How we Groom Future Leaders: Atlassian’s APM Program
When I first joined Atlassian, one thing struck me immediately — our crucial role in helping some of the world’s best teams do their best work. Atlassian is one of very few places where you can play a part in making both SpaceX rocket landings and Fortnite “Victory Royales” possible. But even though we’re powering innovation at over 150,000 companies worldwide, you may still be asking yourself — what’s the secret to our own innovation as a company? And did Elon Musk ever send us a “not-a-flamethrower” for helping SpaceX land Falcon Heavy? (Elon, if you’re reading this, we’re tweeting you to arrange delivery…)
All jokes aside, the answer to what powers Atlassian’s innovation starts from the goal of our founders, Mike and Scott; they’ve set out to create a company that remains a success story for the next 50 years and beyond. They’ve made it clear from the outset that realizing this vision means more than just effective product development today — it’s also about growing the future leadership of tomorrow.
And that’s where our best kept secret comes in —
Atlassian’s Associate Product Manager (APM) Program.
We created the APM Program to attract and grow the best talent at the start of their product management journey. We target those who show uncanny leadership potential, well-rounded product sensibilities, and an entrepreneurial spirit. As individuals with these characteristics can come from anywhere, we don’t require prerequisite experience in the software industry. And while that may seem odd, we’ve found that with the right foundations in place, we can fast-track early career growth through a high investment program that includes rotating assignments, expert guidance, and unusual exposure to senior leaders across the industry.
Why are we so committed our investment in APMs? Well, if you look at the most impactful companies of the last decade, their senior leadership is heavily biased towards the product management career track. I saw this firsthand at Google during my time in Silicon Valley, where I had the pleasure of working with Clay Bavor and Ryan Tabone — Google APM alumni who eventually became Vice Presidents, working directly with Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Like Clay and Ryan, individuals with an APM (or APM-like) background are great candidates for executive fast tracking. Just look at the success of Marissa Mayer (of Google and Yahoo fame) and Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft). These executives are among a laundry list of all-stars who started on the product track and grew into iconic leaders.
For our very own APM program, we took the best elements of existing programs in the industry and crafted our own unique take on a “path of maximal learning” for early career product managers. What’s resulted is a focus on three pillars that we believe provide the optimal environment for accelerating the growth of first time product managers:
- An inspiring network of mentors, peers, and alumni
If you ask top performers how they honed their craft, most will refer directly to the transformative impact of their mentors. This constant remains true even for trailblazers who forged their own paths — Sheryl Sandberg, Steve Jobs, and Jeff Bezos (among others) are all known to have received the guidance of mentors throughout their careers.
Consequently, we knew that we had to embed a culture of perpetual mentorship into the APM Program at Atlassian. After testing a variety of approaches, we landed on our current model, which is focused on enabling direct and repeated exposure to senior leaders, managers, and peers.
It starts on the very first day of the program, where each APM is assigned a recent graduate of the program to help accelerate them through onboarding and beyond. Before long, the “buddy” introduces our newly minted APM to their network of past and present APMs, who bond regularly over lunch and social events to share stories. Wherever possible, regular meetups are amplified by special guests both internal and external to Atlassian, including our founders.
Building on this close-knit group and buddy system, APMs managers are selected from a group of our best product leaders. Working with APMs day-to-day on their assigned project, they provide continuous feedback on how to master the product craft, take on growth opportunities, and navigate the organization for maximum impact.
Outside of their direct day-to-day network, APMs can also tap into the experiences of some of the most inspiring senior leaders within the company. With a shared understanding of the APM mission, product heads and executives are heavily involved with the program, providing mentorship and guidance that stems from decades working at the world’s most esteemed companies.
2. Fast-paced, high-impact projects with APMs in the driver’s seat
Our goal when selecting individual assignments for APMs is to optimize for unusual freedom in high impact projects. With a network of mentors in place and an incredibly talented team working alongside them, APMs emerge from projects feeling challenged and rewarded — with invaluable experience they can take to their second rotation.
We rotate APMs through two, 1-year assignments, where they get exposure to different parts of the business and contrasting product domains. We’re lucky to be able to expose APMs to the variety of product domains that we serve, along with our underlying platform that powers cross-product experiences.
With a focus on shipping customer value, past APMs have played incredibly rewarding roles across the company, including:
- Strategizing and leading monetization for Trello
- Leading an entirely new on-boarding experience for Jira Software, impacting hundreds of thousands of evaluators
- Completely re-imagining and launching a new cloud developer platform
- Owning key parts of our enterprise cloud strategy, enabling companies like Airbnb, eBay, and NASA to do their best work in the cloud
With an ever-expanding product suite and growing needs from our customers, there’s no limit to the scope of projects that APMs have the opportunity to work on.
3. Access to senior leaders and shadowing opportunities
Some of our best ideas come from APMs with a fresh perspective, and when we combine that fresh perspective with Atlassian context, magic can happen. We go to great lengths to expose APMs to the entire company — and that’s where shadowing and senior mentoring comes in.
We have the APMs shadow senior-level leadership meetings so they get a deeper understanding of how the business operates. Additionally, this gives them exposure to the next level of product decision making, for example portfolio allocation, operations, and go-to-market strategy.
Combining this senior access with challenging and impactful project assignments often means APMs are playing an active role in high-level strategy or presenting in product review sessions to the founders (yes, APMs do this!). It’s all a part of ensuring our company culture remains aligned with a flat hierarchy where the best ideas win.
What’s the ideal profile for a successful APM?
As we’re targeting early-career product managers, we trade off prior experience for four foundational areas of strength:
- Great communication skills (an ability to easily articulate their ideas)
- Leading and inspiring (have they led challenging pieces of work at university?)
- Strong product intuition combined with thoughtfulness (early signs of this include being inquisitive and observant about products they use every day)
- An ability to move work forward (often demonstrated by startups or other side-projects developed while at university)
We’ve found that APMs who over-index in these four areas have a high likelihood of being successful not just in the program, but also within Atlassian as a whole. This success opens the door to rapid career progression, and the program is designed to accelerate this.
We love to hear about candidates’ entrepreneurial pursuits, internships in engineering or consulting, or experience in other technical domains. We love folks with technical aspects to their education, however this isn’t a strict requirement to join the program. The diversity in backgrounds and perspectives across the cohort is a determining factor in what makes the program great.
The people we are looking for dream of succeeding on a grand scale, tackling challenging problems, and working with creative colleagues at breakneck speeds.
If you’d like to read more about the program (or even apply if you are still studying!), you can find out more at atlassian.com/apm.
If you are looking to set up your own APM program, please don’t hesitate to reach out — I’m always keen to share our learnings about the program.
Steen Andersson, Head of Product, Atlassian
