I joined the Synapse product team in February 2022. I can’t believe it has been a year already. It has been challenging for me. I have had to improve my interpersonal skills greatly because it is just impossible to do this job alone. You need a lot of people to help you along the way and you just hope that you are able to make the same impact for them.
To summarize the key challenge of moving from a Microsoft field role to a product management role is that the box around you has been removed. We may not realize it, but when you are tasked to help customers use the products that are already built, you have a box of constraints you are working within. The fun part was always figuring out how to push on one side of the box to make it seem a little bigger (aka implementing workarounds for challenges that you are facing), but you have constraints, and you get really good at knowing them and working within them.
As a PM, the box is removed. You are the one defining the box for others to live within. Your influence, data, support system, organization, all help shape what kind of box you can build. “With great freedom comes great responsibility.” Quite honestly, it can be a little intimidating at times. I never trivialized what a PM did when I was in the Microsoft field organization, but I certainly didn’t appreciate the full scope of the role.
The good news is that fun is in the challenges. I couldn’t be happier with the move to product management. God has blessed me in my career at Microsoft and I am looking forward to the journey ahead.
Although Angry Analytics may seem a little stale, I have had a few entries in the Synapse Blog over at tech community. Cross referencing them below.
Cross Subscription Restore for Dedicated SQL Pools
Synapse Link for SQL Deep Dive
What’s the difference between Azure Synapse (formerly SQL DW) and Azure Synapse Analytics Workspace
