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Can anyone give an opinion about joining Cognizant Bangalore now ? I have 1.8 YoE and they are offering a pretty good hike but I have heard news like there's managerial changes happening rn and many people are leaving the firm. Your opiniors will greatly help me in making a career decision.
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What are some peoples favorite PM resources? Here are a few of mine:
- Cracking the PM Interview
- The Product Book - free e-book https://productschool.com/the-product-book/
- Product Folk’s Guide to learning PM skills https://280group.com/product-management-resources/free-downloads/
- ProductPlan - PM resource guide - https://www.productplan.com/learn/resources-for-product-managers/
- Good product Manager / Bad Product Manager - https://a16z.com/2012/06/15/good-product-managerbad-product-manager/
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VC here on the investments team (finance background) considering a move to the operational side (tech) that has more technical involvement - so I've been looking at PM roles and trying to position myself for it. I work as a defacto PM for some of our internal projects already and really like that dynamic with our developers. How would you position yourself (resources, prep, qualifications, etc) to go from VC > PM? And any advice? I think I'm trying to avoid a startup as I'm looking for something less volatile and I know very well how those end up going for WLB.
Super helpful and insightful, thank you! I have my MBA already with >5 YOE so this is all very relevant. Time to get to work
I just left MBB post undergrad after a year because frankly I hated it. Ended up joining a non sexy fortune 100 as a PM in their innovation arm and was given a pretty meaty project because the team is small. Supervisor is awesome and a great mentor
I saw people from my same company in other departments be a Senior PM here and then get downleveled back to PM at Meta. Should I just apply every year because they’ll take me as an L4 either way?
Was hoping to wait until I could negotiate a higher comp to move to a HCOL for FI/RE purposes
Other important point is don't get hung up on title and levels, especially early in your career.
Meta / G PM (L4) pays more and most importantly opens up more doors than VP of Product at [Generic Bank].
I've seen many ppl let their ego get in the way. They are a "Principle PM" somewhere making 200k and won't even consider a PM title at FANG because it looks like a demotion but the pay is actually 2-3X.
Other times I've seen ppl who are Director elsewhere (mainly outside of top tech) only wanting Director at FANG but not aware that those roles are not apples to apples. We have ppl with just "PM" in their title making >$1M but get resume from lots of external "Directors/ VPs" applying for roles thats 3-5X their current comp and experience.
What advice do you have for someone in consulting who wants to get into PM in big tech but doesn’t know much about it?
Think of it as a journey and not a direct transfer.
We all hear of so-and-so's friend who went from consulting directly to FB/Goog PM. Those are incredibly rare. I know 50-70 FANG PMs and only know of 1 that did that and they were a partner at McK who consulted for a company and took a much lower level. Most of the time it's consulting to tech first in a business role, then to PM.
The hardest transition is that first PM job. So find a place that's willing to give you that shot first, likely a startup that can't attract FANG because of lower pay. Do that for a year and then work your way up. Once you have that PM exp it's a lot easier.
The other path is join in a PM adjacent role like PMM or strategy/ ops (depending on company). Then trying internal transfer. Challenge here is you might spend a year doing non-PM work while there's no guarantee of transfer opportunities.
Thank you for sharing!
How to pivot from healthcare consulting to a PM role? What similarities and differences would you highlight for each role?
I'd find a health tech company and pitch your healthcare exp. Show you're a SME in that and can pick up the PM skills along the way.
Thank you!
Talk about how you managed the transfer internally from pmm to pm. I'm in prod ops rn and want to make the switch to pm once I hit the one year mark
Thank you! That's a well thought through answer. I'm trying to work on projects of this nature.
This is super helpful thank you very much!
TC?
Every FANG and late stage decacorns, just depends on level you can land.
Some startups at leadership level but ofc 50-75% of that is paper money (which is what you're going there for anyways).
What kind of projects did you do in MBB? What did your career journey look like? How did you make the transition to tech? What level PM did you join as and with how many YoE?
Did mainly DD for PE and M&A projects.
My journey wasn’t as straight forward, did consulting for 2 years, thought about going to PE and landed a few offers but ultimately decided to try tech instead. Didn't want to do consulting 2.0 in a strat&ops role at large tech so went to a startup instead and did a bit of everything (BD, Product, Ops, Finance, etc). The company was about 200ppl at the time.
Thought I wanted to do VC next, met with 20+ funds, landed offers at 2 pretty reputable funds. One of the GP who gave me the offer actually recommended me not to take their offer and instead go get more operating exp and "can always come back to VC later". So I did that.
Ended up at Meta, first in PMM (product marketing) then transitioned to PM when I realized my role had a lot of overlap with PM and I was essentially doing that job already.
When I first joined FB I had 4yoe and was in a post MBA level in PMM. Almost all my peers were 30+ and had either worked in tech before or MBB + top MBA with tech internships. 2/30 were direct hires from MBB at the EM level and had strong relationships with the director of our group.
How much did MBB experience actually do for you in getting into product? I always argue MBB experience isn't a great translator of product capability (not till someone gets more xp), but interested to hear your thoughts
Am a former MBBer btw - but my PM role today is a reflection of a lot of my work outside of MBB (in addition to being a digital specialist when I joined MBB)
Great answer thanks - glad I'm not alone in mainly feeling this way. As someone who was in tech/product before MBB, there's absolutely a ton of bad habits that the consultants there learn that don't serve well when you have to build shit for real
How did you get your cv across and succeed in the interview at the first place? Lots of PMM requires previous PMM experience. How did you persuade them that you are a good fit and capable of doing the job? How did you make your way from PMM to PM internally?
Oh most of the co-workers didn’t get in via traditional channels
What are the things that you feel need to be a huge shift in mindset at pm versus consulting? Do you think pm is a harder job than consulting?
Neither is harder or easier per se, just different. All depends on what individuals are better / worse at.
Hours is better on avg. I've managed ~40hr/ week and performance reviews has been great. There's weaker correlation between hours and perf where as I feel consulting had more of that.
Biggest change in mindset is impact and outcomes are way more important than vanity work. Just because something sound smart doesn't mean it's right in practice. Building good products takes iteration and humbleness in knowing what you don't know. Some consultants are always pressured to be seen as an expert that their ego/ fear of being seen as a noob get in their own way of learning.
Thoughts on Reforge?
Thoughts on Wharton executive MBA?
Don't know anything about reforge.
MBA is nice to have but won't set you apart. Have seen plenty of candidates with HBS/ GSB not make it in interviews or getting one all together. Lots of ppl either have it or didn't care for it so it's not going to impress anyone.
What experiences on what subjects do you need for your current role. Say programming experience, management, etc.
There isn't a particular skill you need and you'll see many PM come from different background and lean on diff skills they have.
At the core the role is defining what problem to solve, how to prioritize, and leading teams to deliver specific solutions for ambiguous problems.
You don't need to know how to code but it helps. I don't know how to code and lean on my tech lead and eng manager for that. But I'm incredibly good at figuring out what problem to solve and leading teams to deliver against it.
There are many PM with technical background who fail that lead a whole team astray but there are also many PM who were great SWE and even better PMs. Play to your strengths.
What's its like on the inside? How's the stress and moral? Whats happening with the Metaverse vision? So many articles right now sighting layoffs, pips, and redacted offers at Meta.
I think it's all down to the individual. Keep in mind a place like Meta has 50K+ ppl and it's not a good fit for everyone. Some are stressed all the time, some think they are unfairly PIP'd (rarely do someone think they are fairly PIP'd), at the same time some are getting yearly promos, and making 600k at 27.
In general the company has needed to be more focused and disciplined in where it invests compared to the past. It's a change in mindset and some ppl over react. At the end of the day it's still profitable in the billions and should be for the foreseeable future.
Typically more junior ppl make a bigger deal of it all because they've never seen it before and are generally more fearful. If you have enough friends in similar roles at other companies you realize things are more similar than they are different across these companies.
News sell based on shock factor because reality is boring. So in good times things are exaggerated and in tough times even more so. If you believe it all it's pretty exhausting and really limits your outlook on life.
What is the tc breakdown for mba grads who are hired into these roles?