 Welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining our panel discussion about career growth in large organization hosted by Product School. I'm Neha Kanju, Director of Product Management at LogicSport, work extensively in large organizations like Accenture, Cisco and Zoom. And I'm here with my awesome team to discuss this, you know, very important topic, especially in the product management area about how do you grow in a large organization in the product world and in the product management field. So, you know, without further, you know, wait, I would love to introduce you to our panel panelists for today. So starting with you, Bas. That was good. Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining the live stream. My name is Bas from Spotify, I'm based in Washington DC and excited about the opportunity to discuss this with everyone else. I'll pass it to my colleagues. I think Shahid is next. Hi, everyone. Likewise, great to meet everyone. My name is Shahid, I'm a Group Product Manager at Google. I've been in Google about 11 years through a lot of phases of growth based here in the Bay Area and looking forward to your questions. I'll pass it over to you. Yeah, thanks. I'm Iway. I'm a Senior Group Product Manager in Chelsea Takeaway and then before that I was working at Booking.com for six years. I'm based in Amsterdam originally from China and really looking forward to the discussion today. Thanks. I'll pass it back to you, Nihar. Great. Thank you so much. You can see we have extensive knowledge and expertise today with us, you know, joining from Bay Area, Washington DC and Europe. So, you know, we'll have probably covered all the areas, mostly all of them today are representing. So, you know, without further delay, let me, you know, kind of jump into some of the questions, you know, that can really kick us start with, you know, this topic. I think the first thing that, you know, I would love to get some important feedback from our team is, you know, what do you think are the specific skills that have been crucial, you know, especially to the success in, you know, in the product management career in these large organizations that you have work like what would you attribute to best you want to start. Sure. Happy to take an attempt. I'll pass it to my colleagues if they want to add something or compliment it. I would say I see product management like a role where it's you're being an entrepreneur within the business itself. So it requires a lot of soft skills and hard skills and to be more specific, I would say, adaptability and agility in general, because you need to be in a place where you have strong communication skills from a strategic point of view. You need to be a good problem solver. You need to be good at influencing and managing people without authority when you're working with cross functional teams. You need to be able to make decisions that are based on data. So we have to be a data driven person as well. Amongst a few skills that requires a lot of leadership. So in a nutshell, I would say to keep it simple from a product management point of view if you're someone that has ease with the technical side of things and can convert and translate things to business, you can be the glue or the bridge between a lot of different teams and fields and that way it facilitates the drive of the product management strategy itself, the roadmap and being able to stay aligned with the vision of the company itself but also being able to speak the language of the engineering teams, the marketing teams and everyone else that would be involved. So in a nutshell, I would stop there. I'm a nerd so I would talk about that for hours but I'll pass it to my colleagues if they want to add anything. Go ahead. Yeah, I can go next. I think I totally agree with Beth already said I think if I want to choose one, you know, top one skill. I would choose basic stakeholder management and the large organization as a context because a large, you know, large means basically big, big means so many people so many departments and so many dependencies. That means for you as a PM, if you want to get anything done then you need to basically engage with so many stakeholders and to onboard people with a shared vision vision strategy. So that's why I think if I choose one then this specific skill set is in particularly important under a large organization context. Thank you for that Shai. Do you want to add something? Sure. I'll kind of have my take on this but you know very supportive of what's been said. So the way I think about it is for large organizations as a PM, you're going to be owning a piece of this. And the important thing is to show mastery in that area that you have ownership over and I'm choosing my words carefully there. So I'm going to highlight three skills that I think roll up to that the first is carefully reporting upwards what you're doing so making sure that there is an understanding of what it is that you're working on. Whether that's regular updates, whether it's specific updates just a tactical thing that needs to be like the box needs to be checked. Secondly, as you mentioned keeping the team aligned. So the narrative that everyone has about this area that you have ownership on needs to be aligned. Everyone needs to say the same thing about what's going on and why. And then third, leading from the front to make sure that you as a PM are the face of this effort. That's back showing mastery can't just do it have to show it in a large organization because without that, you know that the part will get lost. So those are the three things I'll mention mastery in the specific area. Thanks for sharing that like, you know, totally agree with all of you. You know, I think one of the key aspects that you know everyone shared was, you know, definitely like having a good domain expertise on you know what you are kind of working on that particular feature or that product pillar you are leading and stakeholder management. I know you did talk a lot about it. I think that's very crucial to you know a few things from my side. I felt like I could add was other than all what you said, which is all all I could feel, you know, with my past journey, you know, I've gone through all of them is also like where the product is that you're, you know, at the maturity life cycle of, you know, that organization. Sometimes, you know, for bigger organizations, you know your product is probably already mature. And sometimes you're working, you know, you're starting a product so you're, you know, it's at a different stage of maturity but I think irrespective of where it is, you know, it becomes very difficult. If your product is very mature at a good maturity level, then, you know, there are different ways of monetization revenue, you know, how do you actually show the value of that product more. How do you compete the existing market if it is brand new then you're testing the market and it's totally different experience and you know both of those factors are there in big organization. But like in terms of the skills that, you know, having that mastery and aligning with what is the bigger goal of company really goes a long, long way. You know, I was very curious to, you know, ask this question and get your feedback because I think I've had mixed reviews or comments about it. What do you think like is promotion, you know, in these large organizations, you know, as you go up the ladder, you know, is that a very crucial aspect of, you know, growth in the large organization and if you think that promotion is then, you know, please share why do you think that I'm very curious to know and understand from all of you guys. Shahid, I'm going to start from you. Yeah, thank you. I would say that what people see as career growth is probably pretty personal for them and so different people will have different answers to it. But I'd also say that as well as the factor of what an individual wants is the factor of what works in the org. Some orgs will work really well for growths, like we want to see the numbers and some orgs will work really well for, you know, the titles or the team size. So it depends on those two factors. But some things to keep in mind, some things that individuals might have as their perspective could be that you want to learn. And you want to accelerate your learning as you go through your career. It could be that you want to work in a particular area or a product that matters to you like AI or AI, for example. It could be working with the people or on the product that you want. And then you don't worry about promotions like all of that comes later. You just focus on the things that mean something to you. And I think that takes a degree of self-reflection and some time to consider for us as not just PMs, but as people like what really matters to us. Some people do focus on promo itself though. I don't want to discount that. And there are some orgs where that matters because everything's tied to promo like comp, your ability to manage. If those things are things that you personally are important to you, then that's okay. And some orgs really do work like that. And then it's just a question, it's a fairly tactical thing. What are the performance review criteria? How can we hit those review criteria? How can we check those boxes when it comes to promo time and build the case with other senior leads within the team so that they feel the same way that you do a new manager does. So it's pretty dependent on the people and the organization. But those are a couple of aspects to think about. Yeah, thanks, Shai, for that. Vast, do you want to share your perspective? Sure, yeah. First off, I definitely agree with what Shai said. It makes a lot of sense and all of it resonates with me. If I may add a few thoughts there, it's something that you said already. But when it comes to promotion or growth in your career path, it's a personal thing. Everyone follows something different. It depends on what, full-filling of the most and what brings a sense of gratification for you. Some people value the status, the title, seniority, hierarchy, having more responsibility, more reports and all that. Other people would value more staying relevant in their career, as in having opportunities to learn and grow and have bigger projects and more responsibilities, more learning, more development, more training as they go. Other people would be looking at it from a compensation point of view. We're all human at the end of the day. We're doing the job to create a lifestyle for ourselves and our loved ones that makes us comfortable. At the end of the day, we all need certain minimums to have the life that we hope for and work for. Personally, when it comes to large organizations, I value the quality and the culture that I'm evolving in much more than anything else. When it comes to the culture that touches on what Shade mentioned as well, in terms of depending on the orgs, certain things can be different, whether if it's the numbers, the sales, the growth, depending on the life cycle of that product, like you mentioned earlier, as well. To wrap it up, I would say, yes, there's different ways of looking at compensations or promotions. However, it really depends on what you vocalize and what you communicate. There are certain things that you can influence as you have those conversations with your leadership, as you discuss your contract or your deal, as you start that role. And as you go through those reviews annually or every quarter or six months, they keep things in a healthy, satisfying place for you. However, there is an extent to that. Obviously, you cannot change the whole culture or influence how things are within that company just for your own preference. So, finding that alignment between the culture, the boss that you refer to, and the team that you work in can contribute to your well-being and happiness in there. And if you're happy within that environment, you might value that a lot more than looking into being promoted every year or every two years. That's my two cents about it. I can pass along if there's any other thoughts that anyone wants to add. Yeah, I can add some of my thoughts as well. Definitely big plus one of what both of you mentioned about this is quite personal. And actually, promotion is also, I think, the most default path in terms of cool rules. But I do want to use this opportunity to read some awareness around the focus around the horizontal growth as well. Because the growth is not only about climbing the ladders vertically. It's also about, I think, both of you just touched on as well around how you can learn on your job. Perhaps, okay, then you stay in the same level as a product manager. But then, let's say, for one year or two, you manage a product war. Let's say, technical oriented, very back and driven. Then you can learn a lot of skill sets around technical side. And then perhaps you want to switch into a more commercial oriented products, either facing customers or facing the to be business. In such a way, you learn more on the user behavior, you know, business model, etc. So I think basically to have certain awareness on goals, especially in a large organization is not only about promotion is very important. I would say that use the large organization as a platform, you know, to basically are, you know, broaden your horizon within the limit of years. And then to make sure that the car skill and also you need to solve the skills are kind of like the muscles to build a role can be as strong as possible. I think that approach, even if perhaps you're not getting promoted as fast as you would wish. But actually that perhaps going to support you in the longer term that you can have a exponential growth. Let's say what I could if you want. So that would be my two cents around this topic. Yeah, totally agree with all of you. Thanks for sharing that. I've been always curious to know where, you know, promotion stands in the product management ladder. You know, if there are any audience, you know, watching this, if they want to put their comments or, you know, ask questions, please feel free to, you know, kind of ask any questions and you know, our team would be very, very happy to answer those or answer them later. But I just wanted to kind of give heads up to our audience. You know, this actually brings me, I was thinking that this conversation actually really brings me to another topic, which is very close to what we have been discussing and specific to our large organizations, right? What do you think are the, you know, in your experience on your journey, were there any particular cultural factors that could really, you know, make a shift in, you know, in your journey in terms of growth in your organization. You know, just kind of thinking specific to our larger organizations, any differentiator in culture factor versus midsize or small that can help to, you know, grow. This time I won't pick anyone. I think, you know, team feel free, please do, you know, just share. I can jump in and break the ice and give it an attempt. All I ask is spontaneously out of personal experiences and things have been through my career. When it comes to cultural factors, there's a lot that comes into it and that's what people relate to the most on a personal level. I would start from the bigger picture and try to narrow it down to some specific aspects. On the bigger picture side of things, I honestly start from the global versus local culture. If it's a global company or if it's like a company, a country specific company. If you are working within a space, personally, I've worked in a few different places in Canada and US and Europe as well. So I had the chance to be exposed to a couple of different like country specific cultures and then some global ones. The factors that would influence how things work is, for instance, if you look at the French system, hierarchy is quite different from how hierarchy is in Canada or in the US. So understanding how the career path and the development through it works will influence how you can go about it and how you can manage your expectations and how you can dictate what means success to you or growth or progress. So that's like from a big picture point of view. Obviously places like Spotify, Google and Big Tech in general tends to be global. So there is diversity culturally. There's a lot of things that can happen within every other call at work. Well, you can have people from all over the planet and being mindful of that and it was how you go about it. But the company will have the middle line of things like the little spy that would say or the little middle thing that we all agree on, which would be the company values, the norms, the culture that that company supports and also the risk a version of the company. If the company of encourage, you know, trying fast, failing fast and picking up and do something else that's that creates a certain environments and if the company is more of like secretive, everything has to be quite controlling contained for their compliance reasons for legal reasons. That's a whole different reality. So that impacts the kind of environment that you can find. And also the nature of the founders and how that company started as a startup will influence the kind of company that will be if it's engineering based. The leadership will think more from the engineering perspective if it's marketing based, it'll be bad and product based and etc. So if you happen to have a fit in terms of personality soft skills and hard skills with those core values, the culture of the company, then you will you'll be able to navigate the structure in the Oregon and an environment that feels natural for you. And if not, you might face some challenges. So being able to reflect on that big picture before even diving into your personal case can help you see if there's potential if you grow in there, or you're maybe not looking at the right place or you're not in the right environment for you kind of thing. But I'll stop there to leave some room for my colleagues to add something. I think Bouncy really gave a kind of like an umbrella level answer. But I think you mentioned one thing I want to basically deep dive with it based on my experience, which is sort of like, I think you mentioned like some type of culture, let's say, celebrate, you know, the risk taker or kind of innovation. I think the good example I experienced so far is at booking.com. I vividly remember that moment. There is sort of like million level. Don't quote me, by the way, guys. I don't remember that number correctly, but seriously, big number reserved kind of like for the cost of outage. So me that's that moment. I think the company, especially I think back then 2015 2016, when I just joined the company was a big surprise to me. I'm like, you reserve this money and then from the leadership perspective, they were like, okay, let's use this money. Please feel free to do whatever innovation you want. Feel free to take the risk. Let's innovate fast. And I think personally, I am kind of like really a big fan of that approach. I'm not saying that every company should kind of like reserve a big chunk of money for that. But I think sort of like a culture that's empower people to innovate basically to take risk. I think it's very important to be able to eventually become an industry leader. So yeah, that is something that I want to kind of like share. I'll maybe add just a couple of thoughts on there. Large organizations. So large organizations, it's a big ship and you're one piece of a big puzzle. So tactically, we need to be able to ladder up appropriately to the core mission of the organization ideally all the way up. But like, at least to your larger organization and theirs. Secondly, touching on what I mentioned before, visibility matters in the area that you want to grow into, whether it's you want to grow into leadership, then that's the area where you need visibility. If it's another parallel team you want to grow into, that's an area where you need visibility. And you have to work for it. It's not going to come automatically. At least we should not assume that it's going to come automatically. That's a really easy path to just be ignored. But one thing which I want to mention is actually two more aspects I want to mention, which is company culture varies a lot from org to org. I'll give some specific examples here. Again, don't quote me, but nonetheless, orgs like Amazon or Apple top down. And the goal is take orders and execute. And it's efficient. It works for them. And organizations like Google, we've traditionally been more bottom up. We try to build the solution ourselves. One of my very old collaborators, he's a PM that I used to work with. He described this as like the slime mold problem. If you've ever heard of that, please Google it if you haven't. But it's talking through in detail like the idea of a coordination headwind. The short version of this is that if you need to work with a bunch of cross functional team members to get something executed, everybody needs to be aligned on the fact that this project needs to happen. And they need to have the time to do it. And the larger the org is, the more people you need to work with, the less likely that is to happen. So even if there's someone you know really well, even if there's someone that is in an org where they have a joint goal, they're always going to have slightly different incentives than yours. So that's hard. There's no easy solution to that problem. The only word of comfort that I'll add is solving it means you've turned a really big shit. And the impact you can have. If you're able to do that in a large org can be orders of magnitude greater than any smaller org. So very hard problem, but big work. Thanks for that. And thank you. And I say like really, really great points. You know, I think it's very important before you kind of look into which company you want to go, you should actually look into the cultural aspect because, you know, there's some companies as child was also mentioning. Very execution focus. There are certain companies who, you know, do strategy execution both up there and I think based on what your expertise or what your, you know, kind of strength is you can really excel or struggle either way in these larger organization to kind of make it or break it. So yeah, I think, you know, I was very curious, you know, this is going to be our last question but I was very curious we have, you know, so many so much awesome experience I wanted to ask this question to the team and kind of, if you want to like, you know, reflect back on your journey from where you started to today, you know, what were the, like, you know, very kind of crucial decisions you took that could actually, you know, shift or move the needle in your growth path from where you are where you were from now to where you are like, you know, if you can share a few examples that would be great. So, you know, for all of us and the listeners. Yeah, I can go first this time. Yeah, I think I would say the action I take is to change, let's say perhaps the wrong mindset I can, I can take a deep dive of it. So I used to have a mindset. Because of my culture, right? So I feel like everything I need to do in the implicit way, for example, if, if I know I want to get promoted, then I wouldn't basically be explicit, let's say to my manager or to my peers, etc. I would just feel like, oh, let me just do the hard work, let me do the good work. Then I would come to me say, hey, let's promote you. So right now I've been working basically in, in this environment, international environment for almost 10 years, and then I think the second half, you know, of my career journey, I realized that I need to change my mindset in a way into a mind model that's always be clear to yourself, always be honest to yourself, and be explicit to the decision makers as well. So then indeed, I think that helped my career progression since I changed this mindset. Because then I can tell my manager say, hey, you know what, I want to grow to the next level, I want to grow as a people manager, then I need your help to help me to develop a plan, give me opportunity to kind of like practice all these skills. And they finally helped me to get there. And also luckily I got a good manager as well. So I think this whole experience, especially in my career organization, just a takeaway helped me to reflect, hey, this is the right way. So last story short, I think, yeah, I want to advise everyone, especially women in tech, perhaps women in tech have some common problems. I don't know whether it's imposter syndrome or whatever. So just be vocal, be explicit, and then push forward of your criticals. So that is basically my, my two cents. Thank you for sharing that. I'll maybe jump in next if that's okay. So I find it hard to identify a particular decision or action in my case. So instead, I'll kind of share maybe a philosophy that's powered some changes and illustrate those changes. That is the idea of making intentional choices and not to allow circumstance to dictate whatever happens next. I'm a big believer in the idea that we as people have agency and can make whatever choice that whatever choice we want to get the outcomes that we that we want. So in my case, before I moved to the United States, I was working in the UK in a marketing organization, but I wanted to get back to tech. So I quit, came to the US to do an MBA to convert my career to a different type of career, and then moved to the Bay Area and started in a startup here. And that was took two years, but it worked. And when I was at Google, I started in a marketing role. I've made it to tech, but we're still in marketing. And I wanted to get closer to technology. So I was able to convince various people internally to have me move from a marketing to a product manager role. It took a year and a half, but it worked. And from step to step, from one of my other roles, I started getting a sense that I was getting a little too comfortable and my learning was tailing off. And learning for me is the thing that matters in my career growth. So I moved. Nothing else was wrong. I was doing great. The product was doing great, but it wasn't ticking the box that was important to me. So it took time to resettle, but it worked. So having that core philosophy has helped move me from step to step in my career. And if that's an idea that is helpful for folk on the call as well, that would be great. I don't know if we have a second I can go in and add a quick thought as well. I have a few things in mind. I'll try to be brief. I resonate and relate to what I heard from both of my colleagues as well. I had a quick bit stop as well for software engineering in the UK and my career and moved to Canada after that for work. And one of the things that made that little career turn for me is after working as an engineer for a few years, I saw a lack of use of my skills or in some way I wasn't in a 100% fit because I had some strong communication skills and some soft skills on that. And I wasn't leveraging as much in my engineering career. I ended up doing a similar thing where I've done an MBA in Canada. And that was one of the things that actually got me to shift quickly. And one of the challenges that I had is I was quite young. I was in my early 20s with my MBA starting into management roles, which was quite challenging at the beginning to be taken seriously and all these kind of things. So at the beginning it was a little bit intimidating. I was trying to grow beard and look older and all these kind of things, but still there. It's not making much of a difference. But the main thing is, I would say, or I recommend is to not be afraid to go after what speaks to you the most. I also am driven by learning and growing. I'm very curious. I always want to absorb new information and all that. So I always try to keep on doing some new training for whatever that was interested in. Like right now the trend is machine learning and all that. It could be something different in five years. It was different a few years ago. So as long as you follow your interest in your passion and you stay relevant and you train yourself, that will lead to opportunities and to growth that will happen organically and spontaneously instead of you having to force things. And the last thing that I would like to add from a large perspective, a large organization perspective that's one of my former bosses or recent bosses had opened my eyes to us. I had multiple opportunities where I took the carriage and applied for roles that were way ahead of where I am in my career sometimes just because I thought that I have the skills but probably not the experience. And from the most part I didn't work, but then I ended up landing roles that was I was personally surprised that I've got them and I did a good job at them and delivered and had the right numbers and everything and they helped me in my career. But never, never be too afraid to go after something that even though you don't have 100% of what it takes, if you think it's something you're interested in catching up and learning and getting like filling that gap will happen quickly because you want you and the motivation will be coming from you. And the last little touch I'm meaning for a large organization is the communication side of things. I think Shai touched on it earlier. If you're a product manager, you're by default someone that has a fit for it and you're a good communicator, you're someone that can influence, you're someone that people would love to listen to, follow, you're someone that practice what they preach, you're someone that leads by example and all that. So all these things are easy to do in person, easy to do in a small room of people. Large organization, you're talking about hundreds and thousands of people and you're trying to influence. So if you don't have it naturally is to work on leveraging what you do in person through writing, through presentations, through reports, through how you report information to the top and to the bottom and to the stakeholders and to the clients, whether if it's B2B or B2C. If you develop that skill of being to leverage the same touch that you have, your charisma, your personality, the way you communicate through text, that's something that can get you places and that can propel your career exponentially. And it's something that I had some feedback for a few years ago and it was very helpful in my career. So I will finish on that note. Thank you so much. Shahid and Evee, I think it's such a great, you know, great to know each one of your journey and like if I can conclude or forward to share, you know, these three words comes in my mind is perseverance, you know, continuing having patients moving forward, perseverance, determination to not give up and courage to move forward. And I think, you know, with your experiences, you're displayed that you were, you know, really not being afraid and, you know, having courageous, taking courageous action, shifting careers, going to schools, you know, learning and not kind of giving up. So thank you so much for, you know, sharing your stories. This also concludes, you know, our today's panel discussion. And, you know, we all of you, all of you thank you so much again and we really hope our audience enjoyed this discussion. Thank you so much everyone. Thank you.