What do you do at Next Role? 

I am a Lead Product Manager for a marketing tech software company called NextRoll. I lead their ad tech advertising experience, the workflow experience and the reporting experience for our customers. 

The fun thing about working in a midsize company is my scope is a lot larger compared to when I was working at a big company. 

What made you want to become a Product Manager?

This takes me back to my undergrad days when I was back in India studying software engineering.

I liked coding, and I had no idea what a PM was, but I remember asking my friends: “who makes all the decisions about how the product should look, or what they should build in a company.” I always wondered, “who does this thing in the world?” 

It had to do with my personality. I ran our technical and our cultural fest in college because I loved taking charge of large groups of people to realize an idea.

Fast forward, I got my first job as a software engineer at SAP SuccessFactors still in India. 

I liked the job because I really liked the fact that I got to build product from scratch but in our SAP meetings, there was this one person based in SF and he was the one telling us the direction of the product. And I quickly looked up his title and saw “Product Manager.” That's how I learned about the PM role.

And gradually working at SAP in India, I realized the decisions are being made in San Francisco by product management teams and that the India team was more of a development team (now things have changed a lot and there are a lot of critical decision making teams in India, but back in the 2010s this was the situation.)

So honestly, I actually decided overnight to move to the US because I wanted to be a part of the business decision making process. 

Did you become a PM directly after your move to the US?

I decided to quit my job and moved to the US in January 2018. Initially when I was moving to the US, I was looking for Product Manager roles. But I was told I should try for software engineering positions to get my foot in the door first. 

After a tricky three month recruitment process figuring out the US system (Linkedin networking, event networking, getting references), I joined Yahoo as an engineer and immediately did more research on the PM role at the company by listening closely to every PM conversation and getting coffee chats.

So by around seven months into my job at Yahoo I was sure product management was where I wanted to go and that I needed to make this happen. But I had no clue how to do it.

When you knew you wanted to be a PM, what did you do next to snag the role? 

Seven months into my engineering job at Yahoo, I told my manager I want to move out of his team. A dangerous move, but I did it anyway. 

And the interesting part was he was encouraging. He was a great mentor. 

He connected me to this new PM and told me that she might have a project for me to work on. And that PM actually asked me to put together a PRD (Product Requirements Document). She gave me a template. I was like, “whoa, okay. I'm getting this opportunity.”

I remember working through the weekend doing so much research for that project and writing down the PRD. Monday morning I reviewed it with her and she said it was good!

At the same time, I met with the VP and head of product management to express my interest in joining their team. I remember being disappointed when the head of product advised me to get an MBA (because that’s how she transitioned from engineering to product). 

Long story short, my work on this PRD got me my next opportunity. The head of product management saw my work and gave me a better 20 percent project. 

My engineering manager was adamant that I put 100% into my engineering job and I was like, it's fine. This is my way to get onto the next place I want to go to. I will do it both. So engineering work was a hundred percent and this is 20 percent so it does 120 percent or more and do some over time.

Though that 20% project was tricky because of my positional power as an engineer, but ultimately, I got the project done, they really liked my work, and we started implementing it. 

How long did the official promotion to PM take after your 20% project? 

I did a sort of hybrid role for seven months. We released the product. It was a lot of fun for me. Like I realized that this is exactly what I wanted to do. 

That was when I went back to the head of product and I asked: “20 percent is fine, but hey, when are you hiring me?”

She did say that they liked my work but because there was a hiring freeze they were not able to open a position. I say, okay, I have to be patient through this. 

Then another tricky challenge was that I had some multiple managerial changes in my engineering arc, and since my passion was in product, it made for some stressful review cycles.

Finally just before COVID started, like 2020 March, they agreed to do interviews. And then they got me the offer with the appropriate salary and level. 

Looking now I'm telling a very simple, nice story, but I remember those eight, nine months. There was anxiety. There was stress, but there was a lot of fun learning. 

It was a big learning lesson of how to chart your own path towards your career and getting out there and asking for help. Continuously telling people around me that this is my dream and my career path and it eventually happened. 

And how did you find the confidence and courage during tough times? 

I'll be honest. There were definitely anxious moments and some nights I have cried wondering, oh my god, how do I get to the other side? A lot of ups and downs. But I'm glad that I was resilient.

I think what really helped me was my conviction that I was really sure this was how I wanted to grow my career and that this is where my personality fits. So I think that kept me going. Thankfully it worked out in a period of almost a year. Honestly it was definitely difficult, but making sure you have the passion and you're confident that is the goal you want really helps.