Thank you Blind PMs for changing my life & happiness

New
Jomen

New

Jomen
Jan 16, 2021 13 Comments

For the past 8 months, I was working as a SWE at an incredibly toxic startup. My manager was some ex-HR lead from Accenture who doesn't actually know how to code and studied psych in school. Despite not understanding the complexity of the projects I was working on, he would constantly berate me for missing his arbitrary deadlines. I was constantly miserable and borderline suicidal as I felt like nothing I did was good enough. I joined this startup as I was told I would be able to switch to a PM role once I helped build a few things to work through our backlog as the SWE team was extremely understaffed. Within a few months, it become clear there was no actual intention to ever let me switch into a product role.

I've known for a while I wanted to move into product management but was struggling to get interviews without prior PM experience. I was so desperate that I actually almost paid $5k for Product School. But thanks to Blind, I was able to find kind strangers who mentored me, referred me, and showed me interview prep resources that cost a fraction of what Product School does and are probably much better. I am extremely excited to announce I just landed a PM offer at Twitter that pays $115k more than my toxic SWE job and can't wait to tell my manager I'm quitting Monday. Thank you so much Blind for helping me in this journey!!

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TOP 13 Comments
  • Congrats, I am kinda of in same situation. I was looking at product school and other places they offer pm courses. Can you please share those leads with. πŸ™πŸ™
    Jan 16, 2021 1
    • New
      Jomen

      New

      Jomen
      OP
      Yeah, happy to share. So I talked to a lot of PMs and essentially learned that no companies really care if you did Product School. Having that on your resume doesn't open doors. It used to be that attending Product School opened up some networking opportunities with PMs who could in theory refer you but that has greatly diminished as their classes moved online.

      In terms of prepping, read Cracking the PM Interview if you haven't already to get a general lay of the land and understanding of what sort of questions to expect. The book is dated but still helpful.

      The resource that a lot of PMs recommended and was the most helpful for me personally was the Product Alliance courses. There are three courses: one which helps you better package yourself with resume templates and referral strategies if you don't have existing connections, one which teaches you how to answer just about any interview question, and then one course which gives you company specific study guides and most asked questions for the top 20 companies. Two of the questions I got asked were listed on their Twitter Questions You are Most Likely to Get Asked 2021 doc.

      If you are looking for mock interview partners, check out Lewis Lin and Product School's Slack communities (both free to join). If you are looking for a PM from a specific company you are interviewing with to mock interview you, IGotAnOffer offers the best rate on quality coaches.

      Those are pretty much all the resources I used. Let me know if you have any other questions not covered above. Happy to give back to the Blind community that has helped me so much :)
      Jan 16, 2021
  • Facebook / Product
    NestrCoyn

    Go to company page Facebook Product

    PRE
    Google
    NestrCoyn
    Wholesome. Go get em' at Twitter.
    Jan 16, 2021 1
    • New
      Jomen

      New

      Jomen
      OP
      Thanks!
      Jan 16, 2021
  • Uber
    princeZ

    Go to company page Uber

    princeZ
    Monday is a holiday. Ought to wait till Tuesday.
    Jan 16, 2021 0
  • Amazon
    madmusafir

    Go to company page Amazon

    madmusafir
    OP, as an swe, how did you first of all get their attention without prior PM experience? Also, how did you answer background questions, questions about challenges faced in the past with a PM perspective if you did not have prior pm experience?
    Jan 16, 2021 1
    • New
      Jomen

      New

      Jomen
      OP
      Great question, so one of the challenges at my startup was that it was extremely understaffed with one PM for 14 engineers. So senior engineers like myself got a lot of freedom in making product decisions which I was able to talk about in my interviews and highlight in my resume. The Product Alliance course on Breaking into Product was super helpful in helping me re-write my resume to be much more product centric. The mistake I was making before I started landing PM interviews was I was using my old SWE resume. Huge mistake lol
      Jan 17, 2021
  • Twitter
    plopplop

    Go to company page Twitter

    plopplop
    I'll do the standard 'Welcome to the Flock!' here
    Jan 16, 2021 0