My PM journey — From Backpacker to PM

Three years ago, I left my job as a Senior Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst in a cyber threat intelligence company in Tel Aviv, and embarked upon an Incredible, 15 month Journey in Latin America. When leaving, I knew that I would return to the high-tech industry. The only question remaining was how and where. I was at a crossroads.

So, why Tech?

Generally, I feel that many of the problematic things in our world are, or derive from, legacy issues. Numerous major problems, useless habits and irrelevant world views have been dragging on with us decades, and they’re quite complicated to solve or to get rid of. Some examples that come to my mind are seniority, an uncompromising demand for a degree, dress codes, and many more. Not backed by any serious research, I’d gotten the feeling that many of these bad workplace habits plague more traditional industries, distracting them from focusing solely on creating value across the board.

The tech industry, as the world’s newest, youngest and quickest major industry, has a tremendous privilege of not carrying operational “baggage”. Combined with the casual — ‘Tachles’ (Hebrew slang for straight and to the point, no BS) Israeli culture, the result is an Israeli tech ecosystem with a strong focus on solving problems and creating value, without getting held up on much else. This focus on what’s really important is an advantage of the tech industry that I’m truly passionate about and a significant part of why I wanted to remain in it.

Decisions, decisions, decisions

There’s this cliche’, that in my short career I’ve found to be very true, about getting your foot in the door of the high-tech industry. Once you manage to get in, your opportunities expand exponentially and your maneuverability increases drastically. Returning to the story, I’d been lucky to have already gotten my foot in the door. My military service has opened the door for me to work a senior analyst in a successful company. Technically, I was in. Nevertheless, I wasn’t satisfied — this was still an entry level job that lead to career paths that didn’t appeal to me.

So, during my journey I Investigated. Hard. I dismantled the industry into core career paths and tried to imagine myself in each one. Unfortunately, the large majority of options were not careers I’d desire. At that point in time, I was vaguely familiar with product management, but the moment my research led me to the entrance of the PM rabbit hole, I set out on an unstoppable frenzy that ended with a lucid conclusion — a Product Manager is what I want to be.

So, why product?

Product management found me in a somewhat desperate state. Throughout my life, I’ve been well aware of what I perceived to be a major flaw of mine — I was very bad at remaining focused on just one thing. I’ve never been a one thing-guy in any context — I always had a basic interest in many different things. While considering my future towards the end of my military service, this flaw started to seem like a serious problem. Consider with me a second the “traditional” career path. Studying a certain field, finding work in it and over time becoming a domain expert is the “old” world’s recipe for success. This was a terrifying thought, as I couldn’t have imagined a single profession that I would want such levels of dedication and commitment to. When I looked at product management, I discovered an incredible profession that seems to strictly demand my biggest character flaw. It was a sign from above that sparked a journey of exploration which drastically strengthened my passion for the field.

Plan A failed, Plan B worked better than expected

Getting your first job as a product manager is rough. With no “official” experience, I strove to leverage offline PM work from my threat intelligence experience. I studied A LOT — courses, articles, lectures and exercises. My Social Media was transformed into meta-verse of PM content. I woke up listening to PM podcasts and went to sleep pondering product design challenges.

Having immersed myself in the PM world from head to toe, I was eager to start the actual job hunt. I knew that once I pass the initial experience hurdle, I could impress interviewers enough to get a chance. Sadly, passing this hurdle was near impossible and the answer that I’d gotten mostly was “We’re very impressed with your skills, but unfortunately we need somebody with significant hands-on experience”.

Several weeks into the process, following some reconsiderations, I decided to semi-pivot and explore additional options. I aimed to explore the potential in a “detour” — leveraging my experience to get a non-PM job with PM responsibilities or potential, and working my way to becoming a PM.

This thought process eventually led me to start a unique role as a Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst, working inside a product department.

A surprisingly quick four months later, I became the PM of the product I’d been a part of!

So, what’s the point of this blog?

Product is a huge trend today it seems like so many people are on the complicated journey to becoming a PM. There are endless PM resources scattered across the web, most of them by people more capable and experienced than I. Nevertheless, I believe that it would provide a unique point of view to document my journey in real time, as an ongoing process right from the start. I believe that value can be found for my readers, in the act of learning with me as opposed to from me and that’s what brought me here.

My blog is called Why?Why?Why?.
Why? It is a wordplay (a field that my passion for has probably already cost me some relationships) combining the Hebrew term for “Wow” with the basic and critical PM skill of endlessly asking why.

I’m Daniel, 26 years old, living and working as a PM in Tel Aviv, Israel. I invite you to accompany the very first steps of my product journey. I heard once that the smartest people learn from others’ experiences. If I can allow fellow rookie PMs to do that, then I’ve accomplished my mission. My goal is to make you cringe at my easily avoidable errors, grin a little over small victories and learn crucial lessons along with me. If you’re looking for answers — this is not the right place, I don’t have them. Questions, mistakes, thoughts and lessons, however, I hope to provide a handful of. This is a rookie PM blog, created by a rookie PM for rookie PMs.

I truly hope that you (as I) will enjoy this blogsperiment.

See you soon!

Interested to see what happens next? Read aboout it here