Mark Johnson

June 17, 2023

"Manage your career like you manage your product" - Friday Thing #19

"Manage your career like you manage your product". It's a pretty innocuous phrase on the surface, and sounds rather wise - of course I should be intentional about my career and set objectives and key results to track progress.

This phrase has been coined by Shreyas Doshi, ex-Stripe, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, now a start-up advisor who coaches PMs through courses, and it's hard to disagree with it. At first I thought it was very wise, and a great revolution, almost breaking the fourth wall to reframe something many people struggle with - managing their career - as something that's been instilled into PMs through years of on the job experience - managing a product.

However, it fails to account for different learning styles. Personally, I'm driven by things that excite me. I don't create five-year plans. Every now and then I'll take a pause, assess the situation, and make informal goals in my head - but the thought of a quarterly tracking against.

Many of the great opportunities in my short career so far have come from blind chance. Getting the opportunity to be lead PM for a feature crew six months into my time at Microsoft came because the Senior PM left the company unexpectedly; getting to work on ChatGPT in Word came about from having worked closely on previous project with the team that ended up leading that effort, a sweet coincidence.

It's easy to hear a phrase like "Manage your career like you manage your product" from a successful thought leader and take it as the sole truth, feeling a sense of guilt and the need to change your approach to fit with this narrative, but as John Cutler says "if you poll 25 well know product makers and ask them for their definition of product vision, mission, strategy, and roadmap they will give you very different answers... Which suggests that authoritative definitions aren’t the problem." - there's many ways to operate in the world, try to be and receptive to all, and apply the ones that resonate.

About Mark Johnson

Hey, I'm Mark, and I'm passionate about sport and personal finance. If you'd like to read more of my writing, check out financewithmark.com.