Welcome!
If you're here reading about my background or subscribe to my future posts, Thank you! I appreciate your time and hope that my content can provide impact to your journey in one way or another. The values I embrace daily in both my personal (life) and career (technology) journey's include:
Advocate for unconventional ways
Embrace change while traveling through the stages
Enhance skills to help create a well rounded culture
In this post, I'll talk about my career background and what I've learned in the different roles I've had pre-technology and post-technology.
Career Background
My career path has been quite the journey. If I could describe my foundation, I'm a business analyst at heart. I love being able to do many things and provide value to my team, the organization, and customers. In all roles I've played I consistently led with a business analyst mindset, keeping top of mind my previous roles while staying curious to learn new skills.
Don't be afraid to be vulnerable, take that leap and if you fail know that failure is still valuable
Below are highlights of my career and what I learned in each role:
Bank Teller; this was my starting point of my career where as an entry level employee I was more focused on this being a job versus a career.
Accountability
Dislike being a "salesperson"
Patience for customers
Soft skills
Task based execution
Mortgage Loan processor; I spent a chunk of time believing this was a career path. I was able to help people finance a forever home and where I ultimately found my love for helping others.
Dedication
Grit
Prioritization
[Scrappy] Problem solving
Soft skills
Task based execution
User Acceptance Tester (UAT) Tester; This role is when I broke into technology and fell in love with advocating for users, I've both executed and written tests.
Empathy for technology + business stakeholders
Industry operation models
Operational improvement methodologies
Outside-in thought process
Task based execution
Value of QA
Integration specialist; The most difficult role for me to adapt to as I was entering my career as a business professional + learning how technology actually works.
Business management skills
Complexity of technology cross platforms
Goal setting
Independent based execution
Tenacity to work with all Stakeholders
Program Management; Having to manage programs and create my own programs within an organization has played a key part in preparing me to manage a product.
Accountability management
Idea selling
Independent based execution
Prioritization
Product Management; The best career to date, leading a team of DevRel Engineers is the best role for me.
Boundary setting
Idea selling at scale
Ideation
Negotiation tactics
Problem management
Strategic methodologies
*Learnings are not limited to this list, trying to keep reading time under 3 min
While this is a significant amount of learnings, it barely touches the surface of all the roles I've played on a day-to-day basis. The additional roles I've played which continue to provide value in my success of being a product manager include content management, analytics, feedback strategic plans/maintenance, and launched enhanced operation processes.
In all of these roles that I've played in my career, I hope that at the end of the day that I can be remembered for my ability to advocate, willingness to embrace change, and consistent focus on enhancing the skills of the community around me, plus my own.