You don’t think about it in your 20s or even 30s, but by default, your cushy Tech career has a shelf life or, in other words, an expiration date. While you can extend it, doing so requires being very intentional and strategic.

Here’s how it typically unfolds (using a PM example):

1. The Mid-20s: You’re landing your first PM role, focused on learning the craft, building your skills, and establishing a reputation.
   - The hungry newborn phase.
   

2. The Mid-30s: You’re cruising through various PM roles, using your experience to secure better opportunities, feeling invincible and confident in your journey.
   - The false euphoria phase.
   

3. The Mid-40s: Job opportunities start to dwindle, and the 20 years of experience “Competitive Advantage” you thought you could rely on, no longer set you apart in the market.
   - The dissolution phase
   

4. The Mid-50s: You find yourself settling for any product-related role, as the market increasingly favors younger professionals with newer skill sets. Though you’re grateful to stay employed, feelings of frustration, anxiety, and insecurity surface.
   - The regret phase

As a society, we should all work together to extend professionals’ career longevity. However, in reality, building career defensibility falls on each of us individually. Moreover, It doesn’t come naturally, as most of us are hard-wired to focus on short-term (1 to 5 year) wins, often at the expense or a complete lack of a longer-term defensible career vision.

Here is what you can do about it today:

1. First, Become Aware of The Problem: It’s the simple yet painful realization that your career has an expiration date. But hey, before tackling the problem, you first need to become aware of it. Many choose to ignore the alarm bells in their brain, but ignoring the problem won’t solve it - it will only make it worse.
   

2. Groom Your Expertise: Pick a niche within your professional domain - something you love and excel at - and make sure you own it! For example, Product management is too broad; it’s not a niche, but focusing on ‘Monetization for B2B SaaS’ or Core Product for Cybersecurity’ will make you stand out. Your niche may evolve, but starting narrow and staying focused is key to building career defensibility. You must be patient and methodic; becoming an expert takes years, not months.
   

3. Make Intentional Career Bets: Where you work, what you do, and who you surround yourself with shape your entire career journey. The people and environment you choose will mold your skills, expertise, and mindset. Be deliberate with your career moves, and think twice before chasing the next shiny thing. Focus on maximizing impact within your niche of expertise.

   

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4. Always Keep Learning: Make learning a priority and a habit. The moment you stop investing in it, you risk becoming obsolete. Up-to-date knowledge, combined with relevant hands-on experience, is the key to building career defensibility and pushing back your career’s expiration date. Personally, I feel fortunate to live in a time where accessing any knowledge is easier and more affordable than ever.
   

5. Playing the Long Game: Let’s approach our careers as a 40- to 50-year marathon. Shifting to a long-term mindset forces us to address questions that often go unnoticed when we only think 4 or 5 years ahead. What will make me happy in the long run? How do I envision my professional self in 20 or 30 years? What risks threaten that vision, and how can I start positioning and enabling myself today to have a defensible career in 20 or 30 years? Moreover, thinking long-term helps reduce anxiety over short-term career hurdles, such as losing a job or facing interview rejections.

P.S. I’m 38 years old, and this topic sometimes keeps me awake at night. If you feel the same way, you’re not alone. The topic of a career expiration date in Tech doesn’t get nearly enough attention. ❤️

After five years of leading PMs, I can say that mastering managing high-performers yields the highest ROI. Nevertheless, taking high performers for granted will shutter your product team ‘house of cards’ in no time.

Moreover, the higher the percentage of top performers on your team, the more accute it becomes to develop the skill set for keeping high performers for the long run.

In this article, I will dive into the topic of ‘Promotions,’ the ‘Sacred cow’ leaders consciously try to keep vague.

The reality:

Top performers expect to get promoted.

And can you blame them? Promotion is the ultimate recognition.

It’s financial, as it comes with a new compensation level, it’s social, as you are getting recognized by the company leadership, and it’s brand building, as it adds credibility to the employee's brand in the job market.

Hence, misalignment around promotion expectations can kill performance and break trust. In most cases, this misalignment involves some dangling the promotion carrot quarter after quarter.

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The product leader’s priority is company success.

You hire top talent for a specific job ( = job X).

Moreover, you want to ensure (after hiring and onboarding) that your rockstar PM does the job they were hired to do for a long time.

Otherwise, what is the point?

Promotions, as great as they are, will, in most cases, stop your rockstar PM from doing the job they were hired to do. Requiring you to onboard other PM to do job X.

Now, I am definitely not saying that promotions are bad. But they do add complexity and overhead, which you must be mindful of.

Do this:

Performance peak != performance trend

Reward for performance peaks, generously.

I mean one-time bonuses, equity grants, and cross-company praising. Show gratitude and take care of your team. Don’t take high performance for granted. Be creative!

Promote a long-term performance upward trend.

The long-term performance upward trend is the promotion north start you build expectations towards. It's also how you help build your team members’ long-term defensible careers.

How long of a trend? 18 - 24 months long.

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Lead with transparency (early on) to bridge the expectation gap

Communicating your promotion ‘How? and When?’ early on, even before hiring. Starting as early as the hiring manager interview rounds.

You want to ensure your hire only those PMs who genuinely excited to join and do ‘job X’ for at least three years.

This is why you never use empty promotion promises as a hiring tactic as those will backfire.

In addition, re-iterate on the promotion expectations every quarter and review together with your team the long-performance trend.

Comparing only the perfomrernce of the ongoing quarter with the performance of the preceding one is not sufficent.

🟢 Three bonus tips for PMs:

1. Ensuring that your work materializes in building a successful company has a higher long-term impact than a premature promotion with no meat behind it.

2. The statement ‘Join at level Y to do job X and you will get promoted in no time’ Indicates a questionable/toxic culture. Don’t’take the job.

3. Avoid taking roles you don’t see yourself doing with a huge smile on your face for at least three years.

1. ‘The 5 Levels of Leadership’ is my go-to leadership framework.

2. Jason Taylor, my direct manager at Ansarada, first introduced it to me, and I am grateful for it. ❤️

3. It helps me to simplify, demystify, and structure my thinking around ‘Leadership.’

4. As a direct report and a manager, I was on both sides of the framework. It works.

Expand Leadership → Expand Influence → Expand Effectiveness

“When you expand your leadership ( = climbing the leadership levels), you expand your influence. When you expand your influence, you expand your effectiveness. Great leaders are effective.”

John C. Maxwell, Leadership Author and Speaker

Let’s Start.

Level 1: I have the title, so you follow me.

If people follow you just because they must, they will give you the least of their effort, time, and mind. They simply want to get paid. And I don’t blame them...

Getting a leadership job doesn’t make you a leader.

Level 2: You like me, so you follow me.

People start to like you. You are helpful; you listen to them, observe, and learn. You are getting along with people and building relationships.

You must be likable and not antagonizing to build real influence.

The statement: “... You don’t need people to like you as long as they do what you say...” is a total BS and an example of a lazy leadership style and a toxic mindset. 💩

Level 3: I produce results, so you follow me.

You produce outcomes and gain credibility. You start attracting other productive people (the law of magnetism) because you build momentum and solve problems. You are effective, and it’s visible.

We attract who we are, not who we want.

Level 4: I coach you to be me, so you follow me.

You grow others. You grow a company by growing people. When you increase their capacity, they increase the capacity of what you can accomplish.

Effectiveness at scale is achieved through the people you grow.

Level 5: I gained your respect, so you follow me.

You did so much for so many and for so long that people follow you because of who you are.

Getting to Level 5 is a lifelong journey.

What’s Next?

Identify your leadership level with each of your direct reports. The level is subjective per person.

Some of those startups don’t understand the ‘Growth Product’ role. Others simply jump on the ‘Growth’ buzzword trend, trying to sound fancy or blindly copying competitors’ job posts.

This results in labeling roles as ‘Growth Product’ while those roles are actually:

1. Core Product roles but not Growth Product roles.

2. Not Product roles whatsoever.

3. Or Frankenstein roles in which success can’t be achieved. 🧟

It’s ultimately your responsibility to recognize the warning signs, avoid a career bet flop preemptively, and save yourself precious time, emotional turmoil, and potential psychological scars. 🚨

Please remember:

1. Your career =  The accumulation of the career bets you take.

2. Your career bets are built on top of each other.

3. Your career bets are not infinite.

I am talking from experience, both as one who took the wrong bets myself and one who designed ‘Growth Product’ roles as an Advisor for startups and as a Hiring Manager at Miro.

In this article, I will share my blueprint on how to bypass 'Growth Product' career bet landmines and make your next Growth Product career bet a success story.

Who is this article for?

1. Growth PMs who are planning their next career bet.

2. Non-Growth PMs looking to break into Growth Product.

3. Founders and Growth Hiring Managers.

   

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1. You are asked to build and own 0 to 1 features

0 to 1 ‘PMF adventures’ are the domain of Core / Platform PMs, not Growth PMs. Growth PMs uncover and validate opportunities through rapid ‘Research - Hypothesis - Experiments - Learning’ cycles and move on.

Building (0 to 1) bets and owning core features are not the Growth PM job, even if those features are intended to drive Growth.

❌ “You will be responsible for designing and building the notifications system to drive our users engagement and a referal system to drive users acquistion”

2. You are asked to drive feature usage (adoption)

Driving feature adoption is a valid tactic to increase engagement. Nevertheless, when thinking about Growth, we must think more broadly. We optimize for recurring usage of the Product to generate and expand revenue. It’s rarely only about the usage of feature X or Y.

From my experience, the feature adoption goals hint that the job post has a much stronger Core PM narrative than a Growth PM one.

3. You will not be reporting to the Product stream

A Product that doesn’t report to Product is not a Product, isn’t it…

I would go out on a limb and say that if you report to Marketing (or other departments besides Product), you should expect your role to take a non-product shift regarding goals, priorities, mindset, team structure, etc.

4. You are asked to build and scale acquisition channels

I don’t mean the product acquisition channels (Templates, Virality, etc.) but those performance marketing ones; think SEO, Paid Acquisition, Social, etc.

If building non-acquisition channels is the main focus, then it means you are taking a Growth Marketing gig. It’s not a bad thing, of course, if Growth Marketing is what you are aiming for.

A side note: As a Growth PM, you are 100% expected to contribute to the Growth Marketing domain, but it shouldn’t be the main and only focus. 

5. The company is looking for a ‘Growth Hacker’

I talked about this quite a lot, but yet again, Growth is not about hacking but systems. Looking for a ‘Hacker’ means not understanding the Growth DNA. And yes, even big super duper companies still go the hacker route.

Here is a quote from Group Growth PM at UBER (the job post is live on Linkedin at the moment of publishing this article. Disappointing. 😔

❌ “Demonstrated ability in growth hacking and growth initiatives. ”

6. There is no explicit reference to PLG

This one may be too simplistic, but I expect a company that hires a Growth PM, which in 99% of cases should be expected to drive Product-Led thinking, to reference PLG in the job description or the initial interview. The same goes for ‘Experimentation’…

Unfortunately, lacking either or both is more common than you think.

7. The job’s WSLL is unrealistic

For those who ask what WSLL means, WSLL = ‘What Sucess Lools Like?’

Betting on the right company is just one ingredient in your Growth Product career success equation. An additional ingredient is to ensure you can turn the career bet into a success story.

If the job’s WSLL expectations do not meet with reality, you will unlikely make this job opportunity a joyous, pivotal career moment.

For example:

1. You can’t be expected to build PLG on scale in 6 or even 12 months (especially in a sales-led company).

2. You can’t X10 ARR by going freemium in a matter of months.

3. You can’t merge the responsibilities of growth marketing, brand marketing, growth product, partnership, etc., in one role and expect it to work.

The ‘Right Now!, 10X, and Everything!’ mentality is a symptom of either growth incompetency or/and a toxic culture. Avoid.

8. You are not set for success in the role (no data)

The most common land mine for Growth Products is the lack of Data. Data is your oxygen; you can’t do your job without it. As simple as that. If the company doesn’t have the data infrastructure set or doesn’t recognize the need to have one, you can’t do your job.

This one is harder to detect by looking at the job post. It requires asking the right questions during the interviews or signing an NDA and asking to see it for yourself. A multi-tab EXCEL with tables and charts is not a data infrastructure.

I encountered the lack of data infrastructure phenomenon not only in early-stage startups but in scaleups as well.

Setting up the data infrastructure requires a company-wide cultural shift (starting from the leadership), a significant $ investment, and time (a long time).

Hence, it’s not an ideal starting point for a Growth PM, to say the least…

By the way, not having a data culture also likely means that the Company Forecast is based on wishful thinking rather than the Growth Model (data).

9. You foresee a negative friction

Warren Buffet once said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Taking this to our ‘career bets’ world, it’s better to swipe left for an opportunity for which you can foresee significant No-Go collision points.

Some examples are:

1. A direct manager with no Growth experience (especially relevant for junior to mid-seniority candidates).

2. Lack of dedicated Design or Data people to support your journey.

3. And, a peculiar one I encountered last week, relevant to Growth Product leadership gigs, was the hard requirement to manage 12 growth PMs as direct reports with no mid-management layer. Apparently, the company believes in lean hierarchy… Good luck with this structure.

10. Business Model Experience gap (i.e., B2B SaaS Vs. B2C Marketplace)

This one is more on you. 😉

If you jump into an unfamiliar business model, it will be hard to bank on your previous growth product experience. For example, Going from B2B SaaS to B2C Marketplace is hard. Those models have different dynamics.

Even if you are willing to go through the steep learning curve, please be mindful of the risk you are running of being a half-baked expert across a few growth model segments rather than a superstar one in a single segment.

Being a half-baked expert in multiple growth model segments is not a competitive advantage.

—

Take control of your career, be smart with your bets, and remember that your career is important, but your family and your well-being come first.

Stay cool. ❤️

1. Founders / CEOs

2. Product Leaders

3. Growth Product Leaders

4. Hiring Managers

❤️ Why should you care?

Hiring is expensive!

It's your time, company’s time, and a bunch of $$$.

Learn from my successes and failures at Miro to set yourself and your company up for A+ Game.

✅ What do you get?

The guide has four sections:

1. The Unspoken Truth (10 learnings)

2. The Ideal Candidate (8 learnings)

3. The Interview (5 learnings)

4. 🎁 Bonus Tips (7 learnings)

😑 Before we start!

Hiring is a team effort! It's a puzzle you piece together.

Now, we are ready.

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🏁 Let's start!

The Unspoken Truth

1. Hiring takes time; it's not a magic pill to solve your immediate headaches!

   It takes at least 9 to 14 months from the moment you start hiring until the talent reaches their full performance potential. 3 to 6 months to hire a rockstar and 6 to 8 months to properly onboard.

2. Hiring mistakes are crazy expensive!

   It's not only the 'Cost To Hire' that can reach $20k (many people putting in many hours making the magic happen). The real cost of a mistake is the missed opportunity $ and the blow to teams' productivity and morale.

3. Hiring mistakes are inevitable!

   So you made a hiring mistake... The best you can do is to acknowledge it and act. Time matters and PIP is not always the solution. Share your learnings and incorporate the insights into the company's hiring process. Your learnings are gold!

4. Create a hiring business case as early as you can!

   To get a headcount (=terrible term!), you need to do some groundwork with the leadership. Saying that you need to hire X to leadership without having a hiring business case ready is an amateur move.

5. But what should be in the hiring business case doc?

   The doc MVP should explain alignment with company strategy and growth strategy. Articulate the ‘Why now?’ and map the ICP (Ideal Candidate Profile). If a candidate can be sourced internally, you should mention it!

6. You get what you pay for!

   Be honest with yourself about which talent you are competing for. Global (US + EU + APAC) or Local. To get Global top talent, your Brand + Comp package must be Globally competitive. Otherwise, you are wasting your and the candidates' time.

7. Hiring senior talent is GREAT!

   Getting senior bar raisers does miracles for the existing team ( + yourself!). Shorter onboarding to impact time, and high-quality outcomes. It's just awesome! Or is it?

8. Hiring senior talent is NOT GREAT!

   It's expensive (plus you will need to refresh their comp package in 6 to 12 months) and usually creates a promotion traffic jam.

9. Hiring Growth PMs is different from Non-Growth PMs!

   Growth PM aims to build a Repeatable, Sustainable, and Defensible growth system across Acquisition, Retention, and Monetization (Reforge). The mindset is driven by fast hypothesis-experimentation-learning cycles.

10. Long-term (12 months) hiring plans do not work for Growth!

    Same as with growth roadmaps, you can only plan so far. Growth DNA requires more flexible resourcing than the one you can get away with when running a non-growth product org.

The Unspoken Truth

11. Align your ICP1 to your company’s profile!

    Aim for candidates that come from companies with similar (1.) growth stage, (2.) growth rate, (3.) company size, (4.) growth team maturity, (5.) business model, (6.) industry.

12. Align your ICP to your company’s growth strategy!

    I found the best fit with candidates that have experience with the relevant (1.) growth motions (PLG2, MLG3, SLG4, CLG5) and (2.) growth levers (Acquisition, Retention, and Monetization).

13. Align your ICP to the expected growth work!
    Let's go one level deeper. I observed great fit with candidates that have relevant experience with particular (1.) growth lever inputs (in Retention case, Activation, Engagement) and (2.) loop types (Viral, UGC6, etc.).

14. Earth down your ICP expectations!

    If you apply all those criteria together with your budget constraints, you will get a two-and-a-half candidates pool... Figure out which criteria are a Must and which are Nice To Have.

15. Your talent partner is your partner in crime!
    The best ROI investment is teaching your talent partner all they need to know to ask the right questions, identify strong-fit candidates, and screen the rest. A growth expert in the making!

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16. Empower your talent partner with real-world examples!

    Do the work and craft a list of 10 ideal candidates' LinkedIn profiles and 20 ideal companies to hire from. The list will help your talent partner to understand your growth talk better.

17. Growth Culture Matters!

    Be aware of growth hackers, funnel gurus, and feature factory workers! Your candidate should think and talk in growth systems, models, loops, metrics, hypotheses, experiments, and learnings. Reforge should be the baseline thinking!

18. Focus on Linkedin sourcing!

    LinkedIn proactive sourcing gets the best results. Reach out directly to candidates. Looking for strong candidates within those who applied through the company career page is like looking for a needle in a haystack without a

    The Interview

19. Your panel should make sense!

    Those should consist of AMPED (Analytics, Marketing, Product, Engineering, and Design) leaders who will work with the candidate. It's not a HiPPO contest!

20. Get your panel ready!

    You will get extra points for creating a pool of questions to evaluate each competency. You will get a standing ovation if you define how to assess whether candidates' answers are missing / meeting / exceeding the expectations for every question.

21. Stop exhausting the candidates!

    Cap the # of interviews (less than 5), limit the # of participants, and schedule all the interviews within a few days' time window. The time to offer should be less than 3 weeks. If your process takes longer than that, you will lose top-class candidates!

22. The case study is where the magic happens! (Or not...)

    Make it a real business case and suggest collaborating with the candidate. It's an opportunity to evaluate candidates' thinking, communication, and quality of delivery. It's where I choose my favorites.

23. Go off script!

    To assess a candidate's real experience, go beyond candidates' rehearsed answers. Ask for three failed experiments, three learnings, etc. Go deep! In addition, I look for clear signs of resilience, self-awareness, and empathy.

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🎁 Bonus Tips

24. Never hire a bully!

    It doesn't matter how brilliant this person is and whether they come from FAANG. Never do it! You won't change their behavior with coaching, and the negative impact they will have on your team is 10X.

25. Avoid base pay gaps between your team members!

    For example, all Level 7 (Lead PMs) within the same hub should have the same base +/- 5%. Your team always knows! Use equity as a lever to close strong talent.

26. Intuition has its place!

    Don't ignore your gut feelings. Of course, it shouldn't be the only factor, BUT it has its place in your hiring decision. Bill Gates on decision making: “Often, you just have to rely on your intuition.”

27. Onboard PM with Designer!

    If you kickstart a new Growth team (that requires design), onboarding both the PM and the Designer together will make them a super-hero duo. The bond will be unbreakable.

28. Groom meaningful relationships with potential future hires!

    This one is important! Play the long game with world-class candidates. Nurture a genuine relationship with them. You will be their first call when they are ready for new opportunities.

29. The first growth hire must be a leadership-level hire!

    Setting up the growth org requires working continuously with the company leadership, influencing company-level decisions, and jumping between growth levers. A leadership job requires a leadership hire.

30. A growth team mission should never be tied around a feature!

    The growth team mission should revolve around a metric rather than a feature. The growth team should be empowered to experiment across the product and beyond to move their metric. That's the Growth team DNA!