Life @ MadHive: Associate Product Manager Edition

Have you ever wondered what day-to-day life at a tech startup looks like? Welcome to “Life @ MadHive,” a blog series that looks at the daily lives of MadHivers. For our inaugural edition, we’ll be following Sam Esposito, an Associate Product Manager on our Product team. No two days at MadHive are the same for Sam — she’s constantly busy building out new product stories, implementing client feedback, and working cross-functionally with MadHive’s Engineering, Client Success, and Design teams.

First, a little about Sam:

• She’s approaching her one year work anniversary at MadHive.
• She’s originally from New Canaan, CT but currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.
• In her free time, she likes to read, play piano, binge watch TV, and explore new areas of Brooklyn with friends. Speaking of binge-watching, her top three bingeable shows of 2020 were: What We Do in the Shadows, The Leftovers, and Property Brothers.

Like fellow MadHivers, Sam currently works from home due to the pandemic. Her daily routine is very different from when she was commuting into the office, though by now she’s fully adjusted to remote work.

8:45am
Sam wakes up and begins her morning routine. She starts by brewing herself a fancy cup of coffee with oat milk. No, she’s not vegan, but she is lactose intolerant, and her daily jolt of caffeine is a very welcome start to the day.

9:30am
Sam opens her work laptop and checks her emails and Slack messages. You never know what can go down after hours, but luckily for Sam, there are no immediate fire drills this morning.

11:00am
Sam attends a Scrum meeting with the Engineering, Business Agility, and Design teams. Together they go over their sprint goals and current objectives. There’s nothing quite like a quick team huddle to put a little more pep in your step and crush your targets!

12:00pm
Lunch time! Sam prepares her go-to sandwich combo — a ham and cheese jazzed up with avocado, kale, and chipotle sauce. She adds a side of chips to round out the meal and make sure she’s energized for what the afternoon has in store.

12:30pm
After refueling, Sam resumes her workday by drafting user stories for the next round of product work. Today, she’s working on building out the new custom reporting tool. As she works, she listens to English musician Tom Misch and Hip Hop trio De La Soul to get her creative juices flowing.

2:30pm
Sam joins a meeting with Engineering and Design leads to discuss the upcoming product roadmap. They talk over improvements to the UX and technical aspects of the MadHive platform that will be reflected in the next sprint of product development.

3:30pm
To fight off the 3PM “afternoon slump,” Sam grabs a little pick-me-up to help get her through the final few hours of the workday.

4:00pm
Sam joins a call with Customer Success leads, where they discuss how to address the latest questions from MadHive’s clients.

5:00pm
Sam receives a product ticket from the Client Success team. After confirming the ticket is valid, she swiftly relays the issue to the Engineering department to investigate further. She then continues delving into recent developments with other client tickets while awaiting a response from the engineers.

6:30pm
To celebrate the end to another workday, Sam and her roommate head out to pick up some dinner — Birria tacos (a popular taco truck in her area that tends to draw long lines). Fortunately it’s only a few blocks away from her apartment! (And tonight, they beat the line!)

8:00pm
Sam kicks her feet up and turns on the TV as soon as the clock hits eight. She takes a much needed break and decompresses with her favorite Monday night tradition — a new episode of The Bachelor.

Whew, what a long day! We hope following Sam’s journey helped shed light on what a typical workday could look like for an Associate Product Manager at MadHive. In the fast-paced startup world, each day is different. Continue to check back for more “Day in the Life” posts to see what life looks like for other members of the MadHive family.