5 things to watch out for as you accept a TPM job offer
1. Interview difficult level
Did the interview feel challenging? Did they expect you to talk about system design? Did they dive deep into your previous technical project? If not, you can expect yourself to be doing adhoc jobs that are not technical in nature. A few big tech companies label this position as a ‘Technical Program Manager’ but in reality need project managers. Do not fall in this trap.
2. Company research
Understand where TPMs stand within the company hierarchy: TPMs enjoy different statuses in different companies. While they are the lifeline in certain companies , they can be the most unvalued job profile in others. Do your research well, don’t glean this information from the pay. Check how the company solicits performance feedback. Are TPMs on the reviewer list of the devs they support? Have informal conversations with the TPMs who interviewed you and find out when was the last time they rallied an idea to a senior stakeholder. How did it go?
3. Research your future boss well
TPM managers are typically not involved in the day to day of what their reports are doing. So how exactly are they helping you do your job well? Talk to some of their existing reports on how they have helped guide and mentor them. Have they helped them avoid certain pitfalls? How well do they know your stakeholders ? Are they trying to solicit early feedback on your work from your stakeholders? Are they able to give you insights on how to maintain focus on key TPM deliverables?
4. Job Profile
What will your job profile be ? Will you be supporting a specific engineering team or will you be supporting an initiative, or will you be expected to do both? Find out what it means to support a team? Are they looking for a scrum master to take the team through the scrum ceremonies?
5. Job performance evaluation
Given the vague aspect of this role, it is important to understand how will your contributions be evaluated? There will be so many people asking so many things from you. Helping them out can feel gratifying. You can be doing 50 different things in a day, and lose track of what your role requires you to do. Get a success criteria defined. And know how it will be tracked. Understand what the company values more : keeping the stakeholder’s happy or doing the right thing. While, on paper, the requirement is to do both, in practice, in most companies will be solely grading you by what the senior stakeholders of the company say about you.