So I had an interesting job change recently. All through 2021 I had been working towards a promotion to Senior Product Manager. I worked to improve my stakeholder management skills and practices. I identified hard problems in the organization and solved them. I expanded my product portfolio. I took on extra responsibilities at the department level. There was a bit of a hiccup in July when my manager left, who was the Director of Product for Platform Infrastructure. I was concerned about my career progression without a manager, but the other Product Manager in the department (who was more senior with previous management experience) stepped up and was happy to keep working with me on this.

After our fall performance cycle was in the books and everything was finalized, I was delighted to have my manager present me the paperwork with the details of my promotion to Senior Product Manager. But immediately after that meeting with my manager, I had another meeting with our Director of Program Management who informed me that I would be moving into her org as a Program Manager.

What.

I have a lot of opinions and feelings about how this change went down and the context leading up to it over the past few months, but that would be an exceptionally long post. What I do want to touch on is how this change feels, personally.

The main thing that gets me is that this change was not my choice. I spent the last several years struggling to establish my identity as a Product Manager, and just when I thought I’d figured it out (see my blog post “Finding My Fit”), it’s like the rug was pulled out from under me. I’d be the first person to talk about the importance of separating your personal identity from your job title, but this hit me hard and has left me adrift. It’s like the culmination of all my fears that I was not, in fact, any good at being a Product Manager, and the org was tired of tolerating me so they’re pushing me into this tangential role.

It’s hard to explain to most people because it’s easy to get Product, Program, and Project Management confused unless you’re in those roles. When sharing this change I got a lot of “wait, weren’t you already a Program Manager?” To be honest, I don’t have a lot of experience working with Program Managers at all, so while I’m clear on the difference between Product and Project, Program is like this weird grey area that I’m still working on figuring out. From what has been described to me so far, it seems like my new job as a Program Manager (I do still get that bump to Senior, too, at least) will be more focused on implementing and improving larger processes across the Engineering organization. As a Product Manager, I was more focused on applying those processes with an individual team and being responsible for roadmaps for the products my engineering team worked on.

Implementing and improving processes has always been my superpower, so maybe this change will be ideal for me and my career. But right now it just makes me feel defeated. Like I spent years preparing for a trip to Paris. Learning the language. Preparing my itinerary and mapping out the locations I wanted to visit. Then getting on the plane and being informed I would not be going to Paris but instead would be visiting Montreal. Some of the stuff I prepared is still useful, sure, but if I wanted to go to Montreal I’d have planned my trip for Montreal. Now I’m just sitting in the airport trying to figure out a new itinerary on the go while mourning my Paris trip and trying to make the best of it.