A Love Letter to my Product Management Helpers

This is a love letter. It is to my dear product management friends who led me through the winding journey up to the current phase in my product management career. I couldn’t have done it without you. So thank you, my peeps.🥰 I make no apologies for the ooey gooey nature of this article — Because we need more helpers in the world.

I was first introduced to product management when I worked for a voice over IP company about 8 years ago. I was in the marketing department, and regularly worked on documentation that needed to be created in consultation with sales and product teams.

Do you remember the days of working in a physical building with actual people? Breaks throughout the day were much needed, and I often went on walks around our building with Jordan Mulford. It was early in my career, and I had so much to learn. On these walks we talked about product management, business challenges and human experiences . He was one of my first mentors.

A little later, I pivoted to sales operations. One of my biggest projects was working on integrating an out- of-the-box customer relationship management system with a custom onboarding product. That was a fascinating phenomena to observe. I had a product manager to lead and facilitate.

I looked at wireframes, listened to the banter between engineering and design, and saw the gears turning in the product manager’s brain. (You have a really amazing thought process, Adam Peeler!)

Through these experiences, I came to believe product managers were pretty cool. Fast forward to my time at a learning platform company.

When I started there, I was hired as a business applications analyst. That was my background, and it made sense when I accepted the offer letter. However, the company I had joined was heavily product led.

That meant that product managers were the king pins of the company and had the most authority. They were like gods. Soooo…my team leader felt a change in job title (to product manager) was warranted to give me more clout in the business.

I panicked a bit when I was told my title would change. I knew what my mentor had to do, and that seemed daunting to me. But….I wanted to learn more. So I took the change seriously.

First, I started with formal mentorship. I signed up with a local product chapter and was paired with product leader Natalie Mitchell who worked at a project management software company. Fortunately, Anna Mikhova was also assigned to me through my company’s women’s employee resource group.

Through these mentors, I made lasting friendships. They gave me golden advice about navigating corporate politics and the practice of product management. I was introduced to user discovery, journey mapping, and prototyping. I learned about the concept of observing unguided user behavior and mental models.

Needless to say, I fell in love with product management, and passionately applied all of these learnings into my everyday practices. I even went so far as to challenge my own leader to more effectively incorporate the practices into our team operations.

However, I often felt like an imposter because “traditional” product managers work with products that are customer facing and revenue generating. I had also witnessed a lot more creativity and innovation. Being an internal, technical product manager, I was restricted in what I could really create.

Further, working in Information Systems, I didn’t have access to a designer. So when I wanted to branch out and become a “real” product manager, this was an area of frustration for me.

In this next phase, networking and asking lots of questions was key to my success. Through a peer, I found another helper TJ Nelson . TJ is a product design leader, but also a product coach. During the pandemic, he connected me with a startup who needed some basic product management guidance.

I had just had a baby (As a result, I felt all sorts of exhausted), but I was committed to getting into this field and landing that first PM gig. So I worked with the founders virtually after work hours for about 3 months. You can read the details of my experience here.

After completing that journey, I thought, “Great! I have some real world experience, and I’ll definitely get a role now.” Boy was I wrong.

I had to fight and grind to get into a product manager role! It seriously was the worst slog of my life.

I was outright rejected by folks within my own company and through companies that I had applied to externally. It was absolutely soul crushing.

I commiserated with one of my good friends about how defeated I felt. He was a colleague at the time, and he somberly told me, “Stephanie I feel like I can do more for you. I’m going to figure this out.” And he did!

I could elaborate on the need for male advocates in the workplace for days, but all I will say is that Reuben Carlile is a rockstar. He was one of my best friends and is a women’s champion. So thank you, Reuben!

Reuben had my back, and eventually recommended me to a leader for a rotational product management project. My leader during that phase in my career was not supportive of this endeavor. But again, I had a helper.

In came Kavya Chandrashekhar. She convinced my leader to allow me to participate in this rotational product. I’m not exactly sure what she said to him, but I was granted the autonomy to assist the platform as a service team for a summer.

Another helper was Mackenzie Hales. She was willing to build up my confidence by offering gentle consultation and mock interviews. I shadowed her during design reviews and stand-ups to get a little taste of the day to day role. She taught me about the STAR method when interviewing and was a true listener.

Through this wave of difficulty, my dear friend Sara Hathaway had been bending the ears of her leaders and plugging my name into conversations. She was planning to leave the company, so when she found a new position, I had a serious leg up in the interview process. Her role opened, and I applied.

That’s where I landed. I’m a product manager for a tool called Curriculum Portal. My team and I built a user interface from the ground up, and it’s been a wonderfully wacky experience. Although my ride has been short, it has been sweet.

To all my helpers along this rocky, mind altering, and exhilarating journey — — thank you. I will forever be grateful that we had the chance to meet.

Love,

Stephanie