How a Development Economics Graduate Ended up in Product Management
Not many people in my circle have a strong understanding of what product management really is, since it’s new especially in Indonesia.
Product management is a relatively new field that has been getting more spotlight in the past few years with the growing popularity of startups in the late 2010s. It is one of the few professions where there is no corresponding degree or concentration in most universities.
When I first started my career in product management, I felt distant from this role, like a Lego piece that didn’t quite fit with anything else. My educational background had very little overlap with what I did on a daily basis as a product manager.
So how the heck did a graduate of macroeconomics, like myself, ended up with a role in product management?
The beginning
The first few months after I finished my university thesis, I was lost in thoughts on what kind of career I wanted to pursue. At that point, I was faced with three major options: pursue a master’s degree, start working at an established conventional company, or follow my curiosity into the tech startup world. I chose the latter because I wanted to satisfy my curiosity and understand the inner workings of tech unicorns in Indonesia.
I assumed that if I wish to jump to the tech startup scene, I need to build my knowledge in software development, right? So, I reached out to a software development studio in a co-working space I worked with before and managed to secure the role of a project manager there.
Kicking off with project management
During my time in this wonderful studio, I experienced firsthand how software was built — from ideas to storyboards to wireframes and prototypes, to fully functional web or mobile applications. I also got the chance to pick up some technical knowledge on system architecture, especially how clients (front-end), applications (back-end, logics) and databases were arranged and connected via APIs. I participated in daily stand up meetings, joined problem-solving discussions to achieve weekly sprint goals, and helped communicate progress to clients and internal team members.
This role helped paved the way for my product management career in Tokopedia.
I was overwhelmed by the jargon and terminology, but the one thing that I managed to do very well in understanding was the architecture and data flow of a typical software. By looking at how components were carefully built by front end developers, business logics were arranged by back end developers, and databases were broken down into simple concepts of tables and functions, I was able to see how engineers and products were interacting with each other.
As I entered my second year in this studio, I started to lose some level of ownership and creativity when executing project-based solutions. This feeling grew more day by day, and I started to become more curious about how I will approach bigger and longer-term product challenges.
Becoming a product manager in Tokopedia
To feed my curiosity, I started looking for startups that would accept people with my background into their product organization. Many startups came to my mind, but one in particular left a strong impression on me. The startup is Tokopedia, one who frequently put on ads on the cinemas on how it helps SMEs in Indonesia. Something inside me resonated with this vision. The more I read on Tokopedia, the more I became interested in being part of the company’s positive impact. So I applied.
My job interview did not go smoothly, as I was ill-prepared on some points, but that’s a story for a different time. Eventually, I managed to get hired in the end and was immediately trusted to manage two important modules for Tokopedia: Order Management and Seller Home.
In this role, my entry-level understanding of tech architecture turned out to be extremely handy for getting by in the beginning. Engineers became my go-to help desk when I tried learning about the scope and behavior of the modules that I handled.
First learning: PMs exist to solve real problems
Working under an ex-Amazon VP of Product heavily influences my view on product management: words and concepts don’t matter if they do not solve real user problems. And so I made it my mission to understand my users and reached out to my users. I talked and listened to their real problems and slowly learned about their daily struggles and how our products have and might solve their day-to-day pain points.
In parallel, our Data team would help process data and generate insights that would help guide my decision-making in product development. Once I have a good grasp of the pain point we are trying to solve, I would then work with our Product Design team to craft product solutions, while our engineers do their magic to realize the solutions that we have considered and planned. But this is not the only way a product manager in Tokopedia operates.
Having a good knowledge of tech and decent data intuition helped me kick off my product management journey.
New scope, new learning
As my team and I were progressing through our ambitious goals, we stumbled upon a much bigger and fundamental problem: how do we know that we are truly solving the user’s problem exhaustively, and not reactively? How do we really establish the democratization of commerce in our ecosystem?
Working with and on “features” is not the only way Product Managers operate, but experimentation is.
After we regrouped and restructured, I am now in charge of Seller Segmentation and Growth. My new mission is to ensure that we are solving our seller’s problems holistically and ensure that our product fundamentals lean toward the democratization of commerce. It is key that I understand the complexities of our seller landscape and help sellers with their needs at every stage of their journey in Tokopedia.
This new module is a whole new world with a very different pace. No longer do I talk to as many engineers and designers as before. By being constantly exposed to data and problems, I am challenged to be adaptive and critical, to have a scientific mind and experiment with many hypotheses. I am still in the process of grasping and developing the strategy, and hope to share with you my reflection on this journey in another occasion.
Two months into this role, I am certain that there is another modus operandi for a product manager, demanding the essence of product management which is to identify and solve problems: by turning curiosity into insights, insights into hypotheses, hypotheses into experiments, and experiments into solutions!
I am not a misfit — nobody is!
I am experiencing first-hand how a product manager’s role and skill set evolve and adapt with the scope and the nature of the problems he is dealing with. This made me realize that I am not a misfit, I just need to recreate myself with every new challenge and user problem. That’s what I’m doing now: applying some theories and learning from my university as a guideline for my job now!
In a nutshell…
After all this time, I still think that product management is a new and constantly evolving field. It really feels all new to me.
Once in a while, my relatives or acquaintances mistake my role of “product manager” as someone who deals with merchandising or curates catalogs for Tokopedia. No matter how many times I have explained this role to people, it seems like I will continue to have to explain and re-explain my role in product in my annual family gathering, since the role of a product manager continues to evolve.
But such is the nature of this field. There is no single correct way to do it, as every product manager has to adapt to the situations and challenges faced in front of the person. It is no wonder that adaptability and learnability are some of the major qualifications required by many startups and companies for the product management role.
One way to stay adaptive is to be critical and data-driven, talk to as many people as you can, and test things out to find what works and what does not.
My journey away from economics brings me back to economics.
My role in Tokopedia brings me back to my undergraduate major in Development Economics. I feel like I can actually help democratize commerce and economy via technology. This was my motivation when I first joined Tokopedia, and it still is today.
Though my path was one of an unpredictable and unprepared at the start, I can now call myself a proud Nakama because I’m #JustGettingStarted to build impact in Indonesia with over 7 million sellers.
Do you dare to take on a similar challenge and pursue a product management career in Tokopedia?
