Tuesday, October 26, 2010

First 6 months as a PM

Its been a long time (1.5 years) since I wrote my last blog. So the best thing I thought of sharing with all are the last 6 months as a Product Manager as that would summarise a lot of things that I have been upto in the past (obviously excluding things at personal front)

Well, I was one of the few people (single digit I suppose) from my batch at IIMB who opted for a career in Product Management and thought of returning back to the Software industry. You feel good sometimes that you are out of the rat race but at the same time it give you jitters. You wonder if this is the right move after 2 years of investment in MBA as none of your other batchmates want to board this train. But slowly as you interact with more people you realize that all of us are different in one way or the other with different interests, passions and priorities in life. So, to make a better choice for yourself you need to understand yourself better and need to give some time for things to settle down. You get more confidence on your decision when a leading Business Magazine of the country features you in their cover story for doing things differently.

Anyways, afterall these thinking and introspection, I settled with the Product Management role in a leading storage company. I wanted to start my PM career at a place where I could learn the initial nuances of job and get a good mentoring from some senior people. At the same time, I didn't want a small piece of the pie (read it as PM of part of the product based on location). I wanted to work with a strong Engineering team so that my interest in technology booms further. Haven spoiled by the excellent environment in Google, I wanted to work in a company which can boast of its work culture globally and believes in giving a lot of freedom to its employees. Taking all this into consideration, I found NetApp as the best fit for me amongst the available opportunities at that time.

Its the first time that NetApp hired fresh B School grads as PMs but they did a splendid job in ramping us. I must say it took my couple of months to figure out what is happening around me. This is such a technology centric company that initially meetings were like Greek and Latin to me. But slowly, I started reading more about the technologies that we use and develop. I started talking to more people to understand the various products we deliver and slowly started to master my own product. It would be wrong to say if I never thought that why I needed a MBA degree if I had to work in such hard-core techie product (will answer that later). But my passion for technology and zeal to learn new things helped me ramp up soon enough. Infact within 6 months here I was in Delhi, talking to customers on my own and talking freely about our technology and the future roadmap. I was not only confident in talking about my product but also the complete package that we offer to customers (and definitely my MBA skills were helping me here). I was feeling so happy and getting such a kick out of all this. Finally, I had got what I wanted - a good mix of technology and business. I am now in a position where I understand the market and customer needs, translates them to requirements for my Engineering and deliver great products in the market to kick out the competition. I am part of the complete cycle and can see the big picture now.

At last, I am glad that I picked up something which aligns with my passion and didn't follow the rat race.

Disclaimer: All the views presented are my personal and not endorsed by my current employer in anyways