PM at early stage startups (mostly <50 people when I join, current company is ~25) - this is 100% correct not only for engineering, but also every other department in my experience. I can think of a handful of weeks in my career when things were very light (and a couple of these were when I was doing marketing in my first job and were the weeks after our big conferences ended, so everybody just kind of took a break after working 100+ hour weeks leading up to them).
I think it was great for my career/professional development early on, and I highly recommend early stage startups for people early in their careers for that reason. It's not just that you're doing a bunch of stuff, but you're doing stuff that really matters. There's just way too much important work to give the new person pointless work. You're going to get handed real tasks that affect the business immediately, and if you show you can handle them, you're just going to get increasingly important work.
It's also one of the reasons I got recruited from marketing in my first job to PM in my second - they knew I didn't have PM expertise, but I had done meaningful, visible work, been promoted every year, and had built up domain expertise that was valuable for my second job.
It's not just junior people, either - at my current job, which I started <2 months ago, I was doing doing meaningful work in week two. It's definitely hard work, but it's also really nice that your coworkers appreciate you, because you're immediately picking up stuff that either they were having to do or that just wasn't getting done.
Comments
PM at early stage startups (mostly <50 people when I join, current company is ~25) - this is 100% correct not only for engineering, but also every other department in my experience. I can think of a handful of weeks in my career when things were very light (and a couple of these were when I was doing marketing in my first job and were the weeks after our big conferences ended, so everybody just kind of took a break after working 100+ hour weeks leading up to them).
I think it was great for my career/professional development early on, and I highly recommend early stage startups for people early in their careers for that reason. It's not just that you're doing a bunch of stuff, but you're doing stuff that really matters. There's just way too much important work to give the new person pointless work. You're going to get handed real tasks that affect the business immediately, and if you show you can handle them, you're just going to get increasingly important work.
It's also one of the reasons I got recruited from marketing in my first job to PM in my second - they knew I didn't have PM expertise, but I had done meaningful, visible work, been promoted every year, and had built up domain expertise that was valuable for my second job.
It's not just junior people, either - at my current job, which I started <2 months ago, I was doing doing meaningful work in week two. It's definitely hard work, but it's also really nice that your coworkers appreciate you, because you're immediately picking up stuff that either they were having to do or that just wasn't getting done.