Profile
How Deeksha leveraged her domain knowledge to jump into Product Management
About
Challenges
Resources
Deeksha Yadav
Product Manager at Adobe
Transition Summary
Business Analyst Intern, DHL
Data Analyst, Malwarebytes
Business Analyst, Meta
PM, Adobe
Hi Deeksha, would love to learn what you’re up to these days!
I'm Deeksha Yadav. I am working as a Senior Product Manager at Adobe.
I support analytics for our commerce function. High level, we create data solutions for the team to help make data-driven decisions. Personalization, leveraging ML, and understanding the customer experience are all in my charter. It's been an exciting journey.
How did you find your way into this role?
I did my undergraduate in IT and worked in India for some years.
At the time data science analytics was just getting started.
I’ve always liked telling stories with data so that interest led me to pursue a master’s in Data Analytics in 2015.
And until I pivoted into Product Management, I was in Data Analytics.
Once I completed my master’s, I started an internship in DHL (supply chain company).
Then I joined an antivirus company, Malwarebytes, where I had great exposure to startup culture. I was the only analyst supporting the whole B2B function (enterprise sales and customer support) and presented to all the leadership to provide recommendations.
This experience at Malwarebytes led to my interest in strategy and product management. As an analyst, I was already doing a large portion of the PM job like communication, strategy, and stakeholder management.
From Malwarebytes, I worked at Meta for a bit. And that was great exposure to working at a large company where you need to work cross-functionally with different partners. I was able to work closely with product managers in that company, which helped me understand my skill gaps.
How did you make that transition from Analytics to Sr. Product Management?
Anything related to experimentation and data analytics came naturally because I worked in analytics for a long time.
The area I still needed to hone was the process of identifying the user persona, the value prop of the product offering that you're launching, figuring out your market size, and then getting buy-in from all the stakeholders.
Try Exponent was my go-to resource to learn product execution strategy and design.
Apart from using Try Exponent, I was learning from other PMs I had worked with at my previous company, especially any product managers who made a similar shift from analytics. I would try to find my skill and knowledge gaps and address them.
I also found great allies practicing mock interviews with people around me. I learned how to fine-tune my introduction and storytelling.
Overall, I think being over prepared is the key right now because product management interviews are so broad and dynamic.
Sign up for our newsletter
Discover inspiring stories, valuable resources, and advice to navigate your
career transition with people who are two steps ahead of you.
What were the most challenging parts of the transition for you?
Getting the first interview call was the hardest - I lost count of how many job applications I sent.
Even though I had almost 10 years of industry experience, my last role wasn’t in product management. Also, I was an immigrant and my experience in India is not regarded as relevant.
So that's a bummer for everyone I know. It's a very different landscape, right?
So there’s a learning curve networking and getting ready for those job interviews, the behavioral questions, and the start techniques.
The lesson I learned was that I needed to find product management roles with some commonality with my previous work experience in analytics. Even if I don't have direct product experience, I have transferable domain knowledge. So I could find a position, a team, and a manager willing to take a bet on the experience I developed.
How did you get your first interviews?
I think persistence is the key because sometimes even with referrals I was not getting callbacks initially.
What has your journey been like navigating the tech world as a woman and a minority?
I would say it is definitely hard.
Sometimes it can get lonely because you don't have as many women in tech working with you. So even if it's not in your immediate team, branching out and finding more folks with similar interests who can make you feel heard when you're having a tough moment is important – finding your allies.
Initially, it is intimidating to branch out and meet other people, but you're not alone. It's a very similar journey for most of us.
Also what’s been very helpful for me is being vocal if I feel something is not sitting well with me because sometimes things are lost in translation.
What’s next for you?
I have been in data analytics doing some ML work.
The biggest disruption that we're seeing in this decade is Gen AI so I would want to get more involved there and hopefully be on the forefront of launching some product that's utilizing this capability to its max capability.
Of course, as I grow my career, I want to get into a more senior leadership role. That's something that I would really love to do.
Transition Tales