Much of the career advice out there is for aspiring PMs. But what about those who have one foot on the ladder and are looking to climb the next rung? This episode is about advancing mid to late-stage product management careers. I'm joined by Peter Yang, Product Lead at Roblox, and product newsletter writer, to discuss how established PMs can avoid getting stuck. From pursuing growth over promotion to knowing when to change companies, we discuss a wide range of strategies to help you continue building the career you want based on your individual goals.
Much of the career advice out there is for aspiring PMs. But what about those who have one foot on the ladder and are looking to climb the next rung? This episode is about advancing mid to late-stage product management careers. I'm joined by Peter Yang, Product Lead at Roblox, and product newsletter writer, to discuss how established PMs can avoid getting stuck. From pursuing growth over promotion to knowing when to change companies, we discuss a wide range of strategies to help you continue building the career you want based on your individual goals.
Today’s discussion covers:
• Wisdom for mid and late-stage product managers looking to advance their careers
• Why you should focus on growth, not promotion
• Optimizing for company stage instead of company name
• Signs you should leave a company
• The under-discussed trade-offs between compensation and tenure
• Why top companies offer such high compensation
Creator Economy by Peter Yang:
• Nikhyl Singhal (VP Meta): How to Advance Your Product Management Career (Part 1)
• Nikhyl Singhal (VP Meta): How to Advance Your Product Management Career (Part 2)
Referenced in this episode:
• Blog post "Stage of company, not name of company"
• Six Superpowers of Product Managers
• Shadows of your Superpowers (Part 1)
• Shadows of your Superpowers (Part 2)
Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(01:27) Advancing mid or late-stage careers
(04:38) Promotions matter less than you think
(08:36) The different end goals for PM careers
(13:56) How to find the right company to elevate your career
(19:07) The best and worst reasons to change companies
(23:28) The impact of short tenures on someone’s resume
(27:19) Why top companies offer such high compensation
(31:31) The relationship between title and compensation
(34:52) Advice for negotiating compensation
(37:21) The under-discussed tradeoff between compensation and tenure
(39:07) Recapping the "shadows of your superpowers"
(41:55) Nikhyl’s advice for dealing with a common shadow
(47:43) Conclusion
Where to find Peter:
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Newsletter
Where to find Nikhyl:
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
Where to find The Skip Podcast:
• Website
• YouTube
• TikTok
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
Nikhyl Singhal: Hi, everyone. This is Nikhyl Singhal. I am your host of The Skip podcast. This episode is a recording of a conversation I had with an ex colleague named Peter Yang.
Peter and I used to work together and he also has a hit newsletter and what he and I talked about is working together on a newsletter article devoted to sort of the greatest hits of my Skip content, both the newsletter that I have as well as some of the podcast episodes from the year. And I thought it was such a great opportunity to go through some of the backstory of a lot of the coaching, a lot of the content, a lot of my thoughts on content that range from compensation to how to think about your next job, to how to think about your superpowers, to how the climate has changed, you know, job searching or career management in general.
So we recorded it. And his newsletter is out, if you prefer to look at some of the writing, but this conversation I thought was a great way for us to go back and forth on a number of topics and maybe catch up on episodes that you've missed in the past.
So without further ado, I'll introduce Peter. Peter, thank you for joining me on today's podcast. And maybe I'll start by asking you, what have you been up to? Maybe just give a couple minutes on you, your background, and obviously the newsletter that you are so successful in sharing with other product managers.
Peter Yang: Yeah. Thanks so much Nikhyl. Uh, you know, I really enjoyed working with you during our time at Credit Karma. I thought you were always a very thoughtful and high empathy product leader. So it's definitely great to reconnect and learn from you again.
Nikhyl Singhal: For sure.
Peter Yang: Um, for me, you know, I've been working at various companies right now, uh, I'm working product at Roblox um, uh, building, uh, products for creators and for developers. I'm all about the creator economy, so I've been writing and tweeting about it for a long time. And that's why my newsletter is also called The Creator Economy. I write both about product stuff and also about, you know, trying to make it as a creator online.
Nikhyl Singhal: That's great. Well, I'm welcome. And I'm excited to learn about creators from you on both your newsletter as well as any thoughts that you might have today. But I know you had some product management questions and I would love to be able to dig right in.
Peter Yang: Yeah, so why don't we talk about, you know, how a lot of folks can advance their career first and, you know, I'm sure you covered some of this before, but let me just start with, maybe you can briefly explain what The Skip actually means.
Nikhyl Singhal: Yeah, I came up with the title 'Skip' because I think careers are long and people don't tend to think long term about careers. They think very short term. What's my next job? What's my next position? And I always thought what people should do is they should focus on their skip job. They should focus on their skip role.
They should focus on the skip promotion, not just the next one. And so Skip is an homage to thinking long term and being a bit more around next next than just next. And so that's why I call it The Skip, because I really want people to be looking past the decision of today.
Peter Yang: You know, on Lenny's podcast and other areas, we recently talked about the 3 stages of a product career. Why don't we focus on the middle and late stage for old people like us, let's talk about, let's talk about the middle stage first, you know, like a lot of PMs, they typically move from managing a product to managing a team. Curious if you think this is like a must have to advance your career?
Nikhyl Singhal: I think the answer is different today than it may have been a few years ago. I think that when I first started talking about the different acts of career, the transition to leadership was primarily through people management. The answer was, look, if you really want to get a leadership role and leadership roles are really where you have the highest impact and where you have the highest compensation, managing people is sort of a prerequisite.
I think that what's happened in the industry as we've slowed growth is that the challenge around building organizations has been replaced with navigating product market fit and ensuring that you've got scalable products, not necessarily scalable teams, small teams are in, large teams are a little bit out.
And so if your entire focus from a career point of view is how do I quickly, can I manage people and then manage managers? I think that you'll find few positions available to you. So I think what I'm an advocate for is ensuring that at some point, you do get that management opportunity because it is a high impact, high leverage type situation.
Uh, there are fewer opportunities now more than ever. And so what I would prefer is people to think about their builder story. What did you build? What impact did it have? What challenges did you have to navigate to have that build story? And I think that if you can say, look, we came in and we had this challenging feature product turnaround story.
We had a bunch of internal challenges, external challenges. In the process of working through it, I made these mistakes. I learned these things. Then we started to see some smoke and I was able to get this thing out the door. That's the person you're going to hire today. And so that's what's really helping your next job and then that's the reason why. If your story is I got a little bit farther into my IC career, I got tapped to manage. I've managed two or three people. We all kind of were in the building when we were building stuff, but boy, growth slowed and now I'm here to get a management job. And I'd like to see maybe four or five people.
We're going to be like, well, okay, that sounds great, but I don't have a management problem. I have a build problem nowadays. And if you're not really appropriate for that, it's a bit of a mismatch.
Peter Yang: It's easy to like ignore the build part of it. It's just like, you know, I just want to get promoted. I want to manage more people, but at the end of the day, we're all here to like ship great products. So let's talk about promotions, right?
Like, um, I'm sure a lot of our listeners and readers are wondering like, how do I get promoted faster as a PM? Uh, it's maybe start with that, but also you mentioned maybe getting promoted isn't as important as you think it is. So maybe talk about that too.
Nikhyl Singhal: I always handle this topic somewhat carefully because I think promotion is a personal, decision. I mean, some people feel like promotion is a great way to be seen and it's important to be seen in the workplace. So what I would say is the fastest way to get promoted is to heat seek into an environment where your superpowers are on display, you feel seen, and you are your true self at work. If you're not seen, then it always sort of makes it harder for you to take risk. It also makes it harder for you not to have resentment. If you are your true self in the workplace, you just spend a lot less energy doing this recalculation every time you step forward or say something or write an email. A true self at work means that what your natural instincts is the way you appear.
And that means that the energy spent is around being who you are, as opposed to being maybe the person that you think the company needs. And lastly, when your superpowers on display, then your strengths are showing, you feel great about it. You feel like you are able to leverage those strengths and do something that drives impact that will drive fast promotion because the energy is spent correctly.
You're harnessing your strengths and you're turning that into real outcomes.
I think that the concern around promotion that you laid out is that I think increasingly if I was given a choice between someone who's very steadfast on speedily going through the promotion levels. Hey, if it takes typical candidates, 18 months, I'm going to do it in 12 and make that my push.
And then I had another person who was essentially building a story around what they created and what the challenges they work through. And they had a quicker and more efficient path to leadership. The leadership path is really what you're trying to optimize for and the builder story is the critical ingredient to get there and it has the environment that we signaled earlier.
I think that this promotion pace, or even I can't get promoted because of budget constraints or because that role doesn't exist, but I'm learning, these things are fine to slow down on. If you're really getting that promotion story replaced with a builder story.
Peter Yang: That makes sense. Yeah, because promotion can happen I guess at your current company or it can happen at another company too.
Nikhyl Singhal: Yeah, absolutely, to your point. And oftentimes you might see promotions or transitions take place because you leave a company. And you move to another, maybe higher role, and that's where the promotion took place. And I think that you also have to realize that promotions make sense for the company, because you've achieved the things that the company needs.
But when you look at leaders, just because you got promoted at company A. Doesn't mean that you're going to be a great leader in company B. Counterpoint also exists just because you're not getting promoted. Doesn't mean you're not going to be a great leader. Oftentimes, for example, soft skills make a huge difference.
And those soft skills oftentimes aren't in the promotion ladder, but it turns out are massively important. So if you said, look, I'm really learning how to influence folks, it's preventing me from getting promoted. I'm going to punch through. If I took this other position, I wouldn't need to show that I'll get a bigger role.
But then you said I mastered the soft skills by learning patience. And then it turned out that was a huge career unlock and I became head of product. I made ten times as much money. I'm like, well, did promotion really matter in that case? The lack of promotion actually helped you. So these are the things that I always look at.
You just want to look at the whole board. And you know, there's no right or wrong here, but it's very personal to you. But just think about more than just the promotion, the title, and then the comp that comes with it.
Peter Yang: So let's talk about like the end state of a PM's career, you know, like, is everyone going to destiny become like a VP or CPO or like, are there other paths that PMs can explore.
Nikhyl Singhal: Yeah. When I think about like what sort of the end goal of a lot of folks, I think it kind of falls into maybe four or five buckets. I think that, as you pointed out, the natural course is to just take on bigger scope at more consequential companies , you know, ultimately, seniority is based on what's the biggest problem I can hand you, Peter, you know, I can determine how senior you are, which just, just essentially, I give you a very, very, very big problem. I give you relatively little guidance and you can solve it. And through the product management lens, the biggest role for the biggest problems are the head of that function that had a product role. Now, so that's essentially the most common and usually the pitfalls are that we see are people that need to move from their passion in building products to their passion in building the factory that creates the products. It's not the cars. It's the factory. So what you end up having to do is, be very good about first making sure you know how to build products and then being able to take that step back and then being able to systematize that that's what a great head of product does. And that's what usually people get excited about. I think that the second, is this sort of general executive general manager type.
And so this is essentially not the head of product. It's the chief operating officer, the president. The, uh, CEO of the company, these roles, I would say are different. You know, what you end up finding is this is an individual who says, well, product is a means to an end.
I'm actually as passionate about building the product as I am around building the business. And when you think about the business side, you start looking at it wider. And so a very sort of common second path for the top performers that I coach, they often say, look, I want to get a wider role. And again, that might be a general manager of a division, or it might be the COO and it changes depending on the scale and stage and the nomenclature and the structure of the organization.
The third is to say, you know, it's less about me being passionate about creating and building both the product or the process. And it's less about me kind of being passionate about the business. I'm more passionate about the creation of new. You know, the zero to one journey, this is the third, and this is the founder journey, and I think that founder could live inside of a more structured company.
The so called zero to one bets that happen adjacent to maybe a core business, but often they're early stage. And founder journeys are super different and often they are emotional journeys for people. In other words, it's, not that people sit down and say, hey, I'm trying to decide, do I want to found a company or be head of product?
Usually if they can get a head of product, that's the safer gig. So it's harder and harder for people to say, well, no, I'm going to give up the income. I'm going to give up the prestige and the management of a large team. So I'm all by myself. And I'm going to go do this thing from the beginning, those that do choose that make emotional decision.
This is where I can be my best. This is the environment where I can show my new superpower. This is the itch that I need to scratch. So founders are for that builder you know, person. The product executive VP is for that executive who loves the function. And then the general manager is the one who likes constructing companies as opposed to constructing new innovations.
Now the, the fourth is this sort of investor archetype. And that one I think is rare for product people, frankly, but it does happen a reasonable amount because you have to move from being passionate about the product and the business to being passionate about the return. And so the best investors are very, very focused on what's the return that I'm going to see from the portfolio investments I make, and not specifically one, those that are interested in coaching or building typically will self select into more of the other boxes, but those that are looking at creating a portfolio and going after return and seeing things market long term, that makes sense.
And then lastly, there's this sort of semi-retired advisor type, which I don't necessarily put on the docket. That's kind of act three. When you've done these sort of other more operating roles, you move into the hey, I don't want to retire. I'll stay, you know, a little bit engaged in that, you know, that may be another option.
But usually what I find is the career frameworks for people that are looking at each of these four are vastly different. You know, you wouldn't need to get promoted to become a founder, you know, as an example, being an investor requires a whole different skill set than maybe, you know, grinding it out in the product arena.
Peter Yang: Yeah, I think it's good to take a step back from just the career ladders. I think about. You know, who you really want to be, I guess. Yeah. Like, I probably can never be a good investor because, like, I need a rapid feedback loops and investors wait 10, 10 years to see what's going on.
Nikhyl Singhal: Well, and you're a builder, Peter. I mean, I think you like building and you like the customer and you like thinking deeply about a particular problem. I think that's different than thinking deeply about a space, you know, and looking at it from a many, many dimensions and being like, hey, maybe this company won't make it, but this other one will, that's a harder thing to do when you're so passionate about like, you know, finding the best outcomes for everything.
Peter Yang: The environment that you join plays as large a role in your success as kind of like your, your own skills, right? You're going to find an environment that matches your skills. So you had a really good blog post a few years ago about different stages of company that you can join. And maybe you can like, uh, give an updated version of that. Now that we're in this economy.
Nikhyl Singhal: You know, it's funny because I've been thinking about that quite a bit. I wrote, that was my first, piece of content that I ever published on the internet was this idea that I feel felt that people always define product management the same. They sort of said, this is what product management is or does.
And I always thought, well, boy, when you look at the stages of company, it's vastly different. Early stage product management is very much navigating the drunken walk. You know, how do you get, you know, as many mistakes out of the system as possible and then fails fast. And then when you finally find product market fit, actually, you flip product management to be much more of a protective function. The protection is I have smoke. Make sure it doesn't go out. Make sure it turns into fire. So now you introduce process. You introduce process in the earlier stage, and it's quite cumbersome. You introduce process. Now it's perfect because you're protecting. You're making sure there's visibility of customers.
Finally, you don't want to lose those customers. in the last 10, 15 years, as you and I both know, hyper growth has become quite a thing. With distribution platforms that exist from Facebook to, to Google, to Apple, you can put things in an app store and all of a sudden catch fire overnight.
And so companies can go from 0 to 100 and what took LinkedIn 10 years may take over 18 months. And so this sort of hyper growth has a vastly different product management function. Again, it's the building the org, building the factory, it's expanding a working product line into adjacency. And so all the fun parts of product management are on display, the crafting pieces, the scaling pieces, the organization, the growth pieces are all there.
And then you hit to a place of, of scale, the big tech, so to speak, where you have market leadership and there you're not only managing a scaled environment. But you're also having conversations around like innovators dilemma. How do I start over again? How do I start from the beginning? What do I create something new from the early stages?
And so to your question, these stages have a rapid impact on all the roles within an organization. And so often when I talk to people about career and they're like, hey, I'm looking at company A company B. I said, well, hold on a second. Let's erase the names for a second. What stage of company is most appropriate for you, given where you are in your career, where will you be seen the most, what environment will you get to flow quickly?
Right? So that's sort of the framework. And I think that the second part of your question is like, what's changed because I think that that that article that I wrote now, probably 5, 6 years ago, deserves a refresh. For the reasons I mentioned before that, hey, maybe your goal is to get to leadership, which is managing folks.
Well, hyper growth ain't so hyper anymore and, you know, product management has now become more of a builder function again and less of an organizational function. So what I would say is that the main difference is, my counsel in the past was avoid being a product manager while a company is in product market fit.
You know, you'd much rather be a founder, being the person who has the same risk of whether the company will succeed, but not being the founder, that to some extent is not a great profile. What I would say to you now is I mostly agree with that statement, but I do think the people that come in when a company has had a little bit of funding.
And they are moving very thoughtfully into a space, but they don't have product market fit and you can join and build a builder story. You can come in with a relatively small team, partner closely with the founders, get a meaningful stake of the company, but actually carry the company through product market fit.
That role is more successful and valuable than if you were to go join an X growth company, which was a large number of your readers and my listeners are in these companies that were highly valued that are privately held, that have really struggled to make their valuation work. That, as a result, means that they're in layoffs, they're trying to eventually get back to those days when they were able to raise money with 0 percent interest rates, they were able to get to those valuation days.
What I worry about is those positions, those product management roles are actually very defensive. They're working backwards from a very, very heavy headwind. While on the other hand, if you have a clean structure company that is essentially able to not have to deliver product and a terrible valuation, it actually might be a pretty good gig.
So one change is that earlier stage product management, I do recommend and slower growth environments, which have not gone through a big drop. Actually might be more valuable than a hyper growth environments that have had that big hit. So there's been some shifts and how I manage it mostly because I think things are just growing more slowly X hyper growth, I think, is a dangerous zone.
Peter Yang: Probably switched too many companies in my career, but like, what are some, uh, good and bad reasons for changing companies?
Nikhyl Singhal: Best reason to change companies is that you feel in your, and you have that data to support that you're growing faster than the company or the project enables you to grow. I think that you always want the company to go slightly faster than you essentially a bit of a magnetic pull to help you kind of move forward.
When you look at the folks that have been at these big tech environments and have stayed for long, they were able to keep up the pace of growth. But the company just was a little bit ahead of them, so they were always like, oh my gosh, just like the company's growing so much faster. I'm just trying to stay on top of things when people struggle is when they're like, look, I feel like I've mastered this sort of size of problem.
I can take the size of problem that you're giving me, but I can also take a larger one but I look around and that larger problem just doesn't exist here. The problems that do exist are problems that I am not interested in solving and they're not career additive. They're helpful to the company, but not for me.
When you are growing faster than your company, it's a red line. It's time for you to potentially find a faster growing opportunity or one where you can have a wider berth. Like going to an earlier stage company means that maybe you're not just doing product management. Maybe you're doing a lot of things, because you don't have those functions. Maybe you're doing a little marketing, a little business, talking to customers, et cetera. Okay. That's growth, but when you're growing faster than your company, that to me feels like the company's holding you back now, the flip side is, you know, and I think we talked a little bit about this as like, as an example.
A bad reason is, you know, you're not getting promoted as quickly as you expect and your frustration is that, hey, I'm doing great work, but the company is holding off on this carrot. Maybe they're holding off because there's a small amount of feedback that people are saying, and you're not comfortable with that feedback and you think it should be ignored and they feel like it shouldn't, or the company is just increasingly more budget constrained.
And so the bar has gone up, or the next role isn't available to you in the position. And in those examples, it's deeply frustrating, but is it reason to transition? Is it reason to leave? Maybe, but I think that if you, for example, came to me and said, hey, I just feel like it's time for me to go. I've been looking for promotion and I earned it and it's not available.
And I said, well, tell me about the culture. So yeah, the culture is great. You know, my manager is actually easy to work with. I really like my peers. I feel like I'm seen, I feel like I don't have to really spend a lot of time translating my thinking. I said, okay, well, do you feel like you're learning? It's like, well, yeah, I feel like, I'm still solving a bigger problem.
And it's just, you know, we're sort of halfway done. So I'm, you know, I can see in the next six months, I've got some really interesting things. And what about your builder story? It's like, well, I, I feel like I'll be able to show version two to version three. you know, I think that'll be some additive learning.
You're growing by all measures. You're just not being acknowledged. By an increase in title or increase in compensation. I feel like your goal is to grow. Yes, promotion is important, but boy, as you and I talked about, maybe that'll translate into the next job.
So I always want people to think a little more broadly and not just think about my promotion is blocking me move fast, and then that play the game that 12 versus 18 versus 24 months. It isn't very good long term. Though, I think it is frustrating when you don't get promoted and you deserve it. And, you know, you just have to be thoughtful as to why.
Peter Yang: Yeah, I think, uh, people don't realize how rare it is to, you know, have a good manager, good culture, good builder story, like have all those things, like actually match up. It is like a pretty rare scenario from my experience. So if you have a good thing, it's like, probably should keep it around.
Nikhyl Singhal: Even if you have a few of those good things, you know, your point is it's hard to get them all. I'm like, sometimes it's even hard to get a few of those things. You know, hey, I like my culture. I like the product. I like the people I work with. Maybe right now is not the best time to pop around.
Maybe you kind of say this year is okay for me to sort of like, stay steady. Market kind of improves. Maybe some of these X growth companies go away, they get replaced by the next breed that are much cleaner. Maybe it works in your favor. Patience can be a virtue when it comes to career. If things are going okay, you can tell the kinds of things that I look for versus the kinds of things that I think might be more stereotypical.
Peter Yang: What about, what about the listeners and readers who already, like who have already kind of jumped around a little bit too much? you think they can recover from this?
Nikhyl Singhal: Yeah, maybe there's two ways to answer that question. I think that... If you find yourself in short term tenures, I think they are not as helpful from a career point of view, but they're also not as damaging as people believe they are in their resume. A lot of people come and say to me, I feel like I have to be at this next job for a much longer period of time because the last three jobs I've only been able to make work for a couple of years.
I'm like, well, if you're an elite candidate, you'll get hired. There's not a lot of people that are like, hey, you're in tech, but because you're only able to sort of stay for two years, there must be something wrong with you. What they'll ask about is what were the reasons? Well, I took some risks and the company wasn't able to work it out, you know, it turns out that the organization ended up folding the position.
It turns out that the manager and the environment was weak and I knew I could get a much better gig. Well, okay, these are real reasons. So I think that there's an argument to be made that the optics of moving around quickly actually is not as stereotypical as what maybe we thought about it, you know, in our parents age.
The average tenure for tech jobs is like a couple of years. So if it's really a couple of years, and I don't think it's a huge stigma, I think that the concern, though, is that most people see the most impact in year 3 and year 4, particularly when the thing has is working your medium to late stage career, you know, when I joined, for example, Meta, I knew that it was going to take a couple of years before I really understood the culture in the system. And I was seeking a role where I was actually have the time to learn because I really wanted to be here a bit more long term. I didn't really want to make this a quick stint. I thought, well, if I'm going to be a leader, it's going to take me a while to learn how to be a leader here.
I made a leader elsewhere. But openly know that there needs to be some understanding of changing what I stand for what my, tactics are. And for me, that was actually where I was able to see a lot more value in those later years. And so that's what I always hope for people to think about.
Now, to your question, is there hope for those that are, you know, historically, moving around quickly. there is hope because every job is a new job. And I've seen lots of examples myself included where I was kind of a 2 and a half year guy for the first, you know, 14 years of my career. And then I've become a 4 or 5 year guy.
So, you know, that can change. I think a lot of it has to do with what the person's optimizing for. So again, if you're chasing titles, you're chasing a great product, great manager, something unique, well, those things come and go. On the other hand, you're like, I want to have mastery of a skill. I want to start with this as a development area, then move to practicing and then move to mastering.
Or I want to be able to go from maybe being an individual contributor to a manager or manager to an executive. Or I want to be able to have impact on seeing a stable, successful product change. Or move from number two to number one. When you start changing the goal of what you're looking for from career.
I think that's when you really start to say, Hey, maybe long term isn't so bad because that first year it's okay. It's okay. If this is not so great, I'm going to stick it out because I'm not looking for something longer, and I still think I'm on that through line. That's what's the remedy or the hope for those folks.
Peter Yang: Got it. Yeah, you're kind of like building your story.
Nikhyl Singhal: And you're thinking long term, right? You're thinking about what really is meaningful for you to get that next, next job.
Peter Yang: I think a few months ago, you posted on LinkedIn, just like salary table, uh, permanent manager salaries at top tier companies, and you got some pretty spicy comments. People were shocked at how much—
Nikhyl Singhal: A lot of spicy comments. Yeah.
Peter Yang: Yeah. you know, just to kind of recap, like, you know, they show that senior PMs are making like 500k+ and like directors are making 1 million+ And, uh, I guess the first question is, you know, well, why do you think comp is so high at these companies? Like, why are they paying people so much?
Nikhyl Singhal: Yeah, That was an interesting post because I learned a lot. Because what was funny is publicly, a lot of people are like, this is, certainly inaccurate. And they would point me to various data sources. That are actually quite accurate and they're like, look, this guy smoking dope.
I mean, we've got 150K for senior and this guy's saying a 500 and this and that. And then privately, I received dozens and dozens and dozens of notes where everyone was like, yep, that's exactly the numbers that I see as well. But nobody has any thing to gain by publishing what the top companies, the top candidates get we live in a system where a relatively small number of folks are able to get those jobs and those that have them don't run around telling everyone that, hey, this is what we make now. I heard this really compelling story of someone who sat with me and said, what's fascinating is, he grew up outside the Bay Area. He grew up in, you know, Phoenix and he had moved to the Bay Area mid stage of career.
And so he was talking to me about this notion around these numbers and he said, you know, if I saw this article 10 years ago when I was still in Phoenix, I would have thought this entire thing is fabricated and almost certainly foolish. There's no way these numbers are accurate. Now, 10 years later, these are my numbers.
And so I completely understand it. But what's fascinating is I'm the same guy as I was in Phoenix. Like, I didn't go through some massive metamorphosis as a professional. The key and the reason why I published these numbers was that it's not the case that only the people that live in a certain area or went to a certain school or have this special superpower are able and eligible to get it.
Many of the people that are not in these areas that are not in these jobs and that are in different regions are fully capable and are even more qualified than those that have it. They need to have the opportunity, the courage to actually get those roles. And that's the reason why I'm so excited to continue to talk about compensation and sort of open up the data for people to understand that for the moment, think about the fact that these are the top roles, but they don't require skills that you as a listener as a reader cannot obtain.
And that's the story of hope that I'm hoping to drive forward. To answer your question, why are the numbers so significant? It makes sense if you have a multi billion dollar company, the changes that you make, the decisions you make in particular on strategy will have an amplifying impact on the overall value of the company.
And so people get that look at the stock is going to go up because we make these changes. We've got to make these changes correctly. And then they basically pay to find the right leaders. And the funny part is in a company of maybe a thousand people, how many of those leaders exist in those positions?
Is it five hundred of the thousand? Certainly not. Is it fifty of the thousand? Probably not. If you've been in a thousand person company, there may be like twenty people. And those are the people that are often in these leadership roles, which are often product management positions. That are actually tasked with making these important decisions.
And so what the company does is they say, look, we'll pay you half equity, half cash. turns out that equity goes way, way, way up when the company makes the right decision. When the company makes that much kind of money, that creates this average number of $500k or $1m or $2m or $5m And then that means that, well, if that person's going to leave.
And they're going to be attracted by another company, well, that company has to pay that too. So if the best people to get those jobs end up being needing to move in market they're not going to make a financially bad decision. I'm not going to say if I can make $1m dollars here, I'll work for your company for half a million dollars.
Because that's what you pay. They're just going to be like, thank you. But no, thank you. what happens is the market is essentially set to the impact that it can have because equity is such a big piece of it. Equity starts to grow when it gets liquid. And that's what kind of drives the numbers in the way that I've described.
Peter Yang: Yeah. I mean, just kind of like continue to thread. I mean, I think having this data out there is very great for transparency. Yeah, people look at this data and they're like, you know, I'm like a director at another company right now. I'm making less than a senior PM. And I think it's good to realize this kind of stuff.
Nikhyl Singhal: I think titles are sort of relatively valueless in our industry because there's no standardization, most companies that are early, they literally make up titles. There's the extremes, everybody's a VP. And then there's some companies where nobody has a title and everything in between.
if you're title chasing, you're chasing, you know, a rainbow because that title changes based on the structure of the company. But what size of problem. That you can go after is kind of the key calculation.
When you say to me that there's a director that's making less than a senior PM.
Well, a senior PM is someone who's really can practice the craft of product management who has shown the ability to deliver. And do that within some reasonable size of ambiguity. That's the definition within most structured, larger, later stage environments. And for that, let's say that we pay them somewhere between 250 and 600, you know, maybe 4 or 500K.
Okay. Now, a director that is essentially. Doing product management for the first time, but thrust into it because they were good engineering manager. They were the one of the first employees is actually not going to be able to get that senior PM job that I just described. From my point of view, maybe it does make sense that the senior PM is paid more.
But I'm a director. I'm like, well, what are you actually directing? You're directing a company that has a product that has yet to exist and find product market fit, and you're not really managing many people. And those that are being managed aren't actually that hard to replace. Now I'm being extreme, but I'm saying that sometimes, you could take one person and move them easily into one direction than another, and the market tends to be smart about this. if someone comes to me and says, I have a choice between a senior PM role, which seems like a much more junior tile than a director at an earlier stage company, and I'm like, well, you got both opportunities.
My guess is they're going to pay something similar actually, because both of them require similar skills. And the market tends to attract for the same job. It tends to pay roughly the same amount. What tends to be different is the mix between cash and equity. Hey, I'm a director at a company that's earlier stage. The company is giving me half a percent of the company, but they're paying me one third of what I can make in a later stage environment. And I'm like, yeah, so you would have to believe that you can make up two thirds. In the equity or more, and then maybe on a level basis, it's roughly the same amount of money, but if you just throw out the equity, I'm like, well, I'm never going to make any money on this equity and I'm making a third. I'm like, well, why would you take that job if you can get the other job?
My articles talked a lot about this sort of title and in fact, the table that you're referencing actually shows different companies and different title structures and how the directors at a late stage may be equivalent to a VP that exists at a mid stage. Which might be equivalent to a C level job at an early stage.
And then to your point, if your goal is to get the biggest title, then you would take the biggest risk and you would come in early. But maybe that's like a terrible decision for you career wise, but that would be what happens when you title chase. And so that's why title and comp and all these things are so connected and so difficult to kind of use sort of generic kind of guidance around.
Peter Yang: So before we move on to our last topic, like, do you have any advice for like, negotiating comp especially with all the layoffs going on, and like, still pretty tight job market?
Nikhyl Singhal: No matter how tight the market is, I think that, you know, you should be always paid fairly. If you don't feel like you're paid fairly, then you'll end up in a resentful situation and then they'll lead to short tenures.
So, I think the way to get paid fairly is to know your band. So, based on the level and skill that you have. what is the size of problem? You know, I tend to sort of say, Hey, you know, I can quickly have a conversation with you, Peter, for example, and I'll probably generally know, okay, you bucket into this level of seniority and perhaps that's a director here, a VP here and perhaps a C level here, whatever it might be, and then I know that those pay roughly the same amount, maybe that pays like a million bucks.
And if that's going to pay a million bucks, because you're an elite candidate, and I'm like, okay, well, then I'm going to try to make sure that if person gets that offer and they're in that range, then I'm going to be pretty happy. And if they're getting an offer that's significantly off of that range, or their expectations are they should be paid more because their past job, they were paid more.
Then I'm going to basically be nervous and I'm going to say, look, you know, you, you, you were paid a lot, but maybe you were overpaid in the past. What about that? Does that make sense now? Or you're getting this offer, but this doesn't really make sense. Now, of course, the question is like, how do you compare these early and late stage?
And you kind of have to do this expected value. You have to put some value against the equity and put that together. And so knowing your band is sort of the first thing. The second kind of pro tip is, you know, try to get some choices. Because if you think that, you know, hey, I have my current job. This is what I do and this is what I've made. And I have this other opportunity. I'm trying to decide between stay versus go. It's not a great decision. Better decision is I've talked to a few folks and these are the two or three offers. And they may be quite different. Hey, one's a late stage, one's a little bit more risky, one's a little bit, a little slower growth.
Then I'm like, oh, what's the band that you're being seen as becomes very apparent. And then you can say, well, if the market's saying this, that one seems like a good job, but it's a compensation outlier. So we should be pushing on that, but we can make a credible point that, hey, I've got some other offers and these are the numbers.
And that's the reason why I'm pushing on it. So anytime you get a market sense, it validates your band, but it also gives you some negotiation power. When people come to me and they say, well, I'm just starting process with this company that's really good. But I have this offer. I'm like, you screwed up.
You time things incorrectly, you ended up getting offers in series, like you should have timed it and had a crescendo and brought them all in the same place.
Nikhyl Singhal: And then the third thing I would say, a big kind of miss that people make is I think people spend a lot less time thinking about tenure and a lot more time thinking about comp. And so what I've said to a lot of CPOs is they're sitting there dying on the hill to get that. $2m versus say $1.5m and I sort of say, look, man, I think you're probably going to be able to push it and get this comp, but I have a real worry that the job that you are turning down, that's like 1.2 instead of two, that's a three year gig. The one you're in, they fired the last two predecessors within two years. You're not going to make your second year anniversary, which job is going to pay you more? Well, it turns out the other one is going to allow you to have a lot more impact. You're not running around with your hair on fire and looking over your back all day long.
Tenure matters. And I, as I previously said, sometimes people think less about, hey, can I succeed in the role that I've been given and eventually get the impact in year three, they're trying to maximize everything. Biggest job, best comp right now, go, go. They show up, they're like, this job sucks and I'm barely able to survive.
And a year afterwards, they're like coming back. That is not a great comp chall. You know, yes, you can increase comp, but it's a terrible career and it actually reduces your income. So that's the three things that I'd point out.
Peter Yang: I really like that last point, actually, because, you know, like CPOs usually have a pretty short tenure. So I think it really matters. But even at the lower levels, I think like entering at a slightly lower level means that you can exceed your expectations and like, get a good reputation in the company and excel as opposed to coming slightly all over your head.
Let's cover the last topic, which you've been writing about recently, which is the, the shadows of your superpowers. Let me just talk about what this means
briefly.
Nikhyl Singhal: As we get into leadership and management and later in career, I think that is increasingly hard. To find development areas and improve them. And there's just a bunch of reasons why not the least of which is there's subtle, if there were glaring weaknesses, someone would have pointed it out.
Even the less skilled managers would know if you have fundamental flaws, but by the time you get to some degree of success, most of those things are sort of not apparent and your managers often are not as skilled in managing other executives or other leaders. Because the skill of managing managers is actually quite a rare skill.
And oftentimes you have gotten to a place of success where even the light, subtle feedback that's perhaps inconsistent, that feedback is easily dismissed and frankly may be dismissed by your manager and your peers. And so what happens is you end up in this challenge where people come to me and they're like, I'm really feeling like I've struggled to have the impact that I'm supposed to have at this stage of career, they might have had a series of short tenures, they might have had trouble getting promoted to say, an executive VP role.
And there's sort of something that's happening, but that's unsaid. And it's not that they're bad, they're actually successful, so they're just sort of plateauing. That's where this sort of notion of shadows of superpowers is emanated from. Because what you're looking for is some language and some understanding of, well, where would subtlety exist that's holding you back that you could not easily find?
And what it usually would have said is that, well, what if it was sitting adjacent, maybe a sidecar, to a strength area? well, sometimes when you're strong in something, it actually creates a counter. You know, that lightness has a darkness to it, but that darkness is subtle, and it only appears in occasional areas and when brought up, they're like, well, yeah, that's because this person is this, they have this light but the problem is that those darkness, those shadows can hold you back and lead to some very, very challenging work, but they're so hard to find and work on because every time you try to work on them, you're confronted with this bright light of strength. And the last thing you want to do is take your strength down in an attempt to try to go after some perceived inconsistent weakness. And so you end up getting stuck. This is the reason why that article went viral. And this is the reason why I think this is such an interesting area of coaching and development.
Peter Yang: Let's say you have someone who is, you know, cares a lot about customers, wants to get shit done. You know, cares a lot about, like, quality, craft, and so on. And then, uh, yeah, he's been doing pretty well.
And then he's getting this feedback about, like, Oh, you need to slow down a little bit. You need to, like, tie it to a long term vision. You need to bring people along with what you're doing. How would you coach this
person?
Nikhyl Singhal: Without knowing the specific scenario, I think that the tee up that you're given is pretty strong. I think what I'm hearing is this person is precious about the product that they're building. They're essentially very focused on the craft. They're very focused on what's being delivered to the customer.
At the degree of detail and at the degree of decisioning that allows them to be opinionated. And we've seen many great examples of great products. Where there's subtlety and detail and just thoughtfulness. And usually there's folks like this behind it who just care and breathe product. So then the question is, well, why would that be a challenge?
And I think that when you have a taste that makes it special, you tend to use I a lot as opposed to we a lot. Right, when you use I, it's essentially like this is the thing that I want to build because I care about this and I want to fuse my soul into the product that's there. the challenge, though, is that the goal is not to build the thing that you want.
The goal is to build a thing that the customer wants. And so the first observation is, well, what happens when you're not quite right? Then the question is, well, we need to adjust. But the thing is that if you're so focused on being right, being accurate to your own thinking. You don't have any real space in its ability to essentially say, well, maybe I had to put something out there, but not be so focused on getting a perfect just because I want to get some signal.
And then the second thing that sort of is very related is that, you have to ask yourself is building product a single or multiplayer game. If you're working in a company, and it's not your company, answer is it's a multiplayer game. You can't succeed unless the entire team comes along. And when it's a multiplayer game, the question is, would you, the product crafter, want to work with yourself?
If you were in the team, would you want to be part of that team game? And I think that that's the challenge is that, you know, founders struggle when they go to the single player, they start a company cause they want to do it exactly the right way. And then they struggle to scale because they're so into the details at the same time, it's so necessary to be opinionated to find product market fit, but they have to shed that that becomes their shadow when they become successful. That prevents their superpower from really adopting. You have to make it a team game when you join a company, it's not your company. It's the customers' company.
It's the founders company. It's the executive's. So you have to make it a partnership, but it's this understanding that people have to recognize is what's the cost of being precious.
And you have to find a balance of gripping the steering wheel a little more loosely to allow the car to go to a common destination, not just a destination you're 100 percent convinced is right and then swerving to the next and all the team coming along, whether they like it or not.
Peter Yang: How do you address this weakness without sacrificing your superpower?
Nikhyl Singhal: I think that when I've seen it addressed, I think about half of it is understanding. The problem of what the goal should be. So what I mean by that is you get to a stage where you say, I think the goal is not to build the thing that I want. I think the goal is to have the team build the thing that customer wants.
And I have a very important role in that.
When you kind of come to that conclusion, the person maybe leans a little bit back on their superpower and has to essentially find a way to edit their superpower, not to say, okay, great, but then I won't say anything. It's like, no, you don't want to pout. You don't want to hide your superpower.
You want to adjust your superpower. Hey, I have a point of view. It's a strong point of view, but it's loosely held in the process of being loosely held. I want it to be influenced, but that mindset. Is, oh, okay, the goal is to build the thing that we should get to, and I have the ability to not necessarily win the product decision, but implant my opinion when it matters.
And when you have that mindset, you're like, oh, I can be opinionated, but not always be the winner of every decision. And then I think that you also sort of go through this idea that, hey, I think you landing the product the way you want is actually a tactic and not necessarily the goal.
And then when you build something that works and the team is part of it and they see more success, sometimes they get, they get feedback, they don't get the feedback that, hey, you're too precious and you make it hard for us to be seen, but then the moment they adjust like the first week. Hey, what do other people think?
Maybe we should go a different direction. Maybe it's okay for us to get some customer feedback and ship this, maybe the way we want people come out of the woodwork and say, I feel so great about that decision. Thanks for giving me a chance to hold the ball. And you're like, huh. I had no idea that that was actually important to people.
To me, when they start getting a little bit of positive feedback, when they didn't get it before, and they start realizing that the goal might not have been the same thing. It might've been the goal when they were earlier in career, but not today. That's when the shadows are finally cast in the light.
Peter Yang: I also think, like, just like, being public about your shadow is just like, hey, you know, I have strong opinions, but you should disagree with me.
Nikhyl Singhal: If that's genuine, exactly. I think I love your point, signaling what you're working on and signaling that your style is maybe not as much in cement as maybe it comes across. Because sometimes people's language is more, maybe tighter than it really needs to be. And then they, to your point, need to signal that it is okay to give me feedback in this arena. Permissioning actually can really make a difference in this case.
Peter Yang: Awesome. This is an awesome conversation. you know, just for my readers, where can people find you online?
Nikhyl Singhal: Yeah, for sure. Well, so I typically spend time on LinkedIn just because I feel like a lot of the professional audience, a lot of the folks looking for career are there. So you can easily find me there. Skip podcast and Skip newsletter are going to be areas that I think most of the folks listening to this or watching this are going to be aware of.
And then obviously, I respond to emails going into both of those. And I'm also on on Twitter/X. You can DM me there too. So these are all areas that. You know, I love to hear from folks and, and give me feedback on other topics that you're struggling with, even if it's a superpower and a shadow or compensation questions or any of the great and great discussions you had.
And maybe Peter, I'll ask you the same question for my listeners and my readers, where can they find you and your content and your, your Substack?
Peter Yang: Yeah, same same places like LinkedIn and X. And also my blog is on createreconomy.so.
Nikhyl Singhal: That's great. Well, I mean, I am so glad we had a chance to connect. Thanks for doing a little bit of a Q&A with me. I think that'll be helpful to sort of hear some of the content in one episode from some of the past notes, as well as, you know, to get your point of view on some of these really tricky career questions.
It's really a pleasure to see you again.