Nikhyl Singhal (VP Meta): How to Advance Your Product Management Career (Part 2)
The 2nd half of my conversation with Nikhyl on top companies pay PMs, how to negotiate comp, and how to overcome the shadows of your superpowers
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Dear subscribers,
Today, I want to share the rest of my conversation with Nikhyl Singhal (VP Meta) on how to advance your product career.
In part 1, we covered how to navigate the mid-to-late stages of your product career and choose the right company to join. Today, we’ll cover:
What top companies pay PMs
How to negotiate compensation
How to overcome the shadows of your superpowers
Let’s dive in.
What top companies pay PMs
Your post about how much top companies pay PMs led to some spicy reactions. Why is comp so high at these companies?
It’s funny because people publicly told me that these comp ranges were too high but privately confirmed the data.
The fact is, only a small number of people get these jobs and they don’t run around telling others how much they make.
It’s important to make these comp ranges transparent so that more people have the courage to get roles at these top companies.
To answer your question, top companies pay product leaders a lot because their decisions significantly impact the company’s value. A company with 1,000+ employees might only have 20 product leaders who are tasked to make these decisions. So it makes sense to compensate them well.
But these are tough roles to get and hold onto. They’re not easy jobs.
Based on these comp ranges, a senior PM at a top company can make more than a director at an early-stage company. Do you think titles matter at all?
I think titles are mostly meaningless in early-stage companies because there’s no standardization. Some companies give everyone a fancy title while others don’t.
At established companies (say series C or after), titles do start to matter. A Director, VP, or CPO title at these companies signals to others that you’re a product executive.
To understand if titles matter at a company, look at the scope of the problem that you’re asked to solve:
A senior PM at a top company might be solving an important problem with a reasonable level of ambiguity.
A director at a startup, in contrast, might be doing product management for the first time because they just switched roles from engineering.
In this case, the director might actually not be qualified for the senior PM job.
You also need to evaluate the tradeoff between title and comp. Let’s say you have a senior PM offer at a top company and a director offer at another company with the same comp. The director offer will likely have more equity which comes with more risk. You need to think if you want to get half the comp just to get the director title.
I think many people get stuck on title. A friend who’s a group PM recently told me that they’re not willing to take any job with a title lower than director. It feels like a narrow way of thinking instead of evaluating all the trade-offs.
Yes, a director at a late stage may be equivalent to a VP at the mid-stage and a C-level at an early stage. If your goal is to get the biggest title, you would probably take the early-stage job which comes with the biggest risk.
How to negotiate compensation
Do you have any advice for negotiating compensation in this tight job market?
Great question. I think it’s important for everyone to get paid fairly, otherwise, it’s easy to build resentment for your job.
I recommend negotiating in 3 steps:
Know your band. Based on your scope and past experience, what band do you think you belong to (e.g., senior PM, group PM, director, or VP)? Knowing your band and the associated salary ranges grounds your negotiation.
Have some choices. You’re not in the best position to negotiate if you only have 1 offer. Try to get 2-3 offers so that you can consider all your options.
Think about tenure. Let’s say you’re a CPO with a $2M offer and a $1.5M offer. Sounds like a no-brainer right? But what if the company offering $2M fired their last two CPOs in two years? Do you really want to take that risk?
Yes, I think the tenure point applies to all levels. If you join a great company one level down, you can more easily exceed expectations and build a great reputation. That sets you up to excel.
Exactly!
How to overcome the shadows of your superpowers
Can you briefly explain what “shadows of your superpowers” means?
It means that:
Every superpower also has a weakness that needs to be addressed to advance your career.
Here’s a list of superpowers and their shadows: