In a Years Time — Managing a Different Product
365 days ago I was living a different life. I was a different person. I’ve gone from professional basketball player to product manager with what feels like lifetimes in between. This blog outlines my journey and what I couldn’t find in basketball I found in product management.
First-quarter of 2021 was a busy quarter for me. I had interviewed with some of the best companies in the world and was making it to the last round of interviews consistently. I published content on product and research making a name for myself in the UX and product communities. I was upping my game and I was trending in the right direction in a new career. In March of this year, I was offered a PM job with a great data science company; I accepted with great enthusiasm. With vaccines becoming more widely available, life seems to finally opening back up. I have a great job at my feet, but just a year ago, if I were to be writing a blog post, it would tell a different story.
March 17, 2020, was my last professional basketball game in Romania after a 14-year career. The season had been cut short and so was my patience. Covid was running rampant through Europe and bodies were dropping like flies every second. Product management couldn’t be further from my mind. I was doing some research work for a small YC backed startup and working on finishing my Ph.D. What was on my mind was my career situation. Basketball didn’t offer any financial help or security in case of a pandemic. The gig is simple: I play, I get paid; I don’t play, I don’t get paid. And Covid made sure no games would be played. I had been loosely planning my exit from basketball for a couple of years now, but the coronavirus gave me a newfound sense of urgency and presented an opportunity to make a big pivot to enter into a new industry full time. It was one I couldn’t pass on. So I jumped, not knowing where I’d land.
I was so inspired by the uber-talented engineers I worked with at the startup that I had begun developing my engineering skills and tried to get into Hack Reactor boot camp. I was denied, twice. So I taught myself instead (yes, that’s a flex). What’s funny, looking back at it now, the rejection from Hack Reactor deflated me so much that it made me change direction. It wasn’t that I couldn’t be a great engineer, but when a boot camp or company tells you no, once, or even twice and it makes you not want to do it anymore, it meant, to me, my heart wasn’t in engineering. So in hindsight I’m thankful.
But I began reassessing what I really wanted out of this new career. Why did I want to retire from basketball anyway? What about it could I not handle anymore? The love was still there but the game wasn’t evolving. It needed change, innovation and I didn’t have the power to do it. I was a cog in the wheel. So, instead of complaining about a problem I couldn’t solve with no indication of change, I got out.
Meanwhile, during the summer at the startup, we were facing tough times with limited resources. At the time I was merely a consultant providing my expertise around mixed-methods researching and synthesizing data but there was a need in the company that I believed I could fill. We needed a captain to relinquish those daily duties from the CEO. We were a team of engineers building in circles with no clear idea of who we’re building for and why. The research I had been doing for the company provided insights and direction, but they weren’t being implemented. I stepped up, with permission from the CEO to let me lead the engineers and to allow me to translate the data and inputs to give the right context to the engineers so they could build with a purpose.
This was my first experience with product management. I loved being a part of the decision-making process and adding input on which direction the product should go next and why. I wasn’t just doing research and passing it off to sit in a file on the computer. I was no longer coming to practice to shoot, dribble, pass, collect a check (sometimes), and go home. I became responsible for the outcome of our company’s products and made those insights valuable. I strategized how to use industry trends to get our first customers. Believe it or not, product managment is very similar to being a basketball player, at least with women’s basketball: you get all the blame when you don’t win, and all the glory when you do. Pro athletses make the best product mangers, however, the reality is, you’re only resonsible for yourself and your effort and can’t control the outcomes most of the time. Product management gives me that opportunity to innovate, strategize, and produce outcomes I’m responsible for. I take pride in that.
I went all-in on product management for the next 8 months. I reached out to industry leaders for mentorship. I started researching more about it and what it really takes to be a great manager: influence without authority, technically savvy, being a voice for the customer, empathy. I even enrolled in Product School to hone my skills. Product management resonated with me and my strengths as a person. All my past experiences with engineering and my boot camp failures, my research consultant work, my Ph.D. in Psychology, and my retirement from basketball were all preparing me for a career in product.
A full year has passed. I literally have gone from pro basketball player, UX researcher, an aspiring engineer, doctor, to end up hired as a product manager. The only thing I had to show for a long, successful basketball career a year ago was a worldly experience and bad knees. But entering into a new industry post-professional sports is possible and those worldly experiences are valuable. I feel like I’ve lived 100 lifetimes in the last year, but I did it. What a difference a year makes.
