Happy Monday blind, I need some advice. I went to a top canadian business school for my undergrad and I’m currently working in agile product development as a business analyst (APM essentially) at a large company. TC: 60k How do I make the move into a higher paying role? Do I go back to school for SE, do I stay in the PM track, should I try recruiting for a bay area job? Anyone been in the same boat before? #businessanalyst #productmanagement #tc #compensation #toronto #bayarea
Leetcode University
Your choices are to impress your management, learn some LC skills, or network to more responsibility. Top undergrad business schools are only top in the sense that top investment banking and consulting firms will recruit there. Real business school is the school of life and MBA networking (emphasis on networking).
Stay in the PM track, move towards consumer facing products that are profitable with high margins.
Ignore the people who tell you to get a CS degree or leetcode. You can do a fairly good business career in tech, without writing a single line of code. Your best bets are to get a: - Non-tech Prod Mgmt position at Amazon - they love MBAs and although your salary won't be as high as for tech PMs, it will definitely be higher than current; you can build your skill set and then move to other tech - Marketing position at big tech - for example, MSFT pays reasonably well for these (probably double or triple of your current salary) - Strategy position at big tech - not sure if they have entry-level roles though - VC position
Thanks for the in depth response. I’m looking at getting my MBA, any program or schools that are good targets? I’ve also applied to a few strategy roles, but haven’t had any luck in hearing back. What can I do to improve my odds?
Apologies, I misread that you already have an MBA. You can do options #1 and #2 without an MBA. For #3 and #4 you need an MBA. I'm not a fan of MBAs, but you can't go wrong with top 5. If you want to do #1 or #2, you can increase your chances by immersing more in tech. You don't need to learn actual coding, but you should know the basics of CS, programming, data, and how tech products work and succeed. Participate in hackathons and events, team up with technical folks to work on projects.
Contribute more to the product in your current role and start pushing ideas like a PM would. Try to transition to PM internally. That will make it easier to get PM roles outside.
You don’t have to be in a tech company to have a tech-related business career. If dollars are important to you, go join an investment bank and try to get assigned to tech deals. Or play the long game and do consulting with an eye towards CXO roles in 10 years.
I dont know if a CS degree is needed, but you either need very strong technical skills (not just an MBA, they are a dime a dozen) that will allow you to transfer your abilities to different companies (job hop to increase your comp) or become a subject matter expert that makes you less dispensable. The latter requires some luck (that everything aligns well) The former is more in your control.
Take some udemy courses on relevant technical skills thats relevant to your industry & job and learn how to apply what you learned to your role at work to work on new projects and skill build that way. In addition,start to understand office politics & building strategic relationships with people that are doing the work you want to do that pays more & lastly do some informational interviews to gather relevant info!
Come to Bell, TC is $75k for BA role
What would be the best way to do this? Going back to undergrad and doing another bachelors?
You could do one of those online bachelors, have them count as many classes as possible. Doing one of those online bootcamps is usually a waste of money. Learn the basics, that’s what interviews are all about. If you try to shortcut it, it will take you longer in the end.