Journey of a Co-incident PM: Tech Consultant, Banking, end up at E-commerce Giant

Hi PM’ers, I have been waiting quite sometimes to post my very first writing on a digital platform, selecting the topic and which platform to use was really not a piece of cake, but I made it eventually. I am very welcome and would love to receive your honest criticize or positive review to my story. #MulaiAjaDulu #JustDoIt

The Beginning of a Graduate Student

Fourteen days after my Thesis defense, I had just started my career as a Technical Consultant at a Software Consulting Company in Jakarta, the job aligned with my education background, Bachelor of Computer, majoring in Management & Information System. One of generous college senior that introduced me to this new opportunity. There, I did code and used third-party platform to build our client system that refer to the agreed requirements. I believe it was a good start for a graduate students to have a career in a consultant firm, and yes it is, you got trained by the seasoned external party, ranging to understand the world of software development, client handling, those are such an impressive skill set for me before going further in the industry.

Transform into a Banker, from coding to numbers

My next stop was the biggest state-owned bank company. In 2016 I passed the bankers’ management trainee recruitment over thousands of the applicants. Here I feel like; I get into the real workplace, a real business, and let me tell you why, here as a Banker, you didn’t choose what roles you like, which city you preferred, but the company that picked it for you. Some of you might be curious about the role that company picked for me, so did I, waiting for the roles and city placement was just like waiting a spinning Russian-roulette to stop and pick you the prize, okay, let’s just save the answer for now.

In order to shape you into Bankers that came from the multi-disciplinary background; they intensively trained you funding, microloan, SME loan, Corporate Financing, Dealer & Treasury, and other related discipline like Risk Management, Compliance, Legal, and Bank’s IT Infrastructure and service. All those subjects genuinely make you a real all-in Bankers in a couple of months training camp. Amongst those subjects, frankly saying, the moment entering the dealing room and perform a dealer job was dopamine, took me into a roller-coaster ofprice movement. I just wished they placed me as a Money Market or Bonds Dealer in Treasury Directorate, and voila! My first role was Consumptive Loan Product Manager placed in Jakarta, not a dealer, not bad at all, at least they didn’t exile me to countryside

A new endeavor, new world for me, came from an IT Technical Consultant, now gotta work with Microsoft word and excel, drafting product and marketing proposal, creating product profitability reports, sales reports, loan performance, and back-to-back meetings, but I managed to survive. Fyi consumptive loan product is a non-collateral loan, renowned as KTA, commonly targeting employee, professional, police/army. Eight months spent on that role, I was moved to the microloan department, the same role but different product. This time I handled financing product for micro-business segment, we financed various business industries with small loan amount, but slightly higher rates, since micro business is more risky compared to SME or Consumptive loan. Entering 2019, I was assigned to a big project, to digitize loan product end-to-end business process . Now It’s time to meet my ex, recalling the tech knowledege back, not coding (it covered by IT Team) but system and business process analysis ones. The endless project chain turned me tremendously fruitful and productive, I had successfully built some delightful system, say it:

1) micro sales pipeline management system,

2) e-commerce product and integration,

3) adjusted underwriting process for fintech integration,

4) microloan UI for mobile banking apps

and that’s how I ended my precious journey at Bank Mandiri.

“Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” — Theodore Roosevelt

Technology Giant as my new home

In a nutshell, I moved to a Giant Technology company known as “Tokopedia”, a Disney Land for Products and Tech Enthusiast, with its captivating mission to democratize commerce through technology that aggressively burgeoned. By claiming 90 million buyers and 9 million merchants across the nation crowned Tokopedia as the biggest e-Commerce company in Indonesia. Tokopedia is a super-app that’s not merely serves physical and digital goods marketplace but also expanding its business line to financial services, payment, brand agency, wedding marketplace, and sharia products.

okay, Finished with advertising Tokopedia :), when I published this story, I have been doing a Product Manager roles for almost a year in Fintech Division handling several products:

1. Personal Loan Marketplace

2. Instant Loan

3. Credit Card Acquisition Marketplace

4. and a Tokopedia Gift Card.

A Glimpse of PM Roles

Here in Tokopedia, they build a great and helpful team, everyone is a scholar in their own role, and that helps you a lot. aside your main responsibility to provide a solution for customers in a feature or product manner, as a PM it’s undeniable for you to become the hub for both vertical and horizontal stakeholder like your VP/Head (Vertical), BD, Marketing, Tech, Data Analyst, SEO person, Research Team, UI/UX team, Ops & CS, Risk, Legal, and so on (Horizontal). However that amazing team might bump you with tons of requests, that tests your faith of a lean PM, and most of the time you have to say “no” or let me think about it”.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas.” — Steve Jobs

Working as a PM in a pure tech company also requires a more technical skillset, and it’s inevitable for a PM to stuck in some technical stuff on day-to-day basis tasks. Having said so, Does PM need to learn coding/programming? Or at least a kiss of how the code works is enough? Another profound question would be, how a non-technical person could make a career in Tokopedia just like the “muggle” or “mudblood” survive in Magic Universe in the Harry Potter series?

Let’s discover on my next story.