Building a long and meaningful career

Nikhyl Singhal, a product leader who has worked at Facebook/Meta, Credit Karma and Google and co-founded several startups, discusses building a long, meaningful PM career. The conversation covers early-career long-term thinking, promotions, ex-growth companies, manager development, IC paths, community, and planning a fulfilling 'act three'.

01Key learnings

• Think about your career as a product: work backward from the end state you want, and plan several steps ahead rather than optimizing for the next job or promotion.
• Pursue a diverse set of experiences across pre-product-market-fit, scaling, inside-the-building and outside-the-building problems, since this makes you a better builder.
• Early in your career, pick a lane of expertise (domain, crafting, market, organizational, growth) and build a story of what you learned and did that you can tell to future employers.
• If you're not getting promoted, check whether you lack an advocate, whether the next role exists, whether you're being impatient, or whether you have a real development area you're resisting.
• Get better feedback by creating psychological safety, triangulating from peers and others, and repeating feedback back accurately so people feel heard and keep sharing.
• Watch for your strengths turning into shadows: behaviors that made you successful at one level, like being a great collaborator or decisive opinionated builder, may hold you back at senior levels.
• As a new manager, share the steering wheel with your reports and earn the right to be their manager by being invited in rather than assuming authority.
• Build an active peer community for learning and support, since formal manager training is often weak; plan a deliberate 'act three' so your career stays motivating after you reach your goals.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.