First time PM, now Director of Product?
I have a weird PM trajectory and would love some outside calibration.
I came into a small nonprofit tech org as a SME in a very niche field, then became PM, and pretty short order Director of Product. I’ve never worked in a mature product organization, alongside other PMs, or under experienced product leadership (just some former MS guys)
Leadership regularly tells me I’m sooo productive, variations of “you accomplish what much larger, well-funded teams do in less time.” Feels like smoke up my skirt, but I have absolutely no external context for it either way.
I understand our users, and can handle identifying problems, translating messy needs into requirements/workflows, prioritization, working with devs, QA, edge cases, and getting from “vague problem” to functioning product, yada yada.
What I don’t know is how much of that is transferable PM skill versus me being a really effective SME in my own domain.
Is this just a lucky situation or can it transfer elsewhere?