Struggling in Career - Early Product Manager
Hi, I'm M24 - graduated in 2024! Been into working in startups my whole life (never on one of my own tho)
After working in multiple internships my entire college life, I got an above-the-market pay job in Mumbai - the first full time job. The work has its own highs and lows(mostly). Been a year & a quarter since I started working with these guys in Product Management! Doesn't feel like I'm learning anything hard/relevant - how do I know (I started Interviewing and I can't say jack shit on what I bring to table - Extreme imposter syndrome) - lately I feel like doing a lot of grunt work - trying to collaborate but seems like my entire team ignores me! - A lot of executives assistant work/research work/founder's office works
Founder was an engineer and he's completely ENG focussed and at times feels looks down on PM and Design/marketing and feels all of this is same and the reason I joined was to work with him more often! He's in the states - so we rarely connect! I work with my CPO who's in the states too! Working on a GenAI product but I'm not feeling heard and frankly it's not exciting or challenging anymore! I'm frankly working all the hours I can possibly put in! But feels like I'm the guy who's there for context - help ENG understand flow if they get struck - and push them to implement things! These get bulldozed when founder comes in as a well!
Lately (Although extremely rare) have been getting good feedback from my CPO - but I honestly feel a bit fake! I tried talking to the same about how I feel more and more bored by the day - I want more exciting work - we keep having these conversations but it doesn't go anywhere! But I'm pretty sure I'm also not ready if a complete end-to-end feature comes my way!
Extremely concerned about my career, growth - the pay is above market and all the other opportunities I see for sure pays less than this! Felt burnt out a while ago - trying to tackle that! Mental health has gone out of the window as well!
Any Advice on how to deal with this situation?
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
Same boat bro