 Whenever you start a new career, you're probably thinking about what exact career paths you're gonna be so that you know it's product management going to have the unlimited upside potential or there is a glass ceiling. Or maybe you're currently stuck in your current role as a product manager and really lose passion thinking about maybe you should make a change or you need a new strategy to accelerate your career. In this video, I'm gonna share with you six different kind of product management career paths for you to choose from and use the spit framework I invented to design your specific career paths and also want to disclose different kind of product management salary among different levels of product management career so that you can make informed decision about how to start and grow your product management career. Make sure to stay until the end of this video where I share with you how the product management career path is going to get impacted by AI. Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, a direct product featured in Forbes. I've helped thousand people land a dream PM job offer in fan companies, a unicorn startup and continue to get promoted as a product leader. In this channel, we talk about tech trends and free product management training. Like and subscribe and watch our new video every Tuesday. There's a lot of complexity inside a product management career path. I've helped thousand people starting from APM level as social product manager all the way to the VP level to start and grow their product management career. And however, lots of people only think about one small element of the career path by missing the bigger picture. Now let me share with you the number one design principle called spit framework that I have invented. First of all, spit stands for strength, passion, income, trend and value. But as I said, there are six different type of product management career. So which one is best for you? How do you get started? Let's break them down. The first product management career path is APM, a social product manager. This is mainly designed for people who are fresh out of school with less than two years of experience. And those people are usually being trained as a product manager with a mentor within those companies. And all the tier one companies such as Metta, Google, Apple, they all have those APM roles. And those APM roles can range from $80,000 per year for non-fan companies up to $150,000 per year for fan companies as well. The second type of product manager career path is the general PM at the non-fan companies. So general PM means that you can apply the same product management life cycle skills and methodology to manage any product out there. As long as you know customer empathy leads with authorities and also using agile methodology to build those products. And this kind of career path is usually chosen by people who are not product managers when they go to school. They are frequently data scientists, consultants, marketers or in finance or software engineers. They don't like the existing job anymore. And they realize that they want to use the new strengths and leverage their passion and discover the product management is something they can do very well and they feel very happy and satisfied in the new career. So therefore, lots of people who came from different professions that transition into product management, they become a general product manager first in different type of non-fan companies. Of course, there's also people with the first job in PM is in fan companies, which I will discuss later in different kind of career paths later on. The general product manager series is around $150,000 to $200,000 per year at non-fan companies. When you make this kind of transition, you really need to focus on your strengths as I discussed in the spit framework. For example, if you are a software engineer in the AI company, your strengths is you know AI very well and then you can try to transition into AI product management. If you're a consultant, your strengths is your transferable skills working in cross-functional team and knows how to talk to customers and also work with agile teams. So all those are transfer skills for consultant and you can easily use those strengths to become a product manager. You can also use your industry strengths such as your healthcare professional and you can leverage your knowledge of healthcare and help the healthcare technology company to build a better product for their customers. You can also design your career path based on passion. For example, also in Amy Yu, she came from a CPA background and helping CPA firms to create software for accounting and tax purposes, which I believe nobody likes taxes. But her passion is creator economy. So that's why she worked really hard and eventually became a creator product manager at TikTok. And I have a separate video where she told us her step-by-step guidance how she transitioned from B2B to B2C and did a completely career pivot. You can check out this video right here and such an inspiration video for everybody out there. On top of that, she also increased her salary significantly. You must check it out right here. When you make transition based on passion, you must learn how to use portfolio strategy to really demonstrate even if you have no prior experience in this new field. But because your passion is starting to work on product ahead of time towards the direction you want to pivot into. So that's why I recommend everybody to create a portfolio if you want to use a passion-driven methodology to design your next career path. I have a free masterclass where I teach you how to create a clear product manager portfolio within two weeks. You can check out the link in the description of the video and join me and check out different portfolio examples there as well. The third type of product management career path is a specialty product manager. When people transition into product management, they're frequently trying to think, oh, do I need to start from the beginning at 8 p.m.? The answer is absolutely no. You can definitely use your past experience to become a specialty product manager, or you can directly use your transport skills to become a general product manager. Now, what are those different kind of specialty product managers? Those are people who already have the strengths in terms of product management skills or industry domain, and they go deeper into one specific type of product management. For example, you can become an AI product manager, gross product manager, crypto product manager, or even continue to stay in your current company to get promoted as a senior product manager so that you become very strong in the specific product you work on. The specialty product managers, they're getting paid very, very well and also depends on your specialty. For example, my student who currently working at a specialty p.m., including crypto and AI, different kind of very hot domain, necessarily it's ranging between $200,000 all the way to $500,000 per year. Now, let me give you a specific example. For example, one of my students currently working as an AI product manager at a Snowflake competitor company, he's getting paid $440,000 per year and this is all cash and doesn't include equity. Another student of mine also working for another coin-based competitor's crypto trading company now is also getting paid at over $400,000 per year. Of course, if you want to stay in your current company and try to get promoted as a senior p.m., it's likely your salary could be around $200,000 per year, maybe a little higher for non-fan companies. So you really need to select your specific lane strategically so that you can impact your income and career happiness as well. And the salary appointment management really varies based on your experience, location, and the industry you're in. So make sure to watch this video where I break down my salary progression starting from individual contributor all the way to become director and tell you the different things goes into the salary changes of my own personal career and also how it's going to reflect your career track in terms of income as well. Regarding the specialty p.m. or general product managers, 90% of their roles and responsibilities are the same because the foundational roles and responsibilities of product managers and lifecycle product management process is quite similar. Go to the link of description where I give you the ultimate guide to the roles and responsibilities of product managers. Go to this link and you can check out the guide and design your unique career paths as well. The fourth kind of product management career is fan product managers. Why a separate fan was because once you join fan companies, usually people stay in fan companies forever, they literally retire in those fan companies. Have you heard that when people join Google, they're already entering the retirement age? Even they started their career at the age of 20, that's what it looks like when you join fan companies. So once you join fan companies, you will work on different kind of product whatever is available within the companies. Of course, you must do team matching within those fan companies to select what kind of specific product they want you to work on. But whenever you join the fan company, the salary will range between $300,000 per year and up to $800,000 per year. $300,000 per year as someone who just manage up in fan companies such as my students, this does not include the APM role. This includes people who transition to product management or they are working as a product manager in different companies by joining fan companies. And I literally had a student who literally was working for healthcare industry as a program manager and joining fan companies getting paid $300,000 per year and same thing as someone fresh MBA will entrepreneur join fan companies also getting paid $300,000 per year as a bare minimum. Now $800,000 per year for fan companies are the meta L seven level of people, the most senior individual contributors within those companies, they're getting paid a significant amount of money. But the big tech compensation is quite different because they have lots of RSU, testing period, different stock options. It's very complex. In this video, I break down the six figure big tech salaries. You should go check it out and really use it as a tool for you to analyze your future income once you join as fan companies as well. I'm also going to link the video in the description of this video. The fifth type of product management career is people manager. Those include group product manager, director, VP and chief product officer. Once you become people manager, you will spend less time working on individual product. You're going to manage a portfolio product. You're also going to manage a group of product managers. You're also going to mentor them, hire them, help them to grow and also fire them for those people who does not perform well in your current team. Some people feel very empowered to become a people manager and managing a group of product managers, especially growing the career as a chief product officer. But some people just want to be the most senior individual contributor. So therefore, I leave it to you guys to understand which kind of career path is most suitable for you. And comment on the video and let me know what kind of career path would you choose. And once you reach those VP or director levels, your income could range from like half million dollars all the way to two million dollars, several million dollars per year. This is crazy because if you are the VP of product at Google, you're getting paid millions of dollars every single year for sure. Because even when I was a director, 45% of my income is bonuses. The sixth type of product management career path is not a product manager anymore. It is entrepreneurship. Lots of product managers would choose to become entrepreneur because entrepreneur and product managers are very similar. The 70% overlap in those roles and responsibilities. And I made a video about why entrepreneurs can transition to product management right here. You can check a video and learn the details. And so also product managers also thinking about after they become product manager for two years, three years, a few years, they decide to start something and take more risk and jump into a startup space and all the skillset that mastered in the product management space and also all the connections that made in the big tech companies going to help their startup to grow even faster. So therefore, product management career is a golden career path for everybody who are ambitious, want to excel and also achieve the work by balance they want. Now let's answer the most asked questions. How would AI impact the product management career? Answer is already started impacting your product management career, but you didn't know. Nowadays, we're at the very beginning of the AI era. Everything is turning into AI and there are three different types of AI product. Their product does does not need AI at all to function. There's also product that is okay without AI, but can be improved using AI. And the third type of product is they cannot exist or function at all without AI. So a lot of existing product is trying to move to the second type of product. They're going to add AI to their existing product roadmap. So therefore, lots of product managers or aspiring product managers is very critical. You must learn the trend of AI and also maybe try to become AI product managers so that you're not replaceable in the future job market. This is in alignment with the spit framework in terms of trend. There's something very funny in Chinese saying means, 诸口浪尖, 诸懂浪费. If you translate into English, it means when the wave and wind is strong enough, then pigs can fly, which is in reflection of the push of company moving into AI space. So we're just at the beginning of the bull market of AI. So therefore, whoever is a very beginning is more likely you can fly your career into the AI space as well. So therefore, please join the way list of my upcoming AI product management training. You'll be the first one getting notified once it's available. I'm going to link in the description of this video. You should also get started by watching the AI product management playlist right here to get started on your AI journey. This is Dr. Nia Sidi from PMxCelerator.io. I'm going to see you in my next video right here.