My last 10 or so years in tech has been heartbreaking, mettle-making, dispiriting, and formative. I changed as tech culture changed as the discipline of Product Management changed.
The TL;DR I can’t say for sure all the changes are for the better in tech, in Product, or in me. A decade that felt (and still feels) like 2050 and 1950 at the same time. Serious, grave, haunting, losses. One per year, four years in a row. Rough volatile, dynamic, meaningful watershed decade.
Many failed startups, corporate failures and fuck-ups + real life + menopause +changes in tech = a perfect professional and personal storm- that formed slowly at first (2014-2023), then all at once (2024). I internalized a lot of weird shit but I a also leveled-up my craft in ways it would not have been possible under smoother sailing and blue skies.
But many of the professional experiences I had, as a woman in Product, demolished my passions. No surprise; that’s what happens. I admit I am carrying some grief around that. I love my work;I am trying to let myself love it again. As a kind of rebellion. As reconciliation. As hope. Maybe?
5 years into the last decade I started to write about what I was noticing in myself, my work, in tech. Especially the changes that made me feel completely batshit bananas: emperor wears no clothes back side of the mirror shit. But I thought “better not.”
A while back I interviewed at a well-funded startup They had all of these wood plaques in reception, etched with “customer” logos- storied brands and famous companies. I was given a tour through the office: a hallway with a $50,000 mural to an empty room full of desks where supposedly a whole engineering team worked. The carpet was spotless; there wasn’t even a runnel where a chair had been slid back. I looked at the VP of Product; was this a joke maybe? Nope.
In the interview I sat on one side of a table with at least 5-6 men, one of whom appeared as an iPad robot. I had done my homework; I was ready to present but first, I had a single question.
I don’t even remember the exact question but the CEO interjected- “That’s what our board chair just asked us!” First excited because it was the right question and then and freaked out that two people had so easily seen right through the charade.
None of it was real. The plaques turned out to be their “target customers,” which they admitted when they couldn’t answer any questions about what their customers wanted. I repeat; they were well-funded. Not the first time, not the last either.
How can this stuff NOT make one feel all fucked up? As the (often) sole woman in a room full of men pulling down massive wages for making…nothing… no actual software or something useful or even REAL?
But now the world is changing again. I am wondering how I want to evolve with it. I’m excited and terrified.
R. Good. 