My journey from laboratory scientist to product manager

How does a laboratory scientist become a product manager at a tech company? In this article, I will answer this question and share how I apply the skills that I acquired as a scientist to product management.

At the beginning of 2018, I was working as a postdoc in a medicinal chemistry lab at the University of Notre Dame.   One day in late April, my boss asked me to come to his office for a chat.  I just assumed that he wanted to discuss the, in my mind, small disagreement that we had earlier in the day.  You can imagine my shock when he asked me to leave his lab within the next week.  As he proceeded to tell me why he was asking me to leave, I wanted to cry but I wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to weaponize my tears.  Though my boss and I may disagree on the specific reasons why I was dismissed, we can both agree that I lost respect for him as a scientist and a person.  Even though I had felt this way for months, I stayed in a job that I didn’t like and worked for a boss that I didn’t respect because I was afraid of being unemployed.  At the end of the day, I ended up losing my job anyway.

From academia to the tech industry

After I got over the “Oh crap!  I’ve just been fired!” moment, I applied to over 150 jobs at various pharmaceutical companies and academic research centers.  As I approached the 1-year mark, I still didn’t have any luck finding a research position.  I decided to expand my job search to non-research positions and found a startup that was looking for an organic chemist with teaching experience.  According to the advertisement, the founders were interested in helping undergraduates learn organic chemistry by building a mobile game on the subject.  I had first-hand experience teaching organic chemistry to students and I knew that many of them struggle with the subject.  Though I lacked knowledge of gaming and software development, I understood the problem that the company wanted to solve so I applied for the job.  After the interview process, I took a position as Head of Chemical Education at Substrate Interactive.  My primary responsibility was to create the organic chemistry problem sets that were converted into interactive exercises for the app.

From subject matter expert to product manager

After 6 months on the job, my boss asked if I wanted to take on the additional role of product manager.  To be honest, I didn’t know what a product manager was.  Upon doing some research, I learned that product managers identified customer problems and worked with design and engineering to develop a solution to those problems.  As a scientist, I was accustomed to identifying chemistry problems and developing a solution, so I felt like product management was a perfect fit for me.  (For more on product management I suggest you read Inspired by Marty Cagan.)

Since I was new to product management, my company sponsored my product management certification through Product School.  The Product School course not only helped me to understand the basics of product management, but I learned how to apply my experience as a scientist to my new job.  Up to that point, I had spent 15 years doing research in a lab, so I easily grasped the details of product discovery.  As a graduate student and postdoc, I was the chief evangelist for my research and highlighted its value to colleagues and superiors.  Therefore, I had no problem advocating for the customers and my team to stakeholders within the business.  Outside of synthesizing molecules, I was able to transfer most of my skills as a scientist to product management.

Though I started my product career at Substrate Interactive, my time at the company lasted 1.5 years.  Like many startups, the company ran out of runway before it established product-market fit.  After 6 months on the job market, I landed my current position as a product manager at ParkMobile, LLC.  (‘Cracking the PM Interview’ was instrumental in helping me land my current position.) Now that I have been a product manager for a few years, I want to share a couple of lessons from my time as a scientist that have helped me succeed at product management.

Be curious.  In other words, ask a lot of questions.

When you ask someone to describe the role of a product manager, many will say this person is responsible for identifying and understanding problems with the product.  This description is true in principle but in practice every product manager is not given the opportunity to surface these problems.  Sometimes product managers are asked to be pseudo scrum masters, which forces this person to focus on the day-to-day progress of the feature.  Add to the equation stakeholders, especially ones from the C-suite, that ask your team to deliver specific features; a product manager doesn’t always have time to do the proper product discovery.  I have experienced all these issues as a product manager.  In fact, finding time to do proper research has been one of the most challenging aspects of transitioning from scientist to product manager.

As you can imagine, I spent 90% of my time doing research as a scientist so I understand its value.  Unfortunately, people tend to undervalue this part of product management when there is a feature they are interested in building.  When I was a graduate student, a librarian told me that 2 hours in the library would save me two weeks in the lab.  As I gained more research experience, I realized that this was great advice that could be applied to different aspects of my life.  When I was a product manager at Substate, I saw how a lack of product discovery led to our team building the wrong product for our target customers.  Therefore, I strive to prioritize product discovery while my team tackles other problems.

No one wants to work with an asshole!

The title above is a quote from a hiring manager that I interviewed with.  No, I didn’t get the job, but I got this nice gem as a consolation prize.  As a scientist, I have experienced working for people who genuinely cared about their employees and those who didn’t.  In the lab where the manager was caring, people tend to work hard and produce high quality work.  On the other hand, I also had a manager who cared more about his own success than the professional development and personal welfare of his employees.  This person believed that if you put more pressure on people then you will get an increase in the volume of work.  Though this approach resulted in more publications, the morale in the workplace was very low and much of the work wasn’t high quality.

After reflecting on my past experiences with different management styles, I decided that I wanted to create a positive work environment where everyone feels valued.  As a product manager, it can feel like I am the boss because I prioritize the work, but that’s not the case because I don’t have any direct reports on my team.  Every person on the team plays a specific role and I am just fulfilling the product role.  When a new person joins the group, I share our team values which include respect, collaboration, and accountability.  By setting these expectations early, my group has become one of the highest performing teams at ParkMobile.

Final note

At the end of every scientific presentation, the speaker shows an acknowledgement slide that contains the funding agencies and the scientists that contributed to the work.  Though I do not give the same type of scientific presentations anymore, I do have the opportunity to present new feature work from my group.  One of my favorite parts of being a product manager is presenting the acknowledgement slide after I have shared a new feature that was built.  I like to preface the slide by saying the following: “I hope you enjoyed this presentation.  At the end of the day, I don’t write code and I am artistically challenged.  I would like to acknowledge all the people that contributed to this work.”

After spending two years at ParkMobile, I wanted to share my story and reflect on how my background as a scientist has helped me as a product manager.  I hope you learned something or were entertained after reading this article.  If not, that’s okay.  At least you made it to the end if you are reading this.  Finally, if you are someone looking to transition to product management, I hope you were inspired to make the transition.  I don’t regret becoming a product manager.