Becoming a Product Manager
My career plan was crystal clear: get a Product Manager job at Salesforce, my dream company. I was convinced of the superiority of the Saas business model and completed several of my MBA projects...
May 9, 2007. My wife and I landed in San Francisco International Airport after experiencing our own April madness that has nothing to envy to the NCAA March madness. During that month, I graduated from IESE Business School, my wife and I had our bachelor and bachelorette party, got married in my hometown of 800 people, went to Mauritius Island for our honeymoon, crossed the Atlantic and landed in San Francisco to stat the next chapter in our life.
My career plan was crystal clear: become a Product Manager at Salesforce, my dream company. I was convinced of the superiority of the Saas business model and completed several of my MBA projects on Salesforce. As we landed in SFO, it was game on! I focused all my energy on securing a job at Salesforce. How hard could that be?
After three months of networking, countless coffee meetings with strangers, and a perfect 0% conversion rate into job interviews, my enthusiasm went down a quarter inch. And then came the final blow. I was cooking dinner when my wife entered the kitchen with a face of world champion and told me she got a job offer from... Salesforce. It took her less than twenty four hours to land that job!
A day earlier, the Salesforce recruiter contacted her for a Technical Writer job opening. She interviewed the next day and got a job offer right away. We opened a bottle of Chateau Talbot to celebrate -my last name is Talbot; unfortunately, we are not related. As I was digesting my steak and oven baked potatoes, I thought it was probably time to look at a plan B.
I eventually became a Product Manager at Salesforce five years, two startups, and two kids later. In retrospect, it was a brilliant move on my part. I placed a spy in my dream company and waited for the right time to strike!
My journey from Software Engineer to Product Manager has been atypical. I lived and worked in six countries. I had diverse and rich experiences, both professional and personal, before I found my "zen zone". I love building software products. I had the chance to do it for startups, mid-size companies, and Salesforce where I spent the last ten years. I learned and grew a lot throughout this journey.
Product Management means many things to many people. The Product Management Bytes blog will be a reflection of over two decades of experiences in Internet Software, CRM, B2B and B2C Enterprise, Saas, and startups. I see myself as a strategist obsessed with execution, a pragmatic individual, a critical thinker skilled at problem solving. I want to give readers nuggets of practical knowledge and wisdom while engaging with peers who share the same passion for building great products.