My career and the lessons I learnt
I was a software engineer for five years before I became a Product Manager. I loved coding and loved the clients that I worked for — Nike and Pepsi. As a Software engineer, I was on the other side of the table collecting requirements and developing products for the specifications I got from business. I was curious about the business side, was curious to know how the requirements are carved and why a product was developed the way it was developed. I thought MBA could provide me the answers and give a break into that other side.
I loved building products from the beginning of my career and Product Management was the logical next step but I wanted to test my gut feeling and for summer, while in school, I applied for PM internships — cleared interviews with Cisco and was all geared to build the next big thing. But Cisco had some other plans for me — They wanted me to create a financial forecasting model for a suite of their products. I built a great tool for them that does the forecasting — The team loved it.
Lesson 1 — Give your best even if that is not something you want to do at that point in time!
I was back in school not completely satisfied with the Product Management experience that past summer, started applying at other places and got another internship opportunity and this time with Seagate. Seagate was the best thing that happened in my PM career because it had everything I craved for — Building and rolling out a real product, portable Hard disk drive. I did everything from drafting PRDs to working with cross functional teams to conducting user surveys to collecting and prioritizing requirements to performing competitive analysis to getting the product built to drafting marketing and sales documents to launching the product. That too in 3 months, then another product in the next 3 months.
Lesson 2 — Never give up, you don’t know what you’d be missing!
It was almost graduation time and a startup approached me. I interviewed there for a PM role. That startup was a different beast. It had a 2-person Product team (including me) and mandated both of us to wear multiple hats. When I joined the company, only direction I got from my management was to add products to their portfolio that would help transition the company from Infrastructure as a Service to Platform as a Service in a year. I did extensive market research, industry analysis and came up with product suggestions. I took more risks managed time efficiently by prioritizing tasks, rolled out products that created a positive impact for the users and increased revenues for the company within the time line dictated.
Lesson 3 — Work with a startup (or better yet build a company), at least once in your career!
I exited the startup after it was sold to another company and joined Cisco. It’s been an interesting 3.5 years here. I have rolled out two software products here and there were brief periods of time when I was leading programs but my heart was with Products. Even as a Program Manager, I had my Product hat on and had my eyes open for any little Product Improvement or new product opportunity. When found an opportunity, I made sure I backed my recommendation with qualitative and quantitative data, presented it to management and built products.
Lesson 4 — Always have your PM hat on!
I had many questions when I was beginning my career and I wish I knew the answers then. The only thing I said to myself then was to give my best in the job I was taking up. That’s the best bet if you don’t have answers to all your questions. Do your best and keep chugging along.
To that end, I am excited to start a new chapter at Advancing Women in product, a non-profit organization with the mission that I value the most — guide and motivate young women trying to get their foot in Product Management.
