Product Manager Career Paths
As product managers, we can have highly flexible career trajectories, since we have both breadth and depth of skills that we can easily transfer into a variety of roles.
But, one of the challenges that we face as product managers is having visibility into all of the available options.
To help you with your career, I’ve pulled together a set of potential career paths for product managers. For each, I’ll describe the responsibilities of the role, and I’ll also share some thoughts on how to best prepare for that particular role.
Manager of Product Managers
The most well-known product management career path is to manage other product managers. The vast majority of product managers move from “product manager” to “director of product”, and then to “VP of product.”
The VP of Product sets the product vision for her team, ensures that product strategy is aligned across the entire company, and coordinates with other executives to accelerate growth.
Since your manager is already a “manager of product managers”, they’ll typically already be grooming you for this particular career trajectory.
To be a successful VP of Product, you’ll need to demonstrate success in delivering compelling products and in enabling junior product managers to grow their skills. On top of that, you’ll need to demonstrate mastery in crafting a long-term product vision and spinning up associated strategies that account for industry trends and competitive action.
Senior Individual Contributor Product Manager (IC PM)
That said, product managers don’t have to become people managers. Many prefer to continue to stay close to the day-to-day thrill of being a product manager, rather than becoming further removed as a people manager. That’s why there’s a dual career track for product managers!
In this path, a product manager might become a senior product manager, then become a principal product manager, and then become a staff product manager. To be clear, you don’t have to manage other product managers to grow in terms of scope, recognition, and compensation.
To jump into this role, let your supervisor know that you’re not quite as interested in managing other people, but that you’d like to take on larger problem scopes. To succeed, you need to demonstrate the ability to handle nuanced problems with lots of moving parts.
Generally speaking, senior IC PM roles are more accessible at larger companies. At small companies, just about every scope is large and fuzzy, which is why most small startups don’t have principal PMs or staff PMs.
Serial Product Organizational Scaler
Some product leaders are quite talented at scaling product organizations from one specific size to another specific size. Some might specialize from growing a small product org to a medium one; others might specialize in growing a medium product org to a large one.
Regardless, as a company scales, these kinds of product people will find that they are no longer passionate about the role at their current company, because the product org is no longer the size that they specialized in. So, they’ll find opportunities elsewhere to scale.
As a serial product organization scaler, one should identify what size of product orgs she has the most interest in scaling, determine when she should leave, and identify organizations that she would like to move to next.
Internal Lateral Shifts
Product managers are also well-positioned to make internal lateral moves. After all, product managers regularly interface with a wide array of stakeholders.
Since a product manager already has internal exposure, one could easily make the internal shift to an area that she personally finds to be more interesting. For example, a product manager could move into corporate strategy, marketing, sales, business development, or operations.
Internal lateral shifts are typically much more straightforward than jumping out of your current company to make a lateral shift elsewhere, because people within your company already know that you know what the company does, who its customers are, and what the product is.
To succeed with a lateral shift, first speak with others who are already tackling the role that you’re most interested in. Learn about what the role entails, and ask them how they typically assess candidates for the role.
Then, map out a roadmap for yourself to close the gap between where you currently are and where you want to go, and interview for that particular position.
General Business Line Manager
Many product managers wind up driving entirely new products or business models, and may mature into becoming general managers, i.e. people who lead entire business lines.
General managers aren’t tasked just with the product, but also with monetization, operational processes, marketing, budgeting, and other responsibilities. A general manager is essentially the CEO of a specific business line.
To be a successful general manager, product managers need to learn to let go of the details of day-to-day product development, and focus even more intensely on using influence and data to shift the priorities of the company and the business line.
Founder and CEO
Because product managers are highly skilled at assessing business ideas and turning them into reality, many product managers launch their own companies and their own products.
For this particular career path, you’ll want to first make sure you have a specific thesis or hypothesis about “what is the value of the company that I want to bring into the world?”
Then, you’ll want to determine how much runway you have in terms of cash, and you’ll want to decide who else you need to join you to make your dream into a reality.
Ideally, you should get these set up before you transition away from full-time product management, since tackling the value proposition question, the cash burn question, and the founding team question can take a lot of time and effort!
Product Management Consultant
Many product managers may decide to take the leap to work for themselves, but they still want to stay heavily involved in core product management. In cases like these, you can become a product manager consultant.
A product consultant has the opportunity to jump into product organizations of varying maturities, sizes, and industries. As a consultant, her goal is to enable them to grow sustainably.
To succeed as a product management consultant, you’ll want to pull together a portfolio that demonstrates your ability to ship products successfully. You may also need to spin up a blog or a podcast, so that others can see the merits of your work before hiring you as a consultant.
Product Management Coach
Another path you can take is to become a full-time product management coach. In this role, you’re no longer directly practicing the craft of product management. Rather, you’re focused on teaching others best practices so that they can succeed on the job.
Why might a product manager decide to become a coach? Well, after a PM gains lots of experience, she might discover that she’s more interested in enabling others to accelerate their growth, rather than focusing on the day-to-day operations of product development.
As a PM coach, you’ll likely be working for yourself, though you might also be part of a dedicated coaching firm with many others like you.
To prepare for a role like this, you’ll want to also pull together a portfolio, but here you’ll want to focus on the people you helped rather than the products you shipped. On top of that, you’ll want to speak for various events and conferences, so that others can see that you know how to teach about product management.
Speaking of coaching: as you look to explore various product management career paths, you might benefit from working with a coach! Our coaching services at Product Teacher have empowered people all over the world to secure their dream jobs.
Venture Capitalist
Another great potential career is to become a venture capitalist, especially in tech. After all, you’ll have the operations chops that come with being a product manager, and you can easily see through a bad pitch based on your years of experience.
For a product manager to succeed in this pivot, she should first establish herself as a credible opinion-maker. After all, venture capitalists primarily function by influencing and solidifying opinions on how viable a market is, how attractive an investment is, and how good of a bet a product is.
You’ll also want to start networking with current venture capitalists, so that you can understand the day-to-day role and identify any gaps you have in skill sets. You’ll also want to write up some teardowns of various potential investments and publish these online, so that people can see how you think about making investments.
Entrepreneur-in-Residence
Similar to venture capitalists, entrepreneurs-in-residence (EIR) can make or break companies. An entrepreneur-in-residence is a role within a venture capital firm, where they’ll identify and lead a new company that the venture capital firm will then invest in.
It helps to have deep experiences in shipping totally new products in totally new industries from scratch, since that’s what you’ll be doing as an EIR. You likely won’t be focused on huge companies at massive scale; rather, you’ll be building a company from the ground up.
To succeed as an EIR, you’ll also need to start networking with venture capitalists. But, instead of looking for their ideal VC candidate, you’ll want to demonstrate that you know how to identify and create winning products for portfolio companies.
You’ll want to write up some theses of products to build as well as pitfalls to avoid, so that others can see how you vet market opportunities.
Advisory Board Member
Product managers can also be effective advisory board members. Many CEOs create an advisory board to provide them with cross-industry and cross-functional perspectives, while also positioning themselves for strong networking and partnership opportunities.
Advisory board members typically receive equity in return for their contributions to the organization. Board members can sit on multiple advisory boards at the same time, since the time commitment is relatively low for any single position.
To position yourself well for roles like these, consider networking with early-stage CEOs, who are more likely to need advisory board members. Give them genuine advice that they find insightful, and if they’re eager to learn more from you, ask whether they’d like you to serve as an advisory board member for them.
Summary
Product managers have many paths to success, and not all of them have to be related to product!
To ensure your long-term happiness and success, be sure to start identifying which career end point you want to aim towards. Then, start laying the foundation to make a successful transition.
