How did I get into Product?
This is a 4-minute read.
How did I get into Product?
I ask myself this question from time to time. Oddly enough, many of you are asking on the internet, as well. So here goes.
I stumbled into it.
In the Fall of 2012 I was working as a Marketing Coordinator. Honestly, the title is unimportant. I was working in the field of Marketing with a few years of experience. Mainly I was writing copy, creating campaigns, and living in Google Analytics. At the time, my writing had been the lifeblood of my skill set, thanks to a 5-year stint running my own site. Call it a blog, if you'd like.
One day, the Managing Director of my firm tapped me on the shoulder. Imagine a moderately scary, yet charming Austrian man proposing that I spend a year apprenticing under him and the two co-founders. One was the CEO; the other was the President. Titles can be dumb. They were influential people. Even though this was taking me away from what I wanted to do at the time, apparently I was not foolish enough to walk away from an opportunity like that.
So, I was a glorified bitch for a year. But I saw it all, and I learned a whole hell of a lot. How to think with rigor, how to sell, how to energize through storytelling, and most importantly (for me), how to build games.
The President, who had founded the company in 1985, took me under his wing and shared with me what he had learned in the past ~30 years. The large majority of the time I was a blend of confused, woefully overwhelmed, and buzzing from the learning. Pretty damn cool, if you ask me.
One thing led to another, and I was put on a project to design a new scenario for one of our games. After a month of diving deep into the problem and designing a solution built around batteries, I knew that this was fun work. I learned a hilarious amount about lithium-ions. In fact, I couldn't think of work that was more fun than what I was doing. Ha!
One hangup existed, though. We were a small firm, and there was not an official Product Design team. We designed new things by handing requests to our engineering team and seeing a turd (sometimes shiny) come out the other end. There was little to no customer-driven design, and surely only a sliver of a sliver of data-driven design. The only "Product" person in the company was the President. He had designed simulations for the entirety of his life at the company, but…we age. He realized he could not do this forever. Voila!
A month later (sometime in early 2013, I believe), I became a Product Manager.
With no fucking clue what I was doing. Hell, I didn't even know this was a career path until I was told about the opportunity.
Fortunately, the only thing I have ever been super good at is learning.
So I learned.
Guided by my former manager, who was also learning, and the President, I got to see the inner workings of game design. What made a game useful? How do you balance the experience? What made something truly compelling?
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A brief aside may help at this point.
In my world, we design educational games - business simulations, in fact. On one hand, we design games that put people (typically students) in charge of running a business. Our goal is to help them understand how decisions by everyone in a company come together. On the other, we design "day in the life" simulations of different business careers. We paint a picture of their future. We get to help people learn!
Honestly, it's fucking cool.
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Fast forward 6 years, and I lead a Product Design & Development team. My years as a Product Manager are, to this day, my favorite time in any work environment. I can not stress enough how fun and engaging it is to solve a singular problem, especially when given a modicum of autonomy.
And now, the challenge is larger. How do I align a team of 10 to design experiences people learn from, to their core? How do we build something that will make you smarter and more prepared for your future? How do we leave a lasting impression on our learners? How do we grow a business?
Fortunately, life is as fun as can be when you're solving problems through design. Bring forth the data! Bring forth the instructional expertise! Make you say "Wow!"
We're getting better every day. We're designing great things. I did not anticipate this becoming a recruiting pitch, but here we are. You should join us.
And if you can't, and you feel any type of connection to this story, then you should find a way into Product. I promise you it's something you won't regret.
Moving into the world of Product changed my life. I did not expect to ever fall in love with any job, particularly one I did not know existed in school, but here I am. Go find your own (or have me help).
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Ah, this was fun. To be honest, I would like to keep writing about Product Design. As I look back on the past decade, few things have had as large of an impact as finding my own path. All the pieces of life just fit together.
So, while I am notoriously bad at publishing, my notes are full of thoughts on my craft and I want to help. I suppose I'll make myself a public deal, so you can see how my brain operates.
Bren, today is October 3. If you publish 3 pieces before 2020 begins (just one/month), you get a new pair of Yeezys.
Let's see how well incentives work.
And next time, we'll talk about how you can edge your way into a Product career.
Godspeed, friends.