ne of the best decisions of my life was to become Product Manager.  This career path seamlessly aligned with my strengths and natural inclinations. However, my journey into this role was quite serendipitous.

Back in college, I had this amazing professor, Mr. Bhupendra Chordia , who taught Operating Systems. He made me fall head over heels in love with all the intricacies of OS. Suddenly, being an engineer in the world of Operating Systems became my dream. Soon after, I ended up taking a role on the Windows team at Microsoft, and it was like living the dream. I was rocking it as a Software Engineer, diving into Security, Kernel, File System, Drivers, and the whole Application Platform stack. Life couldn’t be better!

One day, my Product Manager at the time came by my office and said “Good job Priya! You drove the commitment on that project really well! Have you ever considered becoming a Product Manager?” This simple question to the person living her dream job, completely caught off guard.

A few months down the line, I was busy planning an event when a friend Manish Vyas casually dropped, “You’re pretty good at this stuff. Ever thought about being a PM?” That got me thinking.

I started talking to Product Managers and got the lowdown on their daily grind. With that knowledge, I decided to take a stab at being a PM. My pet project was all about planning the next-gen architecture for an application deployment platform, ready to take on emerging phone operating systems. I led brainstorming sessions, laid out the roadmap, and cooked up a quarterly plan for the new system architecture.

I thought that project was enough to talk about my PM skills during interviews. However, the PM world had its own lingo, and I needed to shift gears. Up until then, I was all about programming, code reviews, and high-performance software. Now, it was time to talk about user journeys, problem statements, product design, KPIs, schedules, and cross-team collaboration. Every interview was a crash course in being a Product Manager.

I kept fine-tuning myself for this new gig and eventually snagged a PM job offer. It’s crazy to think that it all started with a simple suggestion. Klorida Miraj the one who first put the idea in my head, became my first manager, my lifelong cheerleader, coach, and mentor.

I’ll never forget our one-on-one chat when she told me the ultimate PM superpower. She said, “Priya, as a programmer, you were a problem solver, relying on your own smarts. But now, as a PM, you need a whole new mindset.” Two sentences she dropped on me still resonate: 1) Unleash the superpowers of the folks around you. 2) Rally the team to tackle any obstacle, even if it’s not in your job description.

Fast forward over a decade of PM life, and I’ve worn various hats – from TPM to PM, handling external partners, diving into AI/ML, tackling Enterprise and Consumer markets, and going from 0 to 1 and 1 to N. You name it!

Each role shaped me into who I am today. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but I did master the art of guiding my team through any challenge. It became my second nature. While I helped others unlock their hidden talents and solve the difficult tech problems, I unleashed some superpowers of my own.

There were some eye-openers along the way too. No more relying on others to book meeting rooms – now, it’s on me! And that sweet rush of ‘dopamine’ from a successfully compiled code? Nope, it’s all about finding PM ‘dopamine’ through a positive meeting outcome.

One of the most interesting lessons I picked up is that customer problems are often simpler than we engineers think. We tend to overcomplicate solutions, forgetting that our users are regular folks, not tech wizards. If every Product Manager gets this, we might just spark a technical revolution!

This year marks a decade of me rocking the PM gig, and I can’t wait to see what the next ten years have in store!