.
While I enjoyed the time I spent with many of the people I’ve met, there were a few whose minds and ideas sparked my own imagination. And if I make only one resolution for 2023, it’s that I want to spend more time with those people.
This will inevitably mean that I need to limit the time I have to offer others — until now, I didn’t discriminate, and I accepted pretty much anyone’s request to meet me.
But time is a precious resource in a product person’s busy life, and I’ve learned that for me to be a great mentor to, I need to be able to learn from them as well.
I think that’s the difference between a mentor and a coach.
Ready for 2023
To wrap this up, I'm quoting a LinkedIn post I wrote a few weeks ago, as I think the the lessons I learned talking to mentees might help others to adapt to the current economic climate as a product manager. Perhaps some of these will make you more prepared for the next year:
I've spent close to 2,000 minutes over the past 6 months talking to mentees from all over the world looking to develop as product managers, break into product management, or move into product leadership roles.
Most of these conversations were about how to land jobs in the current economic climate.
If you are job hunting, here are a few things to keep in mind.
The job market is currently flooded with product managers who were made redundant.
That means there's a lot of highly qualified folks out there looking for new homes. This makes breaking into product more challenging currently than has been the case for many years past.
Companies are not hiring decisively, and they seem to be spending a lot of time weighing their options, delaying the process, and then offering packages below candidate expectations.
Some mentees told me this caused them to reject offers, which itself is slowing down hiring and has also made things economically more precarious for candidates as they continue to interview.
Companies are experiencing decision paralysis due to unpredictable market conditions and little guarantee of low volatility.
This has spooked boards and investors, VCs and private equity firms, and other institutional investors who are holding on to their cash.
Companies have instead shifted focus on reducing cash burn and extending the runway, often at the expense of hiring or employee retention.
The advice I've given jobseekers is to decide on companies carefully, do their due diligence, and spruce up their resumes to tell a narrative and showcase their skills and successes.
Breaking into entry-level product roles, however, is going to be harder for some time to come.
I'd advise those who are willing and interested to consider starting out in roles adjacent to product (such as marketing, growth, product analytics) and make a lateral move when the time is right.
Look for companies whose product managers managed to do the same while working there.
Other approaches are to build your own product, develop a personal brand and share experience online, or analyze existing products in posts to discuss things that interest you.
Growth, platform product management, and machine learning are three high-growth areas I would consider, depending on your affinity for data, technology, and experimentation.
It's a tough time out there, so stay aware of developments. You need to monitor the market and make yourself discoverable and visible online.
For budding leaders, the advice is the same — invest in developing strategy, communication, and people management skills. Find a mentor. Plan and commit, and experiment. In this situation, you are the product.
Good luck out there! You've got this!
To recap:
Lesson #1: In times of volatility and change, a company’s culture is the most important predictor of your success at the company.
Lesson #2: Writing about product will make you a better product manager.
Lesson #3: Making yourself visible online will make you more employable.
Lesson #4: Promotions are as much about merit as they are about career diplomacy and grabbing the opportunity in front of you.
Lesson #5: Mentorship is a two-way street.
And perhaps the most important lesson of all: Never forget, you are the product.
I wish you happy holidays and a joyful, successful start to the New Year!