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> I saw the game for what it was early and got out of engineering before I hit 30. What did you jump into afterward?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
exelius 12y ago
I went and got an MBA and jumped into consulting. Because I worked for a number of startups before that, my niche started out being helping big companies foster innovation internally. At this point, I'm more on the marketing/product side of the equation, which is extremely interesting in my mind. You really need a tech background to do product for anything but retail goods these days anyway; and in the media products space I work in, it's almost mandatory. Net result is I took on a bunch of debt to go back to school but my salary is much higher now and I have a lot more control over my destiny. I don't regret it for a second.
- porker 12y ago
  > I'm more on the marketing/product side of the equation, which is extremely interesting in my mind. You really need a tech background to do product for In this context, what would you define as 'product'? I'm curious as I hear it mentioned and it sounds fun, but conjours up mental images of inventing the next Gilette razor.
  - exelius 12y ago
    It can be :) What you're talking about is the typical CPG (consumer packaged goods) model: a product manager would be responsible for selling that product, identifying a market, etc. The work isn't really all that different, but CPGs don't usually require much deep knowledge. IMO, product in tech companies is a much more exciting role because you get your hands dirty with creating the product. Let's say I'm the product manager for Facebook's News Feed. I would work with designers, developers and marketing folks to determine the features of the product. For example, I could say "Hmm, let's show more ads to people between the ages of 18 and 29 than we show to people between 13 and 18". We would test the hypothesis either through focus groups or A/B testing and determine if users are like/hate/neutral on it, and if they're like/neutral and it provides more money, it's now a feature in the mainline product. The role is slightly different at different companies (product managers at Google are expected to write a little code and lead engineering teams, for example) but the core tenet of the job is answering the question of "What should the product be?" Product management is the central role at any startup for the first few years. A good product manager is worth their weight in gold. A great product manager can make you billions. For me, it's the perfect mix of creative, technical and business disciplines. You have to have the vision to see what the product can be, the technical chops to know how to get it done, and the business sense to know what levers you should be pulling at any given time.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

I went and got an MBA and jumped into consulting. Because I worked for a number of startups before that, my niche started out being helping big companies foster innovation internally. At this point, I'm more on the marketing/product side of the equation, which is extremely interesting in my mind. You really need a tech background to do product for anything but retail goods these days anyway; and in the media products space I work in, it's almost mandatory. Net result is I took on a bunch of debt to go back to school but my salary is much higher now and I have a lot more control over my destiny. I don't regret it for a second.

porker 12y ago
> I'm more on the marketing/product side of the equation, which is extremely interesting in my mind. You really need a tech background to do product for In this context, what would you define as 'product'? I'm curious as I hear it mentioned and it sounds fun, but conjours up mental images of inventing the next Gilette razor.
- exelius 12y ago
  It can be :) What you're talking about is the typical CPG (consumer packaged goods) model: a product manager would be responsible for selling that product, identifying a market, etc. The work isn't really all that different, but CPGs don't usually require much deep knowledge. IMO, product in tech companies is a much more exciting role because you get your hands dirty with creating the product. Let's say I'm the product manager for Facebook's News Feed. I would work with designers, developers and marketing folks to determine the features of the product. For example, I could say "Hmm, let's show more ads to people between the ages of 18 and 29 than we show to people between 13 and 18". We would test the hypothesis either through focus groups or A/B testing and determine if users are like/hate/neutral on it, and if they're like/neutral and it provides more money, it's now a feature in the mainline product. The role is slightly different at different companies (product managers at Google are expected to write a little code and lead engineering teams, for example) but the core tenet of the job is answering the question of "What should the product be?" Product management is the central role at any startup for the first few years. A good product manager is worth their weight in gold. A great product manager can make you billions. For me, it's the perfect mix of creative, technical and business disciplines. You have to have the vision to see what the product can be, the technical chops to know how to get it done, and the business sense to know what levers you should be pulling at any given time.