Lenny's Written Position
People do not get promoted for doing their jobs well; they get promoted by demonstrating their potential to do more through taking on increased scope.
The most underappreciated and often most powerful ingredient in getting promoted is having an influential champion who fights for you in the calibration process.
If you have been stuck at the same level for over two years despite actively working on promotion strategies, it is probably time to explore a new job.
The approach to transitioning into a growth PM role is simple: ask your manager for it, learn growth fundamentals through structured study, and then do actual growth work to demonstrate capability.
The three most important differentiators of senior PMs versus junior PMs are strategy, autonomy, and nuance rather than better day-to-day execution.
A product strategy has three components -- vision, strategic framework, and roadmap -- and newer PMs prioritize by incremental value while senior PMs prioritize by progress toward long-term vision.
The median time to progress from entry-level PM to senior PM is about 3 years, making it the longest single milestone in the PM career path.
The most effective tactic for managing up is sending a weekly 'State of The Me' email to your boss covering current priorities, things on your mind, and blockers.
A PM's work breaks down into three categories: shaping the product (customer research, strategy, specs), shipping the product (timelines, tradeoffs, QA), and synchronizing the people (alignment, buy-in, communication).
Engineers should pursue product management if they are more excited about business and customer challenges than technical ones, often have strong UX opinions teammates agree with, and could see themselves never coding professionally again.
The three most important PM skills to develop when transitioning from startup to big company are communication, influence without authority, and data-driven decision making.
Podcast Moments
“One of the highlights is that I think we're coming back this moment where we can actually treat engineers like our peers and put them into really senior leadership roles and not have this kind of baseline assumption of like, 'Oh, we have to coddle them or hide them from the real problems.'”
The engineering mindset | Will Larson (Carta, Stripe, Uber, Calm, Digg) · Will Larson
“Which today we just find it more in the world of more senior developers and less and less in the junior developers.”
The future of AI in software development | Inbal Shani (CPO of GitHub) · Inbal S
“Opportunity set B is what's available to you, even though nobody's asking you to do it. What I have found throughout my own career is that opportunity set B is always more important, infinitely more important. Opportunity set A, everything that's asked of you. Opportunity set B is where growth happens.”
How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · Jason Feifer
“Moments that stretch you or moments that you feel uncomfortable in or you find yourself saying, 'Oh shit. I shouldn't be here,' or, 'I'm under qualified to be here,' those are the moments you should be seeking out. A much sharper way is like, 'Hey, how many oh shit moments have you had in the last six months?'”
What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda) · Lane Shackleton
“If you ask yourself that question and the answer is, 'It's been a really long time since I've been stretched in some meaningful way or I've felt like I'm under qualified to be there,' then it may be worth digging into.”
What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda) · Lane Shackleton
“Those are the moments that stretch you and give you a new foundation. So oftentimes you'll hear a career question like, 'Hey, do you feel like you're growing in your role?' And that's a very ambiguous, in my opinion, way to ask this question.”
What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda) · Lane Shackleton
“If you are somebody for whom you want to make an exponential difference, you want to innovate, you want to create new value where there wasn't, you want to have a legendary career where you could look back on your career and go, you know what? I was part of this and that, and I was on this team, now's the greatest time in history. The future needs you.”
How to become a category pirate | Christopher Lochhead (author of Play Bigger, Niche Down, Category Pirates, more) · Christopher Lochhead
“Consistent pressure over time. Taking some of the pressure off of having to do things immediately. You just have to keep working at it, and not giving up. Having that grit to keep going and keep pushing over time, is way more important than any immediate accomplishments.”
An inside look at Figma’s unique GTM motion | Claire Butler (first GTM hire) · Claire Butler
“I think it's really important to become really good at and also known for something. You could be known for shepherding the most complex launches because you're just so good at quarterbacking.”
Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · Jiaona Zhang
“Find something that you can be really, really good at. And the reason I give that advice is because when you do that, you can crush the projects that you get because you're making a name for yourself, reputation, and then you are giving more responsibility.”
Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · Jiaona Zhang
“People tend to flock and give responsibility to the people that are known for being excellent at something.”
Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · Jiaona Zhang
“The way to get promoted is to not want it too badly. It is about you have to focus on the impact. It's about having an impact and then doing what is right for the business. So not sort of optimizing things for your promotion. If you try to maneuver that too much, it becomes visible and it's not a positive signal to the organization.”
Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco) · Shweta Shriva
“If you give me feedback, I'll be like, 'Hey, thank you so much. This is super helpful,' because people are like, 'Oh, he actually likes the feedback.' Now, inside my heart might be melting. I'm like, 'Oh, I thought I got better at this.' But externally, I'm like, 'Hey, thank you,' and I mean it. I think that's the key that most people don't focus on. And if you get more feedback, then you'll just get better at the things.”
Leveraging mentors to uplevel your career | Jules Walter (YouTube, Slack) · Jules Walter
“Getting promoted is way harder if you're not good at telling stories and rallying the team behind a shared goal. You usually achieve this through good storytelling techniques. I would consider it a bit of a career staller if you don't get to a decent level of storytelling and to a decent level of public speaking.”
How to be the best coach to product people | Petra Wille (Strong Product People) · Petra Wille
“What if I called it educating about all the great work your team has been doing? Instead, what if I called it how do I shift the direction on something, or how do I help the business actually succeed when I disagree with somebody about something.”
Building a meaningful career | Jason Shah (Airbnb, Amazon, Microsoft, Alchemy) · Jason Shah
“The workplace is really favoring people who can speak up. It looks like self-promotion. I wouldn't want to do that because it's self-promotion. But instead, what if I called it educating about all the great work your team has been doing?”
How to own your career growth and become a powerful product leader | Deb Liu, Ancestry (ex-Facebook, PayPal) · Deb Liu
“Writing changed the trajectory of my career more than anything else I've done. When you write, you're forced to think clearly. And when you publish, you create a body of work that compounds over time in ways that meetings and presentations never will.”
Brandon Chu on building product at Shopify, how writing changed the trajectory of his career, the habits that make you a great PM, pros and cons of being a platform PM, how Shopify got through Covid · Brandon Chu
“Imposter syndrome never goes away. I felt it when I became a manager, when I became a director, when I became a VP. Each time you think, 'Okay, now I've made it, and the imposter syndrome will stop.' But it doesn't. The trick is to learn to coexist with it.”
Julie Zhuo on accelerating your career, impostor syndrome, writing, building product sense, using intuition vs. data, hiring designers, and moving into management · Julie Zhuo
Cutting Room Floor
Guest insights on this topic that Lenny hasn't (yet) written about in his newsletters. Potential material for future posts.
“One of the highlights is that I think we're coming back this moment where we can actually treat engineers like our peers and put them into really senior leadership roles and not have this kind of baseline assumption of like, 'Oh, we have to coddle them or hide them from the real problems.'”
The engineering mindset | Will Larson (Carta, Stripe, Uber, Calm, Digg) · Will Larson
“Which today we just find it more in the world of more senior developers and less and less in the junior developers.”
The future of AI in software development | Inbal Shani (CPO of GitHub) · Inbal S
“Those are the moments that stretch you and give you a new foundation. So oftentimes you'll hear a career question like, 'Hey, do you feel like you're growing in your role?' And that's a very ambiguous, in my opinion, way to ask this question.”
What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda) · Lane Shackleton
“If you are somebody for whom you want to make an exponential difference, you want to innovate, you want to create new value where there wasn't, you want to have a legendary career where you could look back on your career and go, you know what? I was part of this and that, and I was on this team, now's the greatest time in history. The future needs you.”
How to become a category pirate | Christopher Lochhead (author of Play Bigger, Niche Down, Category Pirates, more) · Christopher Lochhead
“Consistent pressure over time. Taking some of the pressure off of having to do things immediately. You just have to keep working at it, and not giving up. Having that grit to keep going and keep pushing over time, is way more important than any immediate accomplishments.”
An inside look at Figma’s unique GTM motion | Claire Butler (first GTM hire) · Claire Butler
“People tend to flock and give responsibility to the people that are known for being excellent at something.”
Building minimum lovable products, stories from WeWork and Airbnb, and thriving as a PM | Jiaona Zhang (Webflow, WeWork, Airbnb, Dropbox) · Jiaona Zhang
“The way to get promoted is to not want it too badly. It is about you have to focus on the impact. It's about having an impact and then doing what is right for the business. So not sort of optimizing things for your promotion. If you try to maneuver that too much, it becomes visible and it's not a positive signal to the organization.”
Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco) · Shweta Shriva
“Getting promoted is way harder if you're not good at telling stories and rallying the team behind a shared goal. You usually achieve this through good storytelling techniques. I would consider it a bit of a career staller if you don't get to a decent level of storytelling and to a decent level of public speaking.”
How to be the best coach to product people | Petra Wille (Strong Product People) · Petra Wille
“What if I called it educating about all the great work your team has been doing? Instead, what if I called it how do I shift the direction on something, or how do I help the business actually succeed when I disagree with somebody about something.”
Building a meaningful career | Jason Shah (Airbnb, Amazon, Microsoft, Alchemy) · Jason Shah
“The workplace is really favoring people who can speak up. It looks like self-promotion. I wouldn't want to do that because it's self-promotion. But instead, what if I called it educating about all the great work your team has been doing?”
How to own your career growth and become a powerful product leader | Deb Liu, Ancestry (ex-Facebook, PayPal) · Deb Liu
“Writing changed the trajectory of my career more than anything else I've done. When you write, you're forced to think clearly. And when you publish, you create a body of work that compounds over time in ways that meetings and presentations never will.”
Brandon Chu on building product at Shopify, how writing changed the trajectory of his career, the habits that make you a great PM, pros and cons of being a platform PM, how Shopify got through Covid · Brandon Chu
“Imposter syndrome never goes away. I felt it when I became a manager, when I became a director, when I became a VP. Each time you think, 'Okay, now I've made it, and the imposter syndrome will stop.' But it doesn't. The trick is to learn to coexist with it.”
Julie Zhuo on accelerating your career, impostor syndrome, writing, building product sense, using intuition vs. data, hiring designers, and moving into management · Julie Zhuo