How often you switch jobs?

Do you follow the 18-24 month rule?

Do you wait until you feel you can’t add much more value?

Do you leave as soon as someone offers you a better pay in another place?

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Earning or learning, if you’re not doing either then time to go, not some arbitrary timeframe.

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If you’re still a PM newbie (1 year max experience, at a Startup that doesn’t have a fully-fledged Product Team), how long would you say it takes to learn in the role (and be a valid stage to ask for a payrise?)

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I’ve been a PM for 1 year and in the company 4 years. The last two years I’ve gotten 15% raises, next year I’m going to ask for at least 20%. I’m learning a lot, and contributing even more for each day I work. Don’t think exclusively about how much you learn, at least about how much you contribute and your value to the company

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Thanks @Samantha, for your reply. Similar situation to you, with the time length at the company. Just that I’m not sure how much I do contribute, as I’m still learning the ropes, so many things a PM of 3/4 years knows, I still don’t. So, I’m upskilling with courses and other resources.

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For me, it has helped to understand the complete circle of the product, from sales to tech. I can read and understand the architecture of our code, and sometimes help our developers with the best solutions. The past year I’ve mostly acted as a PM/ tech leader for our dev department, in lack of an actual CTO

Now as my tasks has shifted a lot more to the traditional PM, I have a clear path on what I want to achieve, and how to achieve it, because I understand the limits of our products as well

I can highly recommend reading “Continuous discovery habits”, really helped me a lot!

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In the last 5 years, I have had 6 different jobs. Once was due to Covid and getting laid off. The other reasons were:

  • There isn’t enough work for me, (because the company hired 4 product owners for 1 product just because they got approval for the budget)

  • I received a +%25 pay increase with similar role (happened twice within a 14 month span)

  • A great startup opportunity appears in a market I am passionate about

  • My startup company is running out of runway/money

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I have gone through a fairly similar path to you, 4 in 5 years for me.

Dysfunctional organization, and need to refocus my life was move 1 Startup that got caught underfunded in early COVID was move 2 Rapidly expanding org that elected to focus tech and professional services in another state was move 3 So my role now is in a very stable organization. Less uncertainty, but due to their stability over the years they have not expanded the platform I manage very much in the past decade, so the roadmap of potential work is stuffed full of low hanging fruit.

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I have recently lucked into an ideal situation for me. I work for a large established company, but one that didn’t have a product team. So I am the first product hire, being tasked to create an eCommerce platform for the existing business. I get the startup environment, with the stability of a large established company.

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The best framework I’ve heard is that you switch jobs when you realize the hill you are climbing isn’t the most valuable hill to climb.

At the bottom of the valley, all hills are mountains. But as you start to climb you realize that some are considerably larger than others. What you want to be careful of, is reaching the top, wanting to go further, and having to climb back down to get on a larger one.

Whenever you recognize that you are at a fork, where you can continue the current climb, or switch to a better hill, you have to think about it and make the call. The short term is always overweighted in your mind and underweighted in the outcome.

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I found a spot where I get paid well and only need to put in around 20-30 hours per week with no stress while working from home. So probably going to stick around a while. :grin:

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Thanks a lot folks for your insights.