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This is some general advice I give to budding product managers early in their career. This is also applicable to those who are in adjacent roles like program management, product marketing, product planning, technical project management, etc. who wish to get into product management. Of course, everything is contextual and so is this advice! If … Continue reading How do I build a good product management career?
Over last several months, I had several conversations with the mentees assigned to me by LinkedIn mentor program, as well as with engineers in my company. Interestingly, in most of the cases, I had same recommendation for them - have that conversation that you feel is too tough to handle. Now, it is possible that … Continue reading Difficult conversations are difficult!
When I received my first performance review in as an individual contributor last month, after having been a manager for 7 years before that, it was revealing, to say the least. This prompted me to talk to a few other individual contributors I knew in the company, these discussions were very insightful. I also reviewed … Continue reading Career Paths for engineers – Being a Phase 2 IC
Whenever you meet a hotshot with a bad temper or big ego who doesn't extend basic courtesy, you inevitably ask this question because relationships don't seem to mean a thing for such a person. However, for every brash but successful career you see and meet, there are thousands of brash and unsuccessful careers that you … Continue reading Do relationships matter in a successful career?
As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been reviewing some of the career sites that seem to be popular in India. The goal was to understand how good (or bad) these sites are and then hopefully recommend some sites that are useful. However, while going through these sites, I realized that I promised … Continue reading Review of career sites – Mission impossible?
As I mentioned in my previous post, I plan to review some of the web sites/companies that offer services in the general area of career counseling/guidance/management. Here is the list that I have come up with. Here is how I picked these sites: Listed some of the web sites that I heard about via TV … Continue reading List of career counseling/information sites for review
As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent a month in India recently (August, 2008) before coming to Shanghai to join Microsoft here. I commented on the education system and related aspects that I observed. In this post, I will talk about my observations on working professionals and how careers are moving (or not). … Continue reading Thoughts from my India Visit – Careers
As I may have mentioned in my previous post, I spent a month in India recently (August, 2008) before coming to Shanghai to join Microsoft here. In this post, I will comment on the education system and related aspects that I observed. In the next post, I will talk about my observations on working professionals … Continue reading Thoughts from my India Visit – Education System
This is the last article in the series on Measuring Career Growth, which started off by talking about measures of success and implication of having multiple measures vis-à-vis time, and was followed by posts on financial and learning goals, followed by a post on job complexity and satisfaction. As I promised in the last post, … Continue reading Measuring Career Growth – Final (career phases framework)
This is the 3rd post in the series on measuring career growth, and a follow-up to the post on financial and learning goals. In this post, I will talk about 3rd goal (job complexity) and also touch upon the job satisfaction aspect of all these goals, which came up in one of the comments. Job … Continue reading Measuring Career Growth – Part III (Job Complexity and Satisfaction)
Career Bloom 