10 Signals to Detect a 'Growth Product' Job-Flop (Before it Happens...)

How to bypass 'Growth Product' career bet landmines.

Many companies hire for ‘Growth Product’ roles without those roles being either ‘Growth’ or ‘Product’ or both. ❌

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.

   

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.

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There are three ways we can work together. Check those out. 😉

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.

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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. ❤️