The Long Game: Winning at Product Management
Ever heard of “PM career escape velocity.”?
Let’s talk about it:
Many PMs message tend to feel career stagnation at some point. They feel their upward trajectory has stalled, and so they want to consume the newsletter content. Ok. But in 9 cases out of 10, they also just need to keep toiling away.
Sure, 1 out of 10 people messaging me aren’t cut out for the job. But for the other 9 of you, you got this!
Like every other PM, your feedback cycles list areas to improve. You just need to keep putting in the reps to improve these.
As much as content and frameworks help, you know, deep down, that experience is all that matters. In this job, we face a very predictable set of challenges: influence, product sense, workload tradeoffs…
To really get a grasp on the nuances of skills like these, putting in years to the profession is going to be your best bet. There’s no shortcuts in career growth.
But, there is some serious light at the end of the tunnel!
Product leadership can often come quite quickly, after you have a strong gasp on the PM skillsets. This is the point of escape velocity.
You’ll often see this on LinkedIn. Someone makes it to SVP. Then they keep going to bigger and bigger CPO roles. Others will make escape velocity earlier. They hit director, then they quickly start going on to bigger roles.
You need to stop comparing yourself with any of these people. We all do it at different ages. But, if you are willing to play the game for decades, you can do it.
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Summary — Wherever you are right now in the ladder, you can work to build up your skills. If you stay patient and build the toolkit, you can eventually hit escape velocity. Many play the sprint of the “hot” job. Very few run the marathon of becoming a master of it.
