Product Individual Contributors Are the 'Childless Cat Ladies' Orgs Need
Why staying off the management track could be the best move for companies and Product Leaders
As a Product Coach I get a really great birds eye view at whats happening in the product management market. At a macro level the pandemic caused a great flattening within tech organizations. Cost savings, market shifts, as to be expected.
But what the pandemic also brought was a deeper level of introspection after intense isolation. People want to be more intentional about where and how they work. They don’t want to climb the career ladder just for the sake of climbing.
I know this because I’ve met dozens of these product people.
The conversations post pandemic are inherently different.
Of course, this is my anecdotal evidence, so I can’t speak for everyone.
But, as someone who’s holding monthly space for product leaders, in one of the biggest tech cities in the world, coupled with dozens of clients I support, I can say with confidence that Product leaders are having some thoughts. Here’s what I see:
Product leaders in director + roles are burnt out:
They believe that the only path to earning more money is by moving into a management role.
Further, many director+ product leaders are new parents who explicitly don’t want to people manage at work.
Others love the Individual Contributor (IC) work. In fact, they cite their golden years in product to the best IC years of their career.1 But, they know that if they want to succeed financially they have to leave IC work behind for a manager path.
As a result product leaders are questioning if they want to stay in product at all.
Product has an Individual Contributor problem
I’m not the first to identify this problem.
As far as I see it, product folks don’t progress in IC roles for 3 reasons:
1) Lack of Fulfillment
Product Coach, Ken Norton explained the fulfillment problem back in 2021 when the pandemic woes were still fresh. He put it better than I ever could:
Product management has largely been seen as an intermediate step on a route to something loftier. Satisfaction with anything less is indicative of a lack of ambition.
But what happens if somewhere along the line you discover that you’re climbing someone else’s ladder or just that you’re done climbing and happy to stay on your current rung? What if you really love being a product manager and want to do more and better product work? And let’s not overlook those who choose a balanced life outside of work or would like to start a family or leave the profession for a while to become a primary caregiver to a child or loved one.
This mindset is incompatible with the up-and-up march toward CEO. To many of our observers, anything less is tantamount to failure. Few of us started our careers in product management. We had to work tremendously hard to get the job to begin with, which makes this CEO hustle peer pressure so exhausting. We had to swing over to this ladder from another one: from engineering, business analysis, customer success, marketing, or wherever. To many, becoming a product manager was the achievement, and now we’re expected to keep on marching? What if this is our destination?
This is the post pandemic bit.
While this has always been the case, that people might have a desire to stay as an IC but felt like they couldn’t, people are operating more intentionally at work than they ever had before. They actually want to make career choices that feel more fulfilling.
Product leaders want to build. They want to spend more time with engineers and less time herding cats. They want more shipping and less bureaucracy.
It’s a necessary shift to making mindful career choices, but companies don’t necessarily support that choice. This is the tension that arises and keeps people from choosing the IC path.
Which brings me to my next point:
2) Lack of Dual Track Career Progression
Companies lack a proper dual track career progression.
Sure there are many Staff, Principal, Lead PM roles that don’t require people management.
But, success at most companies looks like moving into people management.2
And most of us know, just because you’re a great PM does not mean you’re a great manager. Success ≠ people management.
But, because the market has shifted, supporting and paying senior level product people a high compensation to not manage other product people is too costly.
Which brings me to my final point:
3) Lack of Compensation
And of course, there’s the unequal compensation.
A few weeks ago Tal Raviv was featured on Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast as a super, career IC. He had some good ideas about how to structure the compensation conversations.
But, he couldn’t help admit the twang he felt in his stomach when he often felt undervalued as an IC compared to a people manager at his level.
Amid the political moment, I can’t help draw the comparison to childless cat ladies. At the risk of making this political, just because you don’t have children (direct reports) doesn’t mean you don’t bring immense value to society (the company).3
The Fix
So what’s the fix?
Well, I totally agree with Ken that we need to advocate for a dual product management career path.
I absolutely agree with Tal that we need to be clearer on leveling and standardizing product levels across the industry.
But, as with many of the problems discussed at Product Leader breakfast - fears of AI demolishing the product function, flattening of orgs, meddling leaders - I believe they all stem from the same root problem:
Product is not well defined, nor understood.
If organizations better understood what product people did:
AI would not seem as threatening because writing product requirements is just one small piece of the product role.
Leadership wouldn’t encroach on decision making because product leaders would be entrusted to solve real customer problems and cross check those problems with business viability.
And the value of the IC vs. People Manager would be super clear. Because each would deliver equal value to the organization.
What do you think? What do we do about the IC problem in product?
Hi - I’m Jori and I’m a Product Coach. Here’s how to work with me ↩️
I work with Product Leaders and their teams to unlock their biggest career moments. If you’re looking for support - drop me a note, I’d love to connect. 🤝
I co-host Product Leadership Breakfast NYC, a monthly product breakfast series to bring together curated groups of PM leaders to connect and share learnings and insights over casual breakfast. If you live in NYC or find yourself passing through, join us! ☕
I have yet to meet a people manager who said they are in their golden product years.
Which, to be fair, is true of many functions.
Said the childless dog lady.