Increased

I will put some FAQs below: 1. What is your current job (and job history) 2. What company is it? 3. Why are you posting this? 4. How are you paid? 5. What is your story? 6. How are you doing so far? 7. What are the biggest themes of your story? 8. Do you like your job? 9. Can you help me? What is your current job (and job history) I currently am a Product Manager at a public company (making 300k). Previously I was a senior analyst at a small startup (making 70k). Before that I was on and eventually led the startup’s customer support team (making 50k). Before that I started a failed startup and did a bunch of random internships. What company is it? Company is a well known public company (not faang but close). You’ve certainly heard of it and chances are you’ve used it at some point. How are you currently paid 70% salary & 30% RSUs Why are you posting this? At end of the day, this is the kind of post I would’ve wanted several years ago. On one side, I want to show more people what is possible. My dad grew up in sharecropping…he literally picked cotton. My mom was unemployed most of my childhood. As a result, I didn’t know my worth or what was even possible for me. Nobody in my immediate or distant family has a successful career. Making hundreds of thousands of dollars felt like something only certain people with perfect Ivy League backgrounds w/ special connections could achieve. So for me, as a college dropout who didn’t go to an Ivy League or have any special connections, to be where I’m at means a lot. Additionally, I hope this post sheds some light on the specific details and processes I followed in order to get where I’m at. DISCLAIMER: this is not a magical step by step guide to doing exactly what I did. As with all of our journeys, there’s luck and a level of randomness that is unique to our story. But what I focus on here is providing the specific things I did and the ways I approached problem solving so you can find something that is relevant for you. I’ve broken my story into chapters containing what I did as well as a brief reflection for each chapter. The last thing I ask is that if you’re just going to hate, please go elsewhere. I want this to be a productive space for growth and conversation. There are plenty of spaces to complain and be negative elsewhere. So without further ado, let’s get into it…. What’s your story? My story is a whirlwind so I’ll break it into sections… 1. The dropout 2. Minimum wage startup 3. Going back to college 4. Dropping out, again 5. Working as analyst 6. Exploring product management 7. The interviews 8. How it’s going so far The dropout Went to a top-25 college on a full merit scholarship and dropped out due to severe mental health issues and family death. It was the first time that I had spent time away from family and lost my close cousin, grandpa, and grandma all while I was away at school. I had no ability to cope with the depression and it took me to a very dark place. After dropping out, I tried to start a startup with friends but my close friend who also was our cto lied about everything and startup failed. This was a really dark period for me because I had no money, no degree, and no hope. I attempted to apply for some product management jobs however no company would take me seriously. So I lowered my bar and had two opportunities. 1. Work at a small startup with 40 people where I’d be working for minimum wage in a support agent role. I believed that the company was doing really cool things but would be at the bottom level making barely anything 2. Work at a larger company in a better role making around 60k. Better benefits and salary but less cool company After much deliberation, I chose the small company at minimum wage. The things that caused me to make my decision 1. I believed in the company and believed that as they grew, I could grow with it 2. The manager was someone I really connected with and felt like he would have my best interest 3. While money is important, I felt like I should be maximizing my learning and development, not finances 4. I felt like I learn best in entrepreneurial roles where there is a lot of moving pieces. And the startup felt like that. I think that is is incredibly important to know how you best learn and find opportunities that align with that style Minimum wage startup So I started working at the startup from level 0. I worked my ass off, regularly working unpaid overtime. I did this so that I could complete my daily job functions and then also have time to contribute in other areas outside of my job. For example, creating improved processes for my team, developing macros for communication, or researching specific issues. I went above and beyond in client interactions and quickly developed the reputation as a hard worker who went above and beyond at every opportunity. During my time here, I really became passionate about working with data and started building and owning tableau reports and analysis for my team. My manager was incredibly important in this because he saw my potential and created opportunities for me to have more ownership. This validated my decision to choose the startup w/ my manager. After 2 long hard years, I had risen to the lead for my team and my manager transitioned into a different role. My new manager was far less supportive and career growth appeared to stall. So as a result, I made an extremely risky decision to quit my job and re-enroll in college and move across the country to finish my degree At the crux of this decision was a belief that I never wanted to feel like I was just waiting for an opportunity to emerge. I wanted to drive my career and when I felt stagnant, I wanted to always be willing to move. Going back to college When I went to college, I committed to studying data science. I applied for 100+ campus jobs and most were basic, admin jobs and got all rejections or ghosts. Finally got an email to interview for an analyst intern role. Did the interview and they asked if I had any tableau portfolio work I could share even though they used powerbi. The company (very big non-tech company) was trying to move to power bi (away from excel / PowerPoint) and j had data viz experience. My tableau work was all at my previous company and therefore not shareable but I told the interviewer I’d check and see what I could do. That night I stayed up all night installing powerbi on a Mac (needed to setup a virtual machine which is a whole ordeal in and of itself), learning how powerbi works, and doing a sample powerbi project. I sent them the work and an overview at 6am and they were blown away. I got the job! Learnings: 1. You only need one yes - i got literally hundreds of rejections in a 4-month period, many from jobs I thought were a guarantee. But at the end of the day, I got the one yes that mattered 2. When you get an opportunity, don’t let it go. When I got the interview, I was willing to do whatever it took to secure the job. Go over and beyond and make an impression Dropping out, again After two months into the job, I returned home for winter vacation and scheduled several meetings with people from my previous job. I leveraged the fact that I had an analyst internship now and spoke about possibility of them opening up a full time analyst role. The company loved me and was incredibly sad when I left and also happened to be opening up an analyst role. They initially wanted to start interviews in February, but since I was there in December and had great relationships, they agreed to interview me in December before I left back to school I prepared extensively for the interview and even prepared a document of all of the things I felt the company needed. Given I’d be the first data hire, I wanted it to be clear that I had a plan. After the interview process, I got the job!! After much deliberation, I accepted the job, dropped out (again), quit internship, and moved across country again to start this new job at my old startup. Fortunately this was right before the pandemic started and had I waited at my previous company I would’ve likely been laid off with no ability to find a great job in the midst of the pandemic. My key learnings: 1. Always be seeking new opportunities proactively. Had I just waited, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job but because I reached out, the doors were open 2. Build great relationships. Even as I left the company, I maintained great relationships which were key in the company bending backwards to bring me back 3. Always go above and beyond in interviews. Find something you can do that no one else would to give you a differentiating factor Working as an analyst At my new analyst job, I worked my ass off to partner with the new COO to help him with mission critical problems. The trust grew and over time he started giving me more and more ownership. I leverages the fact that I had a unique set of data skills with a strong understanding of the business to provide the coo with regular insights that he needed in order to be solving the right problem. After a year, I negotiated and became a senior analyst (instead of analyst 2) even though I didn’t get much salary bump (62–>72k). The title was important for me. More important than salary. I knew this company would never be my big payday but having the right title could open the door for the company that would be.I also won employee of the year for my contributions to mission critical company initiatives that helped generate millions of new revenue. After being senior analyst for a bit, I discovered a new problem area at company and proposed to ceo and coo that I be the “product owner” for this area. Because of the trust I had built and my track record, they agreed. As a result, I operated in a various ambiguous space for awhile wearing tons of hats and continuing to work 80 hour weeks… Exploring Product Management Finally I was looking for a different opportunity that paid more than 72k..i started looking for jobs that would leverage my previous experience. I was really interested in Product Management because it felt like the logical progression of my current work. I'd already indirectly been doing many functions of a PM while also collaborating extremely closely with our PM team. I felt like PM would allow me to use my data, communication, strategy, and execution skills in a blended approach that I'd really enjoy and be good at. The hard part was figuring out how to break in... My thinking was…I have no product management experience but I do have a ton of customer experience work, data skills, and experience execution as a product owner….and if I could find a pm job that focused in that area, I could compete with someone who had more experience than I did. I found a few roles that met that criteria (pm roles that focused on the cx space) reached out to the recruiters, applied with tailored resumes (I remade resume at least 15 distinct times using r/resumesas well as tons of friends) and then waited. Eventually a recruiter reached back out for screening interview. I made it past that stage and then he let me know about the interview process. I had never had a product management interview process before and this was a very formal process (execution and product sense interviews). This was overwhelming as I began to realize all the things that I didn’t know and how much work would be required to simply not make a fool of myself The interviews So I took a week off of my vacation time, signed up for a pm course, and spent my entire week long vacation studying. I really enjoyed the process because the frameworks were either very similar to what I was already using in my current role or very applicable. After a week straight of studying (70 hours total), I had the first round and made it to second round. I then spent another full week doing prep + mock interviews for the second round. So In total two weeks of 70 hour studying, dozens of pages of notes, dozens of mock interviews, and prep, I got the offer! My biggest takeaways from this process were: 1. Set yourself up for pm opportunities at your current job by finding ways to identify opportunities, scope solutions, and execute. It doesn’t have to be a product, but performing those steps, especially across spaces that require high stakeholder management, is incredibly useful and you can easily package that experience for product roles 2. To get in door, find opportunities that leverage your unique experience 3. Study, study, study. Product management interviews are hard and irregardless of what you think, almost everyone is studying extensively for them. 4. Mock interviews are amazing. Do them early and do them often. 5. Your recruiter is your friend. They win by finding successful candidates. Therefore ask them about the types of interviews you’re having, the personalities of the interviewers, common pitfalls, and feedback. Use your recruiter as much as you can!! 6. Research the hell out of the company and interview process. For larger companies, interview process is well documented. So nothing should come as a surprise to you 7. Don’t look at interview prep as just interviewing for a job. Think about how you could apply the lessons you’re learning to your current role. For me, that made all the difference in my ability to retain information After I got the offer, I called a pm friend of mine who showed me some sites I could use for benchmarking comp. I was expecting comp to be in the 130-150 range so boy was I surprised when I was able to land \~300k after negotiating. Initially offer was 250k. While the job is very different than my previous role, a LOT of things are very transferable. I’m very familiar with problem space, I can heavily rely on my data background, and I’m extremely comfortable executing on initiatives and managing stakeholders. How things are going so far? Just had first performance review & received superb feedback. In my short time at my new company, I have led a successful product launch, have gotten a ton of great feedback from my peers, and am mid way through developing a multi year roadmap. My biggest tools for learning have been 1:1s, tons of books, reading documentation, documenting all of my meetings thoroughly, and asking question after question after question. I can elaborate more on this if there are specific questions, but in short, just because I haven’t been a pm before has not led to me having worse performance. I am exceeding expectations across the board. Can you elaborate on the transferable skills? Data analysis: this is my bread and butter skill. I am extremely well versed in quantitative and qualitative analysis. This is extremely helpful for discovering what is most important thing to work on, how do we know what success is, and then measuring outcome to understand how accurate hypothesis was. Stakeholder management: a huge part of my current role is managing stakeholders. Being able to communicate and align a diverse set of stakeholders is a skill I’ve been honing for years User story mapping: a massive part of my job is understanding the user. With a background in customer support, I have a ton of customer empathy and have a wide array of tools to use for looking at problems from a customer POV Execution: ultimately my job as a pm is to execute and ship great products. Execution can take many forms and my experience executing my previous roles has prepared me extremely well for my current job What are the biggest takeaway themes: 1. Work extremely hard. For basically 4 years straight I worked 60-80 hour weeks and rarely took vacation. This is not a very healthy system and I know there is more to life than work. But I’d be lying if I said that a large percentage of my accelerated growth wasn’t attributed to the fact that I was willing to work twice the hours as my peers for over 4 years straight 2. Take risks and don’t wait. When I got the chance to work on a support team, it wasn’t perfect job but I figured it’d be better than nothing and took opportunity. When I felt like career growth was stagnant, I didn’t wait and instead I just moved my entire life across the country. When I got a new offer back across the country, I didn’t hesitate. To grow faster than everyone you can’t do what everyone is doing. It’s going to be extremely scary at times but you have to be willing to take calculated risks 3. Find an area of interest and go deep. For me that was SaaS customer experience problems. I started on customer success team. Then I moved to data team where I was still working on customer success problems. Then I moved to product owner where I was still working with customer experience problems even if my “product” didn’t involve a product team/engineer. That is what enabled me to get my product management job…the fact that even though I hadn’t been a pm, I had a deep experience in cx space 4. Choose the right manager. Managers can accelerate your career or completely ruin them. Never allow yourself to have a bad manager. And if you do. Run. 5. Maximize Learning and Development early on: There were plenty of opportunities I had to increase my salary by 20-30%. Whether that was taking a less exciting job or trading off a new title for a salary bump. For me, I always wanted to keep a clear line of sight on the true "prize". I felt like if I just focus strictly on prioritizing my learning and development, even at the expense of some short-term financial wins, it'd put me in the best overall position to capitalize down the line. Do you actually like your job? I absolutely love it. I love the space, I love the team, and I love the product. If I was paid 70k, I’d still love this job. Can you help me? I’m happy to help review resumes, talk strategy, do mock interviews, discuss case studies, or just chat. Just reach out.