Product manager: On the challenges of entering the profession and an interesting path

I was interested to learn about how she came into this profession, what she is passionate about along the way and what advice she can give to aspiring product managers.

Working on a product for pregnant women

Thank you for agreeing to share your experience. Let's start with where you work now and what are your responsibilities?

I work at Wachanga on a product for pregnant women. To date, Pregnancy Tracker has 15 million users. That's the total number of users who have used our app, because the product life cycle is a maximum of 9 months, as you know. And on the one hand it's cool, but on the other hand it's a bit alarming, because it's more than I expected. Also, I never thought that I would work on this kind of app, because I usually work on products that I understand, and I thought about working on products like Miro, Google, Facebook. I mean, products that I use every day. I expected to work for a huge company with a lot of products and be involved in some small part of a big product. But life doesn't always turn out the way we expect and a new opportunity came the day after I left 999.md. 

How long have you been working at Wachanga? Six months now?

By the way, yesterday I went on LinkedIn to see how long I've been working - it's been 8 months. Not a lot and not a little. Six months was enough to change the way of thinking and reach new heights. Because I had to change my environment, learn new techniques, frameworks.

Job Search

How did you get a job with this company? And how easy was it to find a job?

A former colleague of mine who was already working at Wachanga posted a job opening on LinkedIn. I was in the process of looking for a job and submitted my CV to many companies. Mostly I submitted to companies that were not local. I had an experience with one local company, but only after 2 months they called me for an interview, by then I already had an offer from Wachanga. However, I also waited a long time for a response from that company, about a month.

Did you keep statistics on this process? How many CVs did you send out in total, how many invitations to interview, then offers?

I submitted my CV to over 100 companies within two months. Yes, I was very focused on the process. I personalized them because not all companies want a product manager. I applied for Project manager jobs, BA jobs as well. It was a difficult process. I had to spend a lot of time looking for people I knew who worked in those companies so that I could use a personal approach. I searched on local job sites, Romanian, Latvian, Estonian and others. As a result I had 5 interviews and 1 offer. Some companies invited me after I accepted the offer.

Did you seek help from anyone in this process?

Yes, I am very grateful to Dima Grinshpun, who spoke at last year's Product Management Community Moldova conference. And, in general, I am grateful to the community for the opportunity to meet him. I was amazed that this person took an hour out of his personal time to call me, to review my CV, to give me recommendations. And after I made edits, my job search things got better. He helped me a lot.

Grocery Scrum

Tell us more about the challenges you had to go through in the new project.

It's very hard to become a product manager of an app you don't use. I don't have kids, I wasn't pregnant and as a product manager, you have to have empathy for users. That was the biggest challenge for me, to understand the challenges our customers face. I learnt what a trimester (laughs) what pregnant women go through. When our CPO told me about the needs of pregnant women in the first days of work, I realized that I didn't understand their problems at all. So I did a lot of interviews with women who were already pregnant or who had given birth, to understand why they were using these apps and what information they were looking for.

Interested to hear what your processes are. How different are they from those of the companies you've worked for before?

In 8 months of operation, our company's processes have changed dramatically. 

I also had the opportunity to work with Andrew, Ex-Vice President of Product at Flo Health. The Flo app is the biggest and most popular app in Femtech-e that allows you to track your menstrual cycle and pregnancy. I will say that it's a big deal to have a tracker on the team who has very much developed another product that has worked with different markets, and especially the one we're working on. I had the same opportunity at Simpals, and I realized the importance of tracking first-hand. Andrei made a big difference to our processes. We had Product Waterfall and we switched to Product Scrum. This was completely new to me because I had never heard of Scrum for product managers before. 

What is the product Scrum methodology?

The difference with other companies is that I am not alone, as a product manager, in being responsible for the set of functionalities that will be included in the product. We are all involved in this process, no matter what position you hold. You can be a content manager, or part of the feedback team, or sales, or the design team - it doesn't matter, absolutely everyone can come up with ideas. And only the person in charge of backlog status can influence a feature to go higher on the list. This process allows us to run 10 experiments each week incredibly quickly with the whole team involved. Everyone on the team knows what direction we're going in with the OKRs we've set, and everyone knows what initiatives lie in the backlog. Also, everyone has the right to express his or her opinion on the necessity of this or that functionality. Guys make their arguments, we discuss it, and as a result we can lower the priority of the task. Thanks to this process, I was able to do more than 20 experiments in one month, from which I have already managed to get results, and all the metrics that I should have influenced, I have influenced. Now I can't even imagine how you can work in a non-product Scrum way. 

As far as I remember, you used to work in the company's office, but now you have a full remote working arrangement. How do you work in this mode?

Oh, "it's both a blessing and a curse" (translated as "It's a blessing and a curse."). I am very grateful to my company for such a flexible work schedule, it's really very convenient. However, as an extrovert, I really miss people. I remember when working in an office we often got together and brainstormed, it was very productive. There are pros and cons to both. But I would vote for the hybrid format, when you have a company office, your colleagues work in that office and you can work a few days a week from home. Although thanks to this schedule, I worked for a month while living in Bali. I'm going to go to Romania for a week. It's convenient that you don't have to take a holiday to go somewhere, you can combine it with work.

About the first steps

Can you please tell us how you got started?

Once again, I want to talk about the importance of the product management community because before it came along, I didn't know this profession existed. I studied Software engineering at UTM for 4 years, and I felt like an ugly duckling there. Because I was writing code, doing all my homework, but it was so boring for me. I went to university for programming because I loved programming at school and I thought I would like it. But at university I already realized that sitting around for days and nights working on code was not interesting to me. I liked making presentations (laughs). Or leading teams. We had another PBL subject (Project-based learning) and for 6 months we had a project. I had a team and we created a product. It was the perfect base for my development as a sales person.

What exactly did you study there and what did you like about it?

I really liked management, UI, presentations. I had to write code, but I didn't like it very much. I liked the lectures by the lecturers, the very atmosphere in which I sat with my mouth open and learnt new things. We had mentors from local IT companies - project managers, business analysts, scrum masters - who shared their experience. But nobody talked about product management. But one day the rector of the university offered me a job as a project manager at Fablab, which is located next to Tekwill.

An unexpected twist. What did you do at Fablab?

I had to organize events and I was more interested in that than working in an IT company. It was my first job. I realized that I had to absorb everything like a sponge. After a while I was invited to work in Tekwill team as a project coordinator in Aleg Cariera IT project. Again it was pure management, nothing technical. And once again I was missing something.

And you decided to change things again?

Yes, I tried my hand at design, working as a freelancer - that wasn't it either. I wanted to be more involved in the technical process, to make decisions about product development. I was advised to go to an IT company as a developer, and there I could figure out what I wanted to be. But I didn't want to. So I found out that Tekwill had a partnership with Epam. They had courses with their mentors in Java, Node.js, Business analysis. I wrote to them and asked if I could participate in the BA role. To which they replied to me that yes, of course, but only you. So I was one BA. And it's all for free.

Now that's lucky 🙂 How did this program go?

I was assigned a mentor who gave me a kind of internship in business analysis for 2 months. At the end of the course, I made a sketch of a product and presented it. But even after that I realized that I didn't want to develop further in this profession. Epam offered me a job, but I refused. By that time 4 years had passed, I had graduated from university and was at a crossroads, not knowing where to go next. If I had known about product management then, I wouldn't have spent so much time looking for it. By chance I came across a vacancy for a Junior product manager at Simpals. I got an interview, as I already had a wide range of experience.

What was your first experience as a product manager?

When I was hired, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I was sure that I would only conduct interviews and pass the results on to other people. After two weeks, I realized that I would have to deal with this information and do some A/B tests. While in the office, I listened very carefully to all my colleagues and wrote down all the unfamiliar words after them, which I then Googled. In the end, I fell in love with this profession and I am very grateful to my first company, which provides an opportunity for aspiring salespeople to develop in product management and beyond. 

What helps you grow as a product manager

What helped you become a product manager?

My experience as a designer has helped me a lot, I am fast at making mockups, presentations. Every two weeks, I have to present the results of hypothesis testing and pitching. Pitching experience from university, experience in creating presentations from electives, participation in Product Management Community Moldova and Moldova Developer Community events. 

What do you like about this profession?

I like that I can help the company grow financially. Also, in this company, I feel a strong connection with the users. I realize that one change in a product will affect millions of people from different countries. It feels good to be a part of this important process in a woman's life, and glad that we can help lead the way. It turns out that product is at the intersection of business and user interests. Not everything is so joyful, there is quite a lot of stress and responsibility.

What helps you cope with stress?

Of course, journaling - I always have a notebook and pen with me, and when I feel anxious, I sit down to write. It also helps to communicate with people close to me, all my friends know about my work (laughs). But it is important not to overload people with your problems. Meditation also helps, as cliché as it sounds. I notice how difficult it is for us to be in the here and now, and meditation helps me to concentrate on important things. But all these practices have changed me a lot - I remember Inna 2 years ago, who was afraid to communicate with her bosses and to take negative feedback. 

What advice do you have for aspiring product managers and those who want to become one?

This is a difficult question, because on the one hand you need to be able to work with data, analyze and draw conclusions. On the other hand, you need to be a creative person to see a possible solution that does not lie on the surface. If we are talking about people who want to start from scratch, I think you have to start with analytics, working with data. Then you need to understand what backend and frontend are, and how they work together. You don't need a deep knowledge of programming, but it's important to understand how it works. Additionally, you need to have UX/UI skills, and generally be interested in it, constantly learning new things, paying attention to the design of the applications you use. Well, and of course, minimal experience in team management. A little bit of everything, it turns out.

Recommendations from Inna

Books: Don't make me think

Courses: Strategyzer

LinkedIn: Agar , Tereza Torez (about product discovery)