Shreyas Doshi: evaluation

Transcript context

…That's going to be another podcast episode. Okay, so we want to try to do two more questions. We have six minutes left. The last one's a bonus, so maybe we touch on it briefly. Shreyas, what's your third question? So my third question is why does my job feel so frustrating? Why does my job feel so frustrating? And it goes back to the point that, look, I loved, loved my PM leadership job. I just absolutely loved it. And I think looking back, I would not have exchanged it for anything else, any other experience. That said, there were daily frustrations. There were daily frustrations in that job, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that the PM leader's job is extremely lonely. The PM's job, the PM's on your team, their job is also lonely. But a PM leader's job is further lonelier. So there's that. There's also what I learned at the time when I started asking this question is that our jobs get frustrating when we behave, most of the time, in misalignment with our superpowers and who we truly are at our core. Okay, so for me, as I was evaluating that question, it's like, "Why am I getting frustrated every day? I love the job, I love the macro, but I do not like the micro. And so why is that?" And that's when I actually... There's a simple framework that I've shared, which is you can be doing your work at three levels. Product work happens at three levels. There's the impact level, there's the execution level, and there's the optics level. My epiphany as I was exploring this question was I have a preferred level at which I like to operate, but if most of the day, and most of the week, and most of the month, I am forcing myself to operate in not my happy place, in my non-default level, that makes me very frustrated. So many product leaders, their happy place is the execution level. In my case, my happy place is the impact level. So that is fine. Your happy place can be whatever level, it doesn't matter. But the point is, as you go higher up in the corporate ladder, no matter what kind of company it is, you are now going to have to spend a lot of time on optics, at the optics level. And I have willpower, I have the skills to do it, I have all of that. So it's not about willpower or skills, but willpower is finite. So as I spent day in and day out, just mostly doing optics work, I realized I was not happy and I was getting frustrated. And so that's when I realized the solution, which is I have to abandon the traditional path, that like, "Oh, after this level, I'm supposed to do this, and then I'm supposed to do this, and then this is what society expects. This is what my mom expects. What will people say on LinkedIn when they see my LinkedIn profile?" Like, "Oh, he has this progression, this, and then what stopped? Why did it stop?" So when I realized this, I said, when a team grew to a certain size, so when I was at Stripe and I realized this, when the team I was managing, it had a fan out of about 50 people, so this includes engineers and everything, I said, "This is enough." Because for me, any time a team goes to like 50s, and 100s, and beyond, it is a law of corporations that you're going to have to spend a lot of time at the optics level. ing, I said, "This is enough." Because for me, any time a team goes to like 50s, and 100s, and beyond, it is a law of corporations that you're going to have to spend a lot of time at the optics level. So instead of just pushing, pushing through against who I truly am, what did I do? I just went back to more of an earlier stage product, and then I was fine with like, "You know what? I'm not going to just play the corporate game," as an example. So I guess my suggestion would be identify your superpowers, and like Shakespeare said, "To thine own self be true." Just be honest to yourself. Operate your career and make your career decisions not out of expectation, not out of envy, like the LinkedIn envy of like, "Oh, this person is at a different level. We both went to the same grad school, so I got..." No, identify your superpowers, because if you identify your superpowers and work in accordance with them, you will do the best work of your life. You will love it, and you will be great at it, and you won't have that frustration.…

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