K918cwePย inย
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Product Managerย ย
Why go into PM if the general consensus is poor WLB?
I guess this can expand to any role because my time in management consulting was also ๐ from a WLB standpoint. That's why I switched to PM but I'm finding it's just a different kind of poor WLB lol.
I took my first gig at Deloitte fresh out of school. Pay was nice. Traveling got exhausting and projects were, meh on the interesting scale. Moved into PM to get closer to product and travel less, but the day-to-day feels like politics.
Wondering what other PMs are doing to get the most out of their careers or if anyone transitioned into something (or somewhere) with better WLB. I have 2 young kids and work hybrid.
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JamesonJetsonElroyProduct Managerย ย
I really love being a PM. Albeit, not the easiest role, but it's rewarding working at the intersection of ops, engineering, and customer success. I think it'll be unique to your situation, but my strategies have been either:
+ Building teams that differentiate between technical and business focus; between short term tactical and longer term strategic activities; between internal (inbound) and external (outbound) responsibilities. Hire people who can do SPECIFIC things, not broad skillsets.
+ Hiring/developing experts in markets. Domain expertise revolves around the markets that the product serves vs. the technologies used in the product. Leave the tech to the engineers and find people who can contextualize the product in a variety of use cases.
+ Define ownership and stay in your swimlanes. Probably the most difficult thing to manage imo. But having clear metrics helps hold your teammates and the other teams dependent on them accountable. If there are roadblocks, you can point to the metrics to prioritize which fires to put out.
+ You also need to have a "if it dies, it dies" attitude lol. If something isnt resourced properly, then leave it there until someone does something about it. No point in you trying to pour your life into something someone else thinks is important but doesn't fork over the resources to sustain. Had to learn that the hard way early on and now, it's a lot easier. Keep your head up m8!
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