Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?

I haven’t the foggiest. And that’s OK.

When asked where I see myself in five years, I mostly shrug nowadays. My path has not been a straight line. I never expected or desired to be a product manager. Ever. It sort of… happened.

I do not mean that in the sense of it happened to me, but rather that I stumbled into it. And it has stuck, at least for now. Perhaps by telling my story, I can also lift the veil on how to become a product manager without an MBA. It is a question I am asked from time to time by engineers.

The journey

30 years ago, I spent my days in primary school, afternoons kicking balls around the backyard with my inexhaustible dog or playing with LEGO, and evenings watching television. In those days, I expected to end up with a daily batch of fresh corpses and maggots as a forensic pathologist, inspired by characters in Inspector Morse and, yes, even Kommissar Rex. I was 10. Gimme a break!

25 years ago, I was in high school and dreamed of becoming a rock star. The plan was to study guitar as well as composition at the conservatory. I played in bands, performed live, and we recorded our own and other bands’ music in our three-garage studio. A few years later, we all went our separate ways and that was the end of that. The backup plan was to opt for classics, but the prospect of becoming a teacher was not an appealing one. That is why going to the conservatory to end up a penniless busker or jaded music teacher was of no interest to me either. After all, I was a teenager surrounded by other teenagers and teachers most days. Go figure.

So, 20 years ago, I obviously picked… physics. Elementary particles had fascinated me ever since reading pop-sci books by Richard Feynman, Steven Weinberg, and Harald Fritzsch. Research in theoretical high-energy physics would therefore be my future.

15 years ago, I was a researcher at university and thought I would become a professor of theoretical physics. That did not happen, because I disliked the idea of having to become a travelling postdoc, begging for money at every opportunity. It is why the notion of becoming a startup founder has never tempted me. When I left academia, I found an opportunity in the data space, which is where I have been since.

10 years ago, I was a data engineer and I thought I would one day be a software architect. That idea went away when I realized I could not see myself code forever, and decent architects code. Programming had always been a means to an end, a way to solve problems, not the raison d’être. In fact, I could neither identify with nor relate to the engineers with whom I interacted back then, as many had home labs with lots of devices or coded almost 24/7. That was definitely not my future or even present at the time. To each their own.

Roughly 5 years ago, I was asked whether I wanted to pretend to be a part-time product manager for the team I was and would continue to be an engineer in. I could not picture myself quibbling over requirements and prioritizing features for data sets and dashboards every day, as I was in the middle of a machine learning research project that I had spearheaded. It was about using smartphone sensors and on-device machine learning to determine the handedness of users and estimate finger length for optimal button placement based on how they held their phones and which finger(s) they used for tapping, regardless of whether they would be stationary or on the move. The project concluded successfully, but the idea of adaptive interfaces went nowhere because of a lack of interest from designers. Too bad for all the people with small hands, long fingers, pointy nails, or even lefties with regular-sized hands.

So, I declined that very first opportunity to become a product manager, because I wanted to follow through on the research idea I had pitched: I wanted to solve the problem I had identified, not hand it off to someone else. Selfish? Maybe. Do I regret the decision? Absolutely not.

A little under 5 years ago, I finally got my first job as a product manager. I had been hired as a machine learning engineer and product owner. The combination suited me, or at least I was eager to try it out. The PM of the team left shortly after I had joined, and I turned out to be the only one with knowledge of and experience in ML, so I was made the team’s product manager. Sort of thanks to a lack of qualified people inside the company.

I have since been promoted a few times, received positive feedback from managers and peers, though I still do not feel I know what a good product manager looks like. My ‘growth’ has been mostly the result of what I call the Broken Roomba Methodology. The problem is that when you are a product manager, you rarely have the opportunity to see other product managers in action. I do know what crummy PMs looks like, because I was graced by their presence many times when I was still an engineer. It is actually how I ended up writing my product principles.

Dude, quo vadis?

Do I see myself as a product lead, group product manager, or principal product manager in a few years’ time? Or will I still be at the staff level, as I am today? I haven’t the faintest. And as my journey hopefully demonstrated, I would just make a fool of myself if I claimed otherwise.

My advice is to only climb the corporate ladder if you are sure it is leaning against the right wall. Note that promotions as an individual contributor do not move you up the org chart: you are still scratching the base of the corporate totem pole, though your blast radius (a.k.a. impact) is wider. In that sense, I am still moving the ladder around. And I am fine with that.

Is product management my passion? Absolutely not. Frankly, I cannot fathom anyone who claims that. I find it a little sad, but, hey, chacun à son goût. Since very few people know of product management as a career when they are children or young adults, I view people who claim they always wanted to be in product management with suspicion.

Threads in the tapestry of my career

A few threads through my career are apparent. I have always seen myself as an individual contributor; I have never sought to manage people. Will I ever change my mind on that? You can probably guess the answer to that one by now.

I cannot picture myself in the same role for the next twenty years or even ten years. My journey so far proves that point. Stagnation is anathema to me and I cannot abide life on autopilot. Hence, I am a fan of the Suzy Welch test, in which you ask yourself, “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” As a matter of fact, I already mentioned it before. If you have not learned or done anything novel in a while—I exclude company-internal quirks, such as unique tools, nomenclature, or processes, because they do not transfer to the outside world—what is the point? Money, sure. But what beyond money?

My interests of music, physics, and classics are still alive and well. After studying audio engineering in my spare time, I set up Crow Oak Studio. My philosophy is never to fully scale that up: I carefully choose which projects I work on as an audio engineer, so it stays fun. Quantum computing is an area I follow closely and write about. Furthermore, I have completed courses on archaeology and read books and research on ancient languages and cultures. And beyond that, I have other interests, but they are not relevant to the discussion at hand. This merely goes to show that I am not my job title.

So, what should you take away from my odyssey? MBA graduates are not the only ones who can become PMs. There is no single path to becoming a product manager. Mine was sinuous and not at all planned.

I doubt anyone can be a successful technical product manager without significant experience in engineering, though. A technical product manager (TPM) is not just someone who manages a technical product, because that pretty much describes all digital products: there is always technology behind it. Product management is technical when up-to-date knowledge of technology or research is crucial to the success of the product itself and it is needed to perform the duties of the TPM role.

Lessons learned

What nuggets of wisdom have I picked up along the way? By far the trickiest lesson I had to learn is to accept being the dumbest motherfucker in the room. Not having to have all the answers can be liberating, but it is uncomfortable, too.

Beyond that, it can be tough to let go of tech decisions. As an engineer you were paid to solve problems. As a product manager you are paid to figure out the right problem to solve but leave its solution to the engineers and designers. You can question technical decisions if and only if there are valid product reasons to do so. Your personal opinion of or experience with technologies is, however, mostly irrelevant.

My story does not tell you whether product management is right for you. What, I hope, my journey can do is give an honest reference for anyone who is curious about product management yet hesitant because they do not feel they match the typical profile. Never let a profile define or even stop you.