Most mid-career product people who are doing reasonably well make 2 implicit assumptions that…

Most mid-career product people who are doing reasonably well make 2 implicit assumptions that affect their quality of life: 1. the ceiling of key product skills is just an inch higher than where they are now (i.e. they’re basically already at the ceiling) 2. the point of any upskilling is to get a better job in the future (via a promotion or changing jobs) Both assumptions are false and harmful, but assumption #2 is what’s actually holding them back from the work-life balance they seek at this point in their life. Because they only see upskilling as an investment in a future job, it gets tossed into the “later” pile. And when you’re this busy, that “later” never comes. You see, they are very busy & stressed in their job, thanks to all the career success they’ve had thus far. Success brought them more scope, but operating well below the true ceiling of product leadership skills means that scope eats far more of their time than it needs to. What they fail to see is that upskilling up to the true ceiling will free up a pretty big chunk of the time they’re currently spending being super-busy in their job. So they stay stuck in an infinite loop: too busy to upskill, and too busy because they haven’t upskilled. They’ve been in this loop for so long that they cannot imagine a way out, even though upskilling is the way out.Shreyas Doshi on X · Oct 3, 2026