Before starting my MBA, my plan was to serve in product marketing role post MBA and in a few years, look for opportunities to start my own.
Still it is a plan. But I wonder if it is the best way for me. Let me explain why I started rethinking about my plan.
I have an alumnus mentor (through Babson Alumni Mentor Program, AMP) who is product manager in a medium sized software company. He was very helpful. He came to our Olin hall one evening to discuss about our plans. It is his first year participating in this program. He mentioned that even after ten years working in this field, he still finds to describe his role clearly. Product marketing, product manager roles are often mixed. While he said product marketing is a great place to be in because of the interaction with pretty much every other team in an organization: sales, marketing, engineering and often finance, he mentioned growth is very limited. A few people remain in product marketing for ever(10 - 20 years). Plus, the pay seems to be comparable to engineers (and not greater).
My plan now is to do some research on how many people have successfully moved from product marketing position to become CEOs. If you have any thoughts, comment or/drop an email.
(PS: Here is the link to learn more about product marketing: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/productmarketing/topics/index.asp)
After graduation..
15 years ago
1 comment:
This is a great point and one that I am also struggling with (as I consider applying to Babson). To accompany your question about Product Marketers moving on to be CEOs, I might ask what a better position would be. While it might not be commonplace, involvement in all areas (as you mentioned) SHOULD only be a benefit to such a role. I would expect that a VP of Sales or Engineering may have a steeper learning curve in some respects. Regardless, your points and question certainly hit home and have caused me to think about my future as well.
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