Aug 8th, 2021
After several months in the job market and with 4 good offers on the table, I took a job as a PM at YouTube at the end of Feb.
It's completely different from what I expected. Given the size of Google/YouTube, I was expecting the work to be narrow and—relative to my founder experience—boring. Yet, I expected the training and this-is-how-we-build-products to be world class. Neither is true. My scope and area of ownership is large which I love. However, I've been surprised to experience how immature the org is. At the time I joined, my team lacked many processes and standards that even the product org at my startups had. (I've since come to understand why, which is a mix of the product area I'm working in being new and growing like a weed, and a deliberate decentralized culture at Google.)
Overall I'm enjoying it and it is a great place for me right now. I get to go deep into my craft of building products, get paid very well relatively to startup life, and experience new things amidst a great group of people. I do still want to get back to startups, but I'm comfortable with that being on a 3 to 5 year timeline. (Although this week I've really had the startup itch and noticed the first feeling of desire to get back out there.)