Dual Career Tracks for Product Managers

Essay originally published on the Product Teacher blog on October 4, 2021.

Have you ever wondered what a “standard” product manager career trajectory looks like? Well, you’re not alone. I’ve received this question from both aspiring product managers and experienced product managers, and it’s crucial that we as an industry understand how to develop and promote product management talent.

In my experience, the best product management organizations leverage the concept of “dual career tracks” to grow their product managers.

The first track is focused on people management: that is, these product professionals are responsible for managing other product managers.

The second track is focused on execution: that is, these product professionals are responsible for day-to-day product work.

To help provide more clarity around the product management dual career tracks, I’ve written this guide to provide a high-level overview of the kinds of career progression that product managers can expect.

Let’s first frame the conversation by discussing the kinds of problems that product organizations face when they grow and mature. From there, we’ll then dive into why dual career tracks enable product organizations to tackle these growing pains.

Afterwards, we’ll share a bit more detail about each of these career tracks, and we’ll also discuss the downsides that happen when organizations don’t use dual career tracks. Finally, we’ll wrap up with a comparison of product management vs. other kinds of professions.

So, let’s discuss the problems that product orgs run into as they scale.

What kinds of problems do growing product organizations face?

Like any other organization or department, product orgs will grow and evolve over time. As they grow, they face new challenges at each step.

Once a product organization has 3–4 product managers on the team, it starts to run into the following problems.

First, product managers need to coordinate across customers, makers, and business stakeholders. Once there are more than a couple of PMs within the company, having each product manager own their own “rules of engagement” isn’t efficient or effective. To scale the org, someone within product needs to own processes, systems, and accountability across the entire team.

Furthermore, the more product managers you add to the team, the more you increase the chance of product collisions, where one PM’s work might run into another PM’s work. Without any overarching coordination, product managers may wind up shipping duplicative work or conflicting work.

Second, as the company grows, its customers will ask it to solve progressively more difficult problems. To keep up with ever-growing customer expectations, the company needs product managers who are highly skilled at tackling complex problems.

While these two problems are related to the company’s growth, they’re distinct from one another. The first problem is a coordination problem, whereas the second problem is a talent problem.

Thankfully, the dual career track neatly solves both problems for the product organization. By creating one dedicated track for PM people management and another dedicated track for PM execution, companies can maintain focus and accelerate their momentum in the competitive landscape.

What are the dual career tracks in product management?

Senior roles in product management can be split into two different tracks, which is why it’s called the “dual career tracks.”

The first track is more managerial. On this track, you’ll be focused on managing other product managers. It’s a track that’s more focused on people management, and less focused on day-to-day product management work.

On the management track, you can generally expect the following progression of titles, starting from most junior to most senior:

Of course, different companies will use different titles (e.g. some may add “associate”, “assistant”, or “senior” to any of these titles), but you can expect this general progression on the managerial track for product management.

The second track is more focused on individual contribution. On this track, you’ll continue to be tackling the day-to-day of product management, and your focus won’t be on people management. While you’ll still mentor junior PMs, it won’t be your full-time focus.

On this individual contributor (IC) track, you can generally expect something like the following, from most junior to most senior:

Product professionals who work in dual career track companies will typically have the ability to switch between managerial tracks and IC tracks without penalty to either compensation or title.

A couple of things to note: first, you typically won’t be moved into either track until you first become a senior product manager.

Why is that? Well, if you’re not yet a senior PM, you don’t yet have the breadth of experiences to effectively manage other PMs.

And, if you’re not yet a senior PM, you don’t yet have the depth of experience required to tackle some of the company’s riskiest product investments.

Second, you might also find that companies simply use a numbering system, rather than use any sort of explicit titling.

As an example, take a look at , where you’ll see that companies like Amazon use levels like L5, L6, L7 in place of a formal title.

Now we have a better grasp of what dual career tracks look like in product management. Let’s discuss how dual career tracks differ from single career tracks.

How are dual career tracks different from single career tracks?

For many traditional professions, companies use single career tracks, where your promotion depends on you managing other people.

In other words, the “individual contributor” track is entirely inaccessible in many professions. Or, the individual contributor track and the management track are bundled together, where you’re expected to manage people and to perform individual contributor work at the same time.

The challenge with having only a single career track is that you wind up losing focus for solving two fundamentally different problems. Managing other people is very different from managing a high-complexity large-scope product.

Before we further analyze the drawbacks of the single career track, let’s first discuss how companies benefit by splitting their product management trajectories into dual career tracks.

How do companies benefit when they use dual career tracks?

When companies use dual career tracks, they clearly signal to their product management talent that they’re looking for two distinct skill sets.

One skill set is more people-management focused, and the other skill set is more IC-focused. On top of that, the company clearly signals to its product managers that both tracks are equally viable in terms of career progression, prestige, respect, and other critical job hygiene factors.

By doing so, companies eliminate the mistaken assumption that “you can only succeed if you’re a people manager.” Product managers can decide to focus on their love of the craft if they so choose, without worrying whether they have to become people managers to continue to grow with the company.

In turn, that reduces potential attrition. Product managers are more likely to stay at organizations where they can visualize a future that fits their desires, needs, and preferences.

Having dual career tracks is also a great way to attract new talent from outside the organization.

As an example, a highly-respected IC product manager may no longer feel like they can continue to grow within their current company without becoming a people manager first, even though they don’t want to be directly managing other PMs.

This IC product manager will seriously consider moving to companies that truly appreciate their craft and execution.

To recap, when a company uses dual career tracks for their product managers, they reap the following benefits:

• Clarity across the organization on “what kinds of PMs will succeed here”
• Increased morale and buy-in from the team, leading to reduced attrition
• Attractiveness to external high-performing PM talent

What problems occur when companies don’t use dual career tracks?

There are three core problems that occur when companies don’t use dual career tracks for their product managers.

The first one is that they will cause lack of focus in the more senior product management roles. Rather than clearly identifying the role of the PM, that PM is expected to tackle both IC work and management work.

This lack of focus is dangerous because it means that the company’s best talent isn’t 100% dedicated to a specific type of problem to solve. Since focus is what drives outsized returns, companies wind up slowing themselves down this way.

The second danger is a lack of clarity on when to promote people, and how. If people are expected to demonstrate both a mix of IC work and management work, that makes evaluations incredibly difficult.

Instead, if you ask an employee to opt into a specific track and you agree to measure them against that track, you’ll increase alignment within the organization.

The third danger is attrition risk. When people are placed into roles that they’re not genuinely excited about, they start to consider other companies who will give them more of that focus.

Let’s illustrate the three risks above with a hypothetical story.

Josie is a high-impact product manager who has shipped multiple winning products within her 8-person product organization at Acme Widgets. She’s eager to continue to grow as a product manager, specifically in an IC role.

Josie would prefer to stay with Acme because that’s where her friends and colleagues are, and she deeply enjoys tackling her current industry vertical.

However, Acme only uses a single PM career track, and repeatedly passes over Josie for promotions. Why does Acme do that?

Well, Josie hasn’t managed more junior PMs within the company, which is required for promotion. Each summer, Josie declines to mentor PM interns because she’s focused on launching industry-defining products for her company.

Josie knows that mentoring PMs takes significant time and effort, and she doesn’t want to trade her time off that way. If she becomes a people manager, then she won’t have enough bandwidth to ship the products that really matter to Acme.

One summer, Josie finally caves and commits to mentoring a PM intern. But, in doing so, she finds it incredibly dissatisfying because she’d prefer to tackle the day-to-day work of product management rather than managing people.

Her output that summer is lower than most of her past summers. Josie’s manager notices and penalizes her for her lack of output.

Josie is now highly dissatisfied with Acme and seeks product management roles at other companies that have dedicated dual career tracks.

She successfully switches away to a company that recognizes her skills as an exceptional individual contributor, where she gets to tackle exciting new challenges. On top of that, Josie now earns significantly more than she did at Acme, which undervalued her contributions.

Acme starts to lose steam because they no longer have Josie on the team.

18 months after Josie’s absence, Acme has still not been able to find someone to fill her role. In fact, three of their largest accounts terminate their contracts due to Acme’s inability to tackle complex product scopes without Josie.

What if Acme had implemented dual career tracks instead?

Acme could have kept Josie engaged and excited, and it could have retained its customers. And, Acme could have hired other PM people managers (e.g. Directors of Product) if it really needed more people managers, rather than force IC PMs to move into people management.

But because Acme failed to leverage dual career tracks, it lost crucial customers, and it lost its leadership position in the market.

Do other professions use dual career tracks?

While many product management organizations do use dual career tracks, we haven’t yet seen universal acceptance in the industry for PM dual career tracks.

But, dual career tracks don’t just apply to product management. In fact, some other professions have nearly universal adoption of dual career tracks.

As an example, in engineering, most software companies use dual career tracks today. They’ve realized that for engineering talent to stay onboard, they need to split their career trajectories into two separate tracks: one for people managers, and one for distinguished individual contributors.

Similarly, for product designers, most product companies will also leverage dual career tracks. After all, some designers prefer to focus on crafting products, while others are more interested in people management.

When departments and organizations recognize that they need to tackle both people management problems and execution problems, they implement dual career tracks to enable talented employees to specialize. This enables employees to grow, make an impact, and have fun at work, which then improves the company’s performance over time.

Summary

As a product manager, you should expect to see dual career tracks. On the management track, you’ll focus on managing other product managers, where you’ll set overarching strategy and create processes for the organization. And on the individual contributor track, you’ll tackle larger and more nuanced problems on behalf of the company.

Both tracks are rewarding in their own way, and you should take some time to reflect on which track suits you best.

Where possible, look for companies that provide dual career tracks for their product managers. If you happen to be working at a company where you only have a single career track available, you need to start thinking about whether you’d be comfortable with that.

At Product Teacher, we’re all about empowering people to do their best work. If you ever need help thinking through promotions or career tracks, don’t hesitate to reach out!