I’ve been unemployed now for a year, and after submitting over 900 applications, one thing has become clear: Management is more competitive than ever, and it’s only going to get worse.
What’s going on
I’ve been confident in my ability to lead teams and projects, but the issue I have is the lack of experience in years. As a result, I’m usually the first person to get cut in any stack of Product Management CVs, despite being extremely versatile in my skillset and obsessive about the industries I work in.
But when top companies like Salesforce, Amazon, Google, Meta, etc. are all reporting stable performance while they continue to cut middle management, suddenly a lot of “perceived” talent is out on the job market.
I say perceived because while I know many people at these conglomerates, I’ve come to realize that there are so many individuals who are essentially paycheck stealers, doing very little and rarely committing 40 hours to the company they used to work for. But, nonetheless, they made it into these companies, so clearly they have something going for them.
But with this newfound reality, a young product manager hungry to prove himself but unable to do so, I’ve come to realize that there’s an important step I need to take in my career. That step is a step back.
Stepping back
I’m jumping back into the development pool. As a result, I needed to retrain and do a lot of catching up on the industry from whence I came, and boy oh boy has the tech industry grown significantly.
The demands from employers in terms of deliverables are higher than ever, and even Frontend Developers (my trade) are now needing to learn much more than just componentization. From Microfrontends, to DevOps techniques, to AI modelling, to Integration Development, there’s so many new skills I’ve been needing to learn over the last 6 months since my last post.
So why am I okay with this? Well, to be honest, it’s a necessary sacrifice. I need to step up and prove myself again, and see this as a temporary setback. Some people are lucky to have the ability to continue a blossoming role in a different firm, but 900 applications in and I’ve come to accept that I’m not one of those. So, I need to fight my way back up, from the inside.
The Step Forward Will Come
Once I find a company that will take me in, I believe firmly that there is a path for me back to where I was, the job I found my calling in. For now, I need to bite the bullet, get busy with projects again, demonstrate leadership skills, and passively explore projects outside of work. It’s going to be a hard few years, but only this way will I be able to make the step to middle management happen again.
What better way to make middle management than to prove that you can do both jobs, as a Product Manager AND as a Software Engineer.
The beauty lies in flexibility.
I’ve long prospered off of having an extremely diverse skillset, from music and video production, to software engineering, to construction, gardening and culinary… there isn’t a skill I haven’t been wanting to give a shot out there yet. As a result, I know eventually once the step up becomes available I can give more than just features that customers want. I can give them actual solutions.
Taking A Break Is Healthy
Sometimes, taking a break from it all is important to move forward. In my absence in the workforce for a year now I’ve come to learn a lot of very important things about how I used to view management and development, and I’m coming into a potential next job much more refreshed and ready to rumble.
For starters, I always thought that being critical is a good thing. I’ve come now to learn that alignment is much more important than being a healthy critic. This doesn’t mean becoming a “yes man”, but it does mean trusting the judgment call made by others in your position, and creating bonds and alliances that will lead to new initiatives down the line.
Additionally, getting back into development has reignited my passion for making products. I can’t wait to pick up the next feature or bug ticket, and solve meaningful problems that customers want in a way that best serves them and the business.
Sometimes, for a bit of perspective, you need to take two steps back before you take a new step forward, even if it is to go back to where you were before.