How Love for Travel Leads Sri Rahayu to Become a Product Manager at Tokopedia
Passion will bring you to an unexpected journey
Sri Rahayu has never expected that her love for traveling would lead her to a significant turning point in life. Starting her career as a Marketing Research specialist in one of the national online media in 2008, Sri Rahayu or ‘Iie’ is now a Product Manager at Tokopedia. For the last 4 years, she experienced a life transition that occurred because of her love for traveling.
Started with her love for traveling
Since her time in Universitas Atmajaya Yogyakarta, Iie has been in love with traveling, especially exploring nature. She is fond of hiking and diving with her friends. After graduating from a communication major, Iie decided to move to Jakarta and work as a Marketing Researcher in one of the online media in Indonesia.
“At that time, I simply thought that communication students usually work in the media sector, and since Jakarta is the central hub for media and information, I chose Jakarta,” said Iie, recalling her early career path.
Her interest in traveling caught her boss’ attention and she was offered a product manager position of the travel channel that the company started. Without a second thought, Iie took that leap of faith.
“To be honest, I had no idea what a Product Manager is, or even what they do but since it was related to traveling and was a good opportunity to do what I love, then why not,” said Iie.
After onboarding the job, Iie had to learn everything from scratch, her key strategy was learning by doing. For meetings that she was part of, Iie usually took note of the difficult terms, and looked for the explanation through Google or her seniors.
Challenged herself to join Tokopedia
After 8 years of working in the media field, Iie challenged herself to join Tokopedia. “As a Company with a leading C2C marketplace in Indonesia, I think that Tokopedia has a more complex system and new things I can learn from,” said Iie.
As a Product Manager, she is responsible for the product development at Tokopedia including any features or services that are provided to users. The job automatically required her to be an excellent problem solver.
To really understand the job, Iie tried to understand each function from other teams that she works with. She also keeps strengthening her planning skill so that the product that she develops can be delivered on time.
“My experience in Tokopedia is quite different from my previous company. Here, we have more team involvement because there are plenty of products to be developed and I need to be able to create a product development timeline well. At first, one product can be done in 6 months, now I’ve learned that one product only needs 3 months to develop, or even faster, depending on the complexity of the product,” explained Iie.
‘Learn from the experience’, Iie has a strong belief that Product Manager is a role that requires your willing to learn. In fact, Iie who came from communication major can become a Product Manager and understand a lot of things, starting from the technical stuff that involved IT until UX/UI, simply because she did not stop learning.
“If someone were to ask me what major they should take to become a Product Manager, I don’t really know the answer. Ideally, you should be more comfortable with this work if you come from the Information System background. However, everyone can actually be a Product Manager as long as they are willing to learn,” said Iie.
According to Iie, someone needs to have at least three basic competencies to be a Product Manager: 1) problem-solving skill 2) planning skill, and 3) communication skill. Those three skills are essential to help a Product Manager to perform the work smoothly.
Work hard, travel harder
Iie always believes in the importance of work-life balance. She loves to plan her trips, make a self-reflection on things that she did, and be a good listener to her family.
“Every year not only do I create a working timeline, but also the traveling timeline. When we plan our work seriously, we should at the same time be serious about our happiness too.”
She creates her traveling timeline the same way as her work timeline. She always starts with a bucket list, makes prioritization of the places she’s going to visit that year, research about the best time to visit and aligns it with her day off and the calendar in that year.
She would challenge herself to go hiking during Ramadan to avoid the crowd. One of her favorite places to go during Ramadan is actually Mount Prau because it only needs 3 hours to get into the peak, so you can still do it while fasting. Plus point, she can enjoy the mountain by herself since no one wants to go hiking during Ramadan.
She always maximizes every day off that she has, “I try to stay away from work or task during traveling. For me, it’s a sacred time to recharge myself, and I won’t let anything bother me, that is why planning is important,” stated Iie.
