Career pivot: Design to Product Management

I get a lot of questions about how I made the switch to a product management role starting from a design degree from National Institute of Design. Some common questions while some specific to individuals trying to assess a fit or learning more about the role. I’m going to be writing about this topic to hopefully address some of the most common questions. Split into 4 parts — My journey, framework for Transitions, the Learning and the Unlearning of my particular journey.

The PM “switch” — 4 key pivots in my story

Personally for me, moving to the product management role wasn’t really a “switch” but more of a calliberation journey based on slightly contrarian seeming career experiments across 10 years. I’ve enjoyed donning 4 different hats along the way and eventually PM is the one I’ve stuck with for the longest period of 5+ years so far. But who knows, what’s next! Currently I am a Product Manager at Microsoft and have been excited about my work on most days! :)

At each point, I believe I made one critical choice and these choices compounded eventually. I was not making this choices with “PM” end in sight, but listening to a combination of intuition + rationality. I was always asking myself a combination of “What feeds my energy?”, “What is valuable in the market?” and “What leverages my strengths” while creating room to grow — 70:30 rule.

1. Just a Computer Science student at BITS Pilani -> Carving out time to dream of a product that I wanted to build as a startup founder of a dorm room startup at 18
2. Startup founder of a product we were building poorly -> Design school student learning alongside other great minds how to build great products
3. Focussing on the “how” as a designer -> Focussing on the “why” and “what” as a user researcher/strategist (I wrote my own JD and pitched it back!)
4. Advising 5+ product teams on improving their products as a strategist for new business investments -> Being accountable for shaping one product at a time as a Product Manager

My PM journey

As a PM, my journey so far has broadly been in the consumer space. The mobility I’ve seen has been around scaling up my impact, while learning a new domain and rounding off my exposure to platforms (web, mobile, PC etc.)

1. Envisioning a suite of products that solve unmet needs of new age businesses
2. Blue sky imagineering of how 3D can augment data visualisation in Virtual Reality
3. Zero to One in 9 months of a complex product (Edge browser on Mac), orchestrating 30+ feature collaborations. My first hands on with an Open Source project.
4. Owning a part of a browser that serves tens of thousands of ambivalent users -> Owning a mobile app, that is used by 10M+ “intentional” users
5. Currently, I’m building something that customers love in an app used by 100M + users

and so on…

Pivots may go wrong. Pause, reflect, watch your energy.

By no means, have all my bets succeeded. I’ve had failed bets, but I keep asking myself — “When am I the most productive?”, “The last time I truly knocked it out of the park, what was different?” I watch my energy and I’d highly recommend doing that.

For example, a few things I know have driven my energy in the past:

1. Stuff that piques my curiosity: I’m curious and scrappy. Learning a new complex thing and getting it “right” fast still thrills me each time! I noticed this when I we built an ML-based document classifer for image categorization in Microsoft Lens. I had never owned any ML product and in a month of rapid iterations and training, we had a product that worked!
2. Control! I had asked my mentor before moving officially to the PM role on whether I should take the leap. He said — “Su, don’t delude yourself. You’re a control freak. You’ll be better off as a PM than a researcher!” Ouch, I thought. A few years later, I think he knew me better than I did :) I love being in-charge of a lot of different moving pieces — The joy of control offsets the fatigue for me.
3. Bold IMPOSSIBLE visions: Within the constraints of what is the “right” thing to build, I love “impossible” charters that start with ambitious targets. One of my managers once told me — “This is really tough, but I know one PM on the team who just get it done, I’d bet on you…” I really enjoy that reputation.
4. Giving back — I love coaching and paying it forward. It makes me feel like a contributor to a positive wave. I also holds a special place in my heart because I have felt very un-guided in some of the riskier corners of my journey so far.