#15 Shiny products and career impact

A hard truth for PMs: The product(s) you’re responsible for can significantly impact your career progression.

That can be unfair...

... but the reality in many companies - especially large & and multi-product ones.

What does this mean?

It means that a PM working on the “hot” products in that company will benefit from it, from a career standpoint.

Because “hot” products are usually on executives' radar - more than others.

This means these PMs get to interact more with leadership. Build relationships. Increase trust.

They get more exposure in the whole org because of the “hype” of the product.

Everyone is excited. Everyone talks about it.

It’s easy to “see” the impact.

There’s also something about the nature of the work a PM is doing when managing a pre-market fit product or extreme growth one.

You can bring your A-game, sometimes more easily to notice than if managing a more stable and established product (especially if it’s a sales-led B2B product)

This is something Product leaders MUST address in their career progression frameworks.

So that the career progression in their product org is fair.

And the value every single PM is bringing is recognized, regardless of the stage their product is in and its internal “hype”.