Background story

My background includes a Product Manager role in a 300-person online gaming company, as well as a Head of Product position in a 5000-person Google competitor. I also co-founded a game-dev startup and acted as a CEO/CPO. Each job had its challenges but I loved all of them.

Things changed when I joined Amazon in 2017. I loved the product, I loved the domain and the intellectual challenge, I loved working in downtown Seattle, and I enjoyed working with a very supportive team, but yet, something was fundamentally broken. 

I had zero energy left when I would come home at 5pm. The only thing I could manage was watching inspirational movies on Netflix.

Being a framework-loving person, I analyzed what kept me energized at my previous roles. I found a huge discrepancy between the scope of what I loved to do and what I was doing there, at Amazon. I adjusted my approach when looking for my new role, and now I am happy again at Google.

Now, I want to share the framework I created and the results I’ve seen. Take a look and see if it works for you.

Spoiler: If you fill out the form at the end of this page, you’ll get your results of applying this framework.

PM Daisy framework dimensions: coverage and involvement

With the framework, I explored two dimensions:

• First, I outlined the main workstreams I was ever responsible for. For example, creating and owning product artifacts, designing user experiences, running data analytics, being responsible for P&L, building partner relationships, doing customer or market research, etc.

• Then, I identified how much involvement and control I had over each of those workstreams. I either was doing it myself, or I worked with a dedicated team or team members whose scope of work I defined. Sometimes, I was partnering with an external resource to my product team, influencing their roadmap and leveraging their expertise and resources. 

I then visualized my roles from the past by putting those dimensions together in a Daisy-like graph form, and compared roles among each other. It quickly became clear what was going on with me at Amazon.

Some hypothetical examples to better understand the meaning of PMDaisy

Applying the framework to my story

• On the left: I was building one of the company portfolio products in the area that was the main expertise for the company – games. My day-to-day job was focused mainly on product development. All external-facing and business-oriented processes, like partnerships, marketing, and revenue management, were taken care of by relevant departments and their resources were at my disposal.

• On the right: Co-founding an independent game development studio required me to do everything myself (sometimes, even submitting production code).

• On the left: I was a Head of Product, also responsible for P&L. I had to manage a cross-functional team that reported directly to me. I also had a wide network of external resources. In addition, I was also wearing a PM hat, doing all PM-related tasks myself. It was the happiest time of my career.

• On the right: At Amazon, I became an Individual Contributor again. I went to great depth for several workstreams, but I lost the breadth of responsibilities and impact.

Now, the source of my pain has been identified. I didn’t do my homework well enough to really understand what that role would be like for me.

I think it is important to note here that I see nothing wrong with being an Individual Contributor or with working for Amazon. I know a lot of awesome people who would feel the opposite if they were in my position. Amazon is a great company, it has many interesting and challenging areas to work on. Some people also love being Individual Contributors, they love going deep, they don’t love managing multiple connections and being responsible for something they don’t quite care about. The particular combination just was not for me.

My next job at Google

I adjusted requirements for my next job, extensively interviewed potential future teams before choosing the one to join, and here is how my first role at Google looked like (I have recently moved to a new role at YouTube):

I’m almost there, see? My next career step would be to get back my business and people management paddles back.

Does it apply to other people?

I surveyed eight friends who worked in different companies as PMs. Here are their Daisies:

Let’s take a look at the Daisy in the lower right corner (#8). You can see the breadth of what that person oversees and that she also does a lot by herself. I bet she has a lot of fun and not a lot of spare time.

The person in the top left corner (#1), on the opposite, focuses mostly on doing research, defining features, and leading engineering execution. I would guess that product roadmap and go-to-market strategy are defined and managed by others.

The person in the right top corner (#4) seems to work on a research and data-heavy product. It looks like they oversee quite a bit, but possibly don't have access to many resources.

Meanwhile, the owner of Daisy #7 looks like they have a lot of resources and do only what’s absolutely necessary for a PM - identify and drive business opportunities and product response.

We could spend hours debating about what those Daisies really represent, but the truth is that only their owners know that. Only they could tell us whether the results of this exercise had matched the picture of the Product Manager role they wanted to have.

Conclusions.

Not all PM positions are equal. Roles that share the same title — Product Manager — might actually mean dramatically different sets of responsibilities.

Job descriptions are not the source of truth. It’s almost impossible to identify how a future job will look based on the job description alone or after one conversation with a recruiter.

Do your homework. Talking to the future team and asking very specific questions can help you understand what is expected (and what’s not) from a PM at that specific position, what resources are available, and who owns them.

How does all of that apply to you?

If you feel happy and energized by your work, clearly see your future, and feel like you are doing something you love (while not missing anything you would love to do) - I’m really happy for you!

If you have doubts, however, and think something is wrong with the scope of your responsibilities — I invite you to do the following:

1. Fill out the form, and get your PM Daisy, a graphical representation of your job responsibilities. You can even choose the color!

2. Look at it and see how close it is to your ideal position. (Admittedly, deciding on your ideal position may prove challenging)

3. Use the information to make more informed career path decisions.

4. Send me feedback on the framework and please do share it with others if you find it valuable.

Disclaimers

• There may be many other issues with your job that make you unhappy. The culture, commute, lack of perks, or possibly even your manager, can all play a role. The PM Daisy framework only helps you find discrepancies between your current set of responsibilities and the work that you really want to do.

• The workstreams I chose are the most common ones that would apply to the majority of PM roles. I agree it’s not an exhaustive list. For example, I also work with legal and privacy teams, localization and content teams, QA, accessibility, customer support, sales, operations, you name it. At the end of the day, the purpose of the framework is to help compare multiple positions across the most important categories, which, I believe, this framework does well.

Appendix: workstreams explained

• Customer Research: e.g. performing focus groups, interviews, UX studies, surveys, industry reports

• Product Artifacts: e.g. writing and owning PRDs, user stories, product vision/strategy/roadmap

• Engineering: e.g. designing architecture, coding prototypes, submitting production code

• UX Design: e.g. creating user flows, prototypes, mocks, designs, graphics

• Data Analytics: e.g. building growth models, analyzing performance KPIs, logs

• Project/Program Mgmt: e.g. tracking tasks, setting processes, managing timelines

• Marketing: e.g. doing brand or go-to-market strategy, creative briefing, creating and managing campaigns

• Partnerships & Sales: e.g. business development, contracts, CRM

• Business & Finance: e.g. responsible for financial performance, P&L

• People Ops: e.g. managing direct reports, recruiting, developing, promoting, or maybe even firing people