The Perils of Being A 21 Year-Old Product Manager
What I learned being the youngest strategic leader at a Fortune 500 tech company
Five years ago I started at NetApp as a product manager. I initially led the design and development of a security and compliance suite called SnapLock,but soon after I converted to full-time I took the reigns of the company’s new Product Security initiative that managed the roadmap behind sensitive features such as cryptography and feature requests from customers in sensitive verticals such as military and national intelligence.
“Converted to full-time” by the way is corporate doublespeak for “graduated college.” At 21 I was the youngest PM in NetApp’s corporate history. I managed SnapLock while completing my senior year of college, and I took the reigns of a similarly young Product Security team about four days after my commencement.
It’s no secret that high tech highly prizes youth. Movies like The Social Network and TV shows like Betas portray youth as an almost necessary quality for strategic leaders in a successful modern tech company.
As I became the youngest product manager in my industry, I initially clung to this societal trend for hope.
Maybe my youth would give me “superpowers” I supposed — a unique insight into the changing world of infrastructure that seasoned veterans twenty or even thirty years my senior at the company didn’t understand. Maybe there was some kind of hidden power within me that would make me a great manager, and that my youth coupled with this hidden trait would make me a paragon for people within NetApp to follow.
Man was I wrong.
Let me be very clear: being a young strategic leader is an incredible honor and privilege. There are a lot of young technology executives in our industry that are successful, and companies like Kiip and Snapchat are proof of the ability of young strategic leaders to succeed.
But based off of my experience, I think our industry radically overvalues youth when it comes to leadership.
Instead of feeling like my youth empowered me, I learned that my youth (and more directly my lack of experience) was a huge handicap in my ability to lead. Most days I secretly felt outgunned and ill equipped to deal with the issues I had to face down. Without the help of my managers, my friends and family, and the direction and guidance of NetApp’s senior leadership I would have failed. Miserably.
The humbling lessons I took from my experience as a young PM have guided and shaped my very young career in the industry. Three of them in particular ring true:
“Never be the smartest guy in the room.”
As a young PM I spent a lot of time shadowing our company’s mid-level and senior leadership learning about different management styles and how/why they’re employed.
I tried to learn what I could from these precious periods of instruction to cultivate my own style. I’d sample Dan Warmenhoven’s warm but serious demeanor, mix in a little Tom Georgens’ analytical frankness, add a splash of Tom Mendoza charisma (or my nerdy attempts at it) and serve the above with Brian Pawlowski’s geeky engineering edge.
This fascination with management styles worked to some effect. But quickly I realized that my ability to implement any of them was wingclipped by the fact that I was nowhere near the level of experience or accomplishment of any of these guys.
BeePy’s management style works best because he’s BeePy. Tom Mendoza’s flair works because he’s Tom Mendoza. Dan Warmenhoven’s demeanor works because he’s Dan-freaking-Warmenhoven. All of these men have earned the respect because of several decades of personal and professional success.
Given that I had (and still only have) about two of those decades in existence, I learned that no clever concoction of leadership styles was ever going to make me wield anywhere near the level of command and respect that each of them did within the company.
From my experiences leveling with similarly young leaders and entrepreneurs who work in enterprise technology, I feel like this is a frequent and disarming realization that we all have gone through. It’s scary to realize that what seems like the standard academic approach to leadership that most leaders employ won’t work because you’re too young and don’t have the personal accomplishment necessary to command such tools.
So like most young leaders I tried to make up with this lack of accomplishment in the worst way possible: I tried to be the smartest guy in the room.
I fanatically — and I mean fanatically to the point of near stalking — researched every individual I was supposed to meet and pre-engineered discussions I would have with them to make them feel like I had all the answers. When it worked it worked out well. When it didn’t work, I looked like an idiot and hurt my credibility.
Based off of my discussions with other young leaders since then, I feel like using the “smartest guy in the room” technique is a frequent riposte to the inability to implement certain management styles due to inexperience or age. Smartest guy in the room can work regardless of age and if used by a young leader it can make them seem like a wunderkind rather than someone who rolled the dice and got incredibly lucky.
But it’s also arrogant. It’s short sighted. It requires you to be “better” than someone else,consequently developing an air of confrontation that handicaps your ability to lead an organization of people in a united and amicable fashion. Even worse, when you’re wrong (and you will be wrong), being the smartest guy in the room makes you look like the biggest idiot in the world.
From all of the leaders I followed, I constantly heard the phrase “never be the smartest guy in the room.” I thought that referred to intelligence — that you always wanted to be around people who were “smarter than you.”
But through a series of gruelling failures and embarassing missteps, I learned that it doesn’t just mean that. You should never be the smartest guy in the room, because the smartest guy in the room is frequently a dick and someone that nobody wants to follow into battle.
“It’s not about me, it’s about you.”
Beyond occasionally looking like a twelve year old in an awkwardly-fitted suit who had taken the time to disturbingly learning minute details about everyone he ever would talk to, acting like the smartest guy in the room made me miss one of the big lessons that NetApp’s leaders were trying to impart to me with their leadership lessons.
I only realized this a year or so after I left the company, when I reflected on a conversation that James Lau, one of the co-founders of the company, and I had.
At the time I was emphatically thanking James for letting me join a high level strategic project as a product liason with him. James, hurrying off to another meeting, just smiled back.
“No problem. It’s not about me, it’s about you.”
At the time I misinterpreted that response as statement about my success. The “lesson” I immediately got from that was that I was doing a good job at the company, and that I should just continue doing what I was doing if I wanted to be a good leader.
But this is the wrong lesson. What James was exemplifying, and what many of NetApp’s other leaders showed in even wanting to spend time with me, was that the most important part of good leadership was a fanatical dedication to the success of those who follow you.
Being a leader really has nothing to do with you. I think in tech we spend a lot of time fascinated with the loud exemplars like Steve Jobs and we forget about the “quiet” leaders who spend more time focused on their customers and their employees than they do headlines or personal success.
It makes sense why men and women who employ the latter strategy make less press, but leaders who take this road are more likely to lead a united federation of constituents who are more creative and actually enjoy what they do for a living. Happy people are successful people, and empowering others to be happy and well-armed to fight hard problems is key to being a successful technology leader.
Communication Rules Everything Around Me (C.R.E.A.M.)
Key to making people happy — and key really to doing anything as a leader — is communication. If being a leader is about fighting a battle, effective communication is the ammunition and firepower necessary to win.
I appreciated how important communication was even as a young PM. Most of this actually came from studying Latin in high school. I read a lot of classical rhetoricians and leaders like Cicero and Julius Caesar, and I learned to appreciate why people would listen to Cicero and why soldiers would follow a young Caesar into battle.
But what Latin failed to teach me was that communication really isn’t just about the structure, tone, and diction of a missive or statement. It’s about empathy. It’s about learning how someone you’re communicating with thinks and why they think that way.
Good communication isn’t about what you say; it’s about what the other person hears.
I learned that the role of empathy is important as a leader because frequently the most important details of a discussion were left hidden in the subtext of a conversation. Leaders like Tom Mendoza are amazing at picking out the subtext of your communication, and can use what they gleam from being fascinated with you rather than what you’re saying to learn important details and craft communication that inspires you and arms you to succeed.
Communication absolutely fascinates me, and since I left NetApp and became a VC I’ve learned an incredible amount about the power of effective communication. More than anything, I’ve realized just how important empathetic communication is to being able to inspire others to follow your vision as a leader.
I’ve learned a lot of lessons since I was a 21 year old PM. By far, the most important lesson I’ve learned is that I’m still very young. I’m never going to have all of the right answers, nor do I ever want to if I’m going to be a leader.
Being a good leader in tech is about being fascinated with the success of those who follow you just as much as it is about getting your vision of the future right. I feel incredibly thankful to have had the experiences I had at NetApp, and I look forward to learning about leadership as I continue down my path in this industry.
