The Product Manager career path at Alan

Product Manager (PM) candidates often wonder how they can grow at Alan given our decentralized ownership, the lack of titles and the absence of a classic manager role.

We have decided to share our level grid for product managers to help answer those questions and to hopefully inspire other product teams thinking through the career path for their product managers.

The goals of our Level Grid

1. Assess the impact of product managers

Performance at Alan is ultimately about impact, meaning the value created for our members and for the company. The PM Level Grid is designed to help product managers understand how to maximize their impact.

As PMs become more senior, we expect them to grow their product leadership by taking on increasingly ambiguous product problems and/or wider product scopes.

2. Be a guide for personal growth discussions

The grid serves as a roadmap for skill development. It provides PMs and their coaches with actionable guidance on how to enhance their impact. By focusing on specific skills, they can craft a plan for personal growth.

Our philosophy of levels

We have defined a philosophy of levels that is shared across all product communities at Alan (Product Management, Design, Engineering, Data, Operations and Insurance). This helps ensure fairness on how we assess performance across communities that contribute to building Alan products.

Level C1
Their mandate is to grow while actively contributing. They have an impact on problems they own and are building fluency in their skills. They are autonomous, with support when projects become too ambiguous.

Level D
They are a driving force on the topics that they own. They impact member and business challenges and exhibit expertise in their practice. They lead medium-sized projects effectively with speed and good problem-solving.

Level E
They are leaders for their product area. They consistently deliver large impact on ambiguous challenges. They exhibit proficiency on most of the technical/product stack and expertise in skills related to their practice.
They might coordinate the work of several people from product communities.

Level F
They are leaders for Alan. They consistently identify and solve Alan’s hardest member and business problems. They own a large scope or tackle high ambiguity. They showcase deep expertise, and have an impactful leadership that drives their peers.

PMs can grow above level F as they start having company-wide impact. We have a specific grid across Alan for our most senior levels that could be the topic for a follow up post.

The skills evaluated in the PM Level Grid

Beyond this philosophy of levels and the overall Impact expected, the PM Level Grid evaluates specific skills:

• Strategy: how PMs craft an ambitious, differentiated and robust vision & strategy for their product based on unique insights and align stakeholders on it
• Execution: how PMs empower their crews to ship the right product, at a fast pace and matching our quality bar
• Leadership: how PMs lead according to Alan Leadership principles, with emphasis on influential communication and decisiveness
• Community: how PMs contribute to their community to build the best product team, learn from each other and make memories of our time at Alan

How to read it

The PM Level Grid is not a rigid checklist, especially at the most senior levels. We understand that excellence in product management can take on various dimensions, and PMs may exhibit spikes in specific areas.

The Grid has a cumulative approach and emphasizes that PMs should embody the skills of all levels, up to and including their own.

The detailed PM Grid

You can find details below and a larger version here.

This PM Level Grid is a dynamic tool. We update it as the PM role evolves and as Alan grows.

We’d love to know what you think of it. Please reach out if you have any feedback!