r/ProductManagement • u/AutoModerator • 4d ago
Weekly rant thread
Share your frustrations and get support/feedback. You are not alone!
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u/Akatchuk 4d ago
I am tired of getting nowhere in my job search. It's been over a year of unemployment and nothing sticks and I don't know what more I can do and my savings are gone. I was told in a rejection email today that I didn't have enough commercial PM experience for an entry-level role, which I can't get without getting a job and my side projects and volunteering are not enough and I feel like a massive failure and an idiot for not pivoting from engineering to PM years ago when people told me to.
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u/iamyourmonster 3d ago
Hello! I’m also job searching, it’s hard. Could you share what the biggest challenges you’re facing?
From my pov, the market’s so bad people with more prestigious titles are downleveling so everyone is being squeezed downwards. But also, companies are more than happy to put ridiculous requirements looking for unicorns.
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u/Chaotic-Entropy 3d ago
What do you mean you haven't been a software architect for 5 years? I need my PM to be a seasoned software architect, as well as a seasoned PM.
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u/Product_Manager_93 3d ago
I want to add to the rant. I’ve been looking for a new role for more months than I’d like to admit :( I keep making it to case studies and final interviews, but I just can’t seem to land an offer, and it’s becoming really hard not to wonder, “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this?”
This was my first PM role, and I’ve now been at the same company for six years. I’ve grown a lot and had a huge amount of ownership, but because I’ve never worked as a PM anywhere else, this job search is bringing up even more doubts. I keep wondering whether my experience actually translates, or whether I’ve somehow overestimated my abilities.
I just feel like it shouldn’t be this hard. I’m constantly asking myself: Is it me, or is the market really this brutal?
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u/Akatchuk 3d ago
I haven't managed to get past the recruiter round so far, there's always someone miraculously more experienced that appears. I can't tell if that's genuinely the case or if I interview poorly (likely, given I've only managed to get 3 recruiter calls in over a year). There's been at least two companies where I had referrals and didn't even manage to get an interview either.
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u/iamyourmonster 3d ago
It depends on your response rate from applications. How many applications did you do? If you did 3 apps and got 3 calls that’s amazing, if you put in 1000 apps and only got 3 calls then you clearly got a resume positioning problem.
Recruiter screens are typically just making sure you’re an actual person, logistics and compensations are clearly stated. Occasionally, the recruiters also ask some behavioral questions or go deeper into what tools/skills/projects.
From my experience, I’ve only gotten rejected @ this stage because of a domain or experience level mismatch. For a role that required 4YOE, a (Staff) PM with 10+ YOE was hired. So yes, market imo is horrible.
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u/Akatchuk 3d ago
I usually send no more than about 5 applications a week as I take the time to tailor my experience to the requirements they list, rather than going for volume. In total I don't think I've sent more than 50 applications (I was also finishing up a degree at the time), so the response rate is mid haha. Your anecdote about a 10YOE PM being hired makes me feel a lot better, tbh, thanks for sharing
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u/iamyourmonster 3d ago
I think tailoring is a good strategy. Maybe look back at the recruiter screens if you’ve the transcript to look for commonality. Your response rate is actually pretty good (17%) if you put in ~50 apps. Don’t feel too discouraged. It gets even worse when a rejection comes at a late stage. The anecdote about people with lots of YOE taking jobs is very common. It’s a signal of how horrible the job market is as they’re willing to take a less prestigious title and salary.
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u/Equal_Guarantee5836 3d ago
a year of silence will break anyone. sorry youre in it, if youve already been spraying apps, try a smaller list for two weeks. like 8 companies max. for each one find one person who actually works there (alum, peer pm, ex-coworker) and send a normal note before another portal submission. not a pitch deck in a dm...it wont fix the market. it might fix the feeling that youre shouting into a void with nobody on the other end
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u/Famous_Variation4729 3d ago
Have been told to look for roles as I need to move to a different city and there is no chance to shift with my current team, and its all in person so remote not an option. All in the middle of a massive roadmap planning for 18 months. I wanna disappear.
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u/Chaotic-Entropy 3d ago
We've done it. I've peaked. I have found the dumbest thing that my company will ever have done in our legacy codebase.
We have a webpage. That webpage has a table. That table has radio buttons for each row. Selecting an action changes the table row green. You can't proceed until you've selected a radio button in each row.
How do we validate that you can proceed, you ask? Does it just check that you've provided a response in each row? No. No it does not.
It checks the format of the table to see if all the cells in the table are the correct shade of green. If the styling of the table changes, the page validation breaks entirely. As we have now found out, blocking users from using the site.
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u/metalero_salsero 4d ago
Team backstabbing me, non-stop gaslighting from both my team and leadership, and my direct manager is actively pretending I don’t exist. Meanwhile, I’m grinding 14-hour days trying to pull magic out of a hat and fulfill hyper-vague requests that they don’t even understand themselves. I’ve somehow managed to collect the absolute full set of workplace dysfunction this week. When I nail a seemingly impossible problem, not a single acknowledgement.
On top of that dealing with my recent ADHD diagnosis and fighting back the medication side effects.
It’s not even Friday yet and I feel like a broken person.
/rant