We recently shared a series of videos featuring our Senior Product Recruiter, Heidi Ram. In these 5 videos, Heidi discussed the trends she sees in the Product community, particularly related to Product Manager salaries for individual contributors. While every organization and role has it's own unique challenges, opportunities, and contexts that impact compensation, there are a number of commonalities roughly grouped together according to the release experience of the individual.
To make things as easy as possible for hiring managers who are looking to define compensation for their next Product Manager, we've collected all 5 videos below. You can also read the transcripts, if you prefer.
We hope that this series provides some valuable insight for both organizations and candidates, looking to understand competitive salaries for Product Managers.
Video Series Introduction:
Start here for an overview of why we decided to create this series, our qualifications to discuss the market for Product Managers, and the reasons an organization might need to evaluate their compensation plans for Product Managers.
Are you getting ready to hire a Product Manager? We've created a free checklist to help you refine your requirements, plan the interview process, and get aligned on competitive compensation.
Click here to read the transcript for the Introduction Video.
Part One: Product Managers near the Bottom of the Salary Arch
In this instalment, Heidi discusses the largest community of Product Managers — those in the early on, lower end of the salary range. Heidi talks about the reasons they have for moving to new opportunities, areas to probe during an interview process, and some resume writing advice for folks in this group.
Click here to read the transcript for Part One
Are you getting ready to hire a Product Manager? We've created a free checklist to help you refine your requirements, plan the interview process, and get aligned on competitive compensation.
Part Two: Senior Product Managers who have Hit a Salary Plateau
Many Senior Product Managers hit a salary plateau, when the reach the limits of an individual contributor role. These folks have great product stories about what they've learned building and releasing successful products in market. Heidi shares her insights into what motivates this community of product managers to consider new opportunities, the questions you should ask in the interview process, and the types of products that require this senior level of talent.
Click here to read the transcript for Part Two
Are you getting ready to hire a Product Manager? We've created a free checklist to help you refine your requirements, plan the interview process, and get aligned on competitive compensation.
Part Three: An Interlude for Senior Product Managers Looking to Move into Management
In this video, Heidi shares her advice for Senior Product Managers who are looking to move from individual contributor to managers. Unfortunately, it's tricky to move out and up — most organizations want their leadership to have experience managing teams. Heidi offers some advice for how to talk to your boss about growing into new responsibilities, and working your network to identify organizations where you can add immediate value.
Click here to read the transcript for Part Three
Are you getting ready to hire a Product Manager? We've created a free checklist to help you refine your requirements, plan the interview process, and get aligned on competitive compensation.
Part Four: Product Manager Salaries at the Top of the Salary Arch
In this final instalment in our video series, Heidi talks about the small community of individual contributing Product Managers who are at the very top of the salary range. Often these folks are working on extremely complex systems, supporting global enterprise clients, and generating a great deal of revenue.
Click here to read the transcript for Part Four
Are you getting ready to hire a Product Manager? We've created a free checklist to help you refine your requirements, plan the interview process, and get aligned on competitive compensation.
That's a wrap! Thanks so much to everyone who followed along! You may want to bookmark this page so that you have it handy during your next headcount planning meeting.
Are you getting ready to grow your Product team? Our friendly and knowledgeable team of recruitment specialists would be happy to chat about your plans.
Video Transcripts:
Introduction Video Transcript:
Hi there! I’m Heidi and I recruit Product Managers.
For the very reason that we have a Product Management practice, we get a lot of calls and messages from hiring leaders, sometimes Chief Product Officers, sometimes Founders, CEOs, and sometimes very business oriented HR Professionals. And they all want to talk about Product Management salaries.
Sometimes they want to talk because, perhaps they are looking at their organization and they’re trying to make sure that their business is actually aligned to current market salaries. Or sometimes the hiring leader is looking to build a case to their leadership to confirm something that they’ve been suspicious of all along, which is that they are not competitive, and they want to do something about it.
Sometimes hiring leaders reach out to us because they are at a point in their business where they want to add a very specific function to the Product team, maybe it's someone who is going to work on API integrations, or maybe it’s someone who will be a subject matter expert. Bottomline, they are curious to know what the market is like for those candidates, and what salaries look like.
And sometimes, we even get calls from, usually Founders, CEOs, who are looking to add to their Product team, who want to understand salaries, because up until this point, the team they have been working with has gotten them to, you know, maybe a $5 million dollar business. But that Founder knows that this team, while they’ve been successful, probably isn’t the team to get the business to $50 million, and for that reason they want to know what is it going to cost to assemble a team to get to $50 million.
Whatever the reason, Product Management salaries is a huge subject, and there’s lots of grey area in this topic.
In this video (series), I’ll be sharing some insights with you about what I’ve been learning about Product Managers and their salaries in the market that we’re currently in. And I hope that this insight helps you and your business in whether you’re building your team, or trying to retain your team, but ultimately with the goal that your organization is going to be able to move forward and release amazing product in market that is delightful to its users.
Enjoy!
Are you getting ready to hire a Product Manager? We've created a free checklist to help you refine your requirements, plan the interview process, and get aligned on competitive compensation.
Click here to download your free checklist
Part One Transcript:
Alright, I’m super excited to get into this part of the insight piece, and before I do, I want to share with you the fact that I acknowledge that I’m going to be speaking in really general terms, and of course there are people in the industry who are outside of the averages of what I’m going to be sharing with you today. So just know that I acknowledge that, to give the broadest perspective possible I’m kind of lumping some things into general comments, but if you want to have a personal detailed conversation about this subject, I am happy to do it.
So we’re going to begin talking about the largest community of Product Managers out there, and those are the folks, kind of, in that early on, beginning part of the range. And those are folks who might be earning $85K, maybe they are earning $90K, maybe $95K. They’re in there somewhere.
But if maybe they work for a really huge huge company with lots of process and everything else, maybe they are earning $96,525.10, and they can’t wait to get into the round number world.
So we’re talking about the people kind of in that first part of the salary arch, I’m going to call it.
And this is a really wide community of different situations, and different kinds of Product Managers.
So these candidates, one example, might be, they might be called a Product Manager, but they’re really a Product Owner. So they don’t necessarily own the roadmap and the strategic part, they’re maybe not market facing, but they’re more like a Product Owner—they’re executing, they’re grooming the backlog, they’re writing the epics, you know they’re getting it done. And that company just happens to call them a Product Manager.
Or this community could also be one of those hybrid folks, where the company doesn’t divide Product Managers and Product Owners into two teams—one person functions as both. So they own that roadmap, they’re a part of the strategy side, but they are also pumping it out and getting it done and executing.
This pool of candidates could also represent someone who maybe works at a dev shop, or a digital consultancy, where there isn’t a product, because they don’t make a product—they are engaged to do whatever it is their client needs them to do. Maybe it’s to do some ideation, maybe it’s to create a prototype, maybe it’s to do whatever, but they don’t actually own a product upon which a business has been built.
So maybe they are in that early on stage. Maybe this is someone who has actually done great work and has experience working as a Product Manager, strategy, own the roadmap, they’ve launched product in market. But they have done so, not in Canada. And so now they’re in Canada and for whatever reason, they are either more flexible than maybe what they should be because they have amazing skills, or they just become more flexible because they really want that Canadian work experience which so many employers ask for.
And this could even be someone who works for an engineering led company, and that engineering led company really loves the fact that they’re an engineering led business. And they’ve got someone who is a business analyst and that business analyst says that “I really want to be a Product Manager, I really want to be a Product Manager.” And as part of, maybe a retention strategy, they say, OK we’re going to call you Product Manager and make you a Product Manager, but they are really quite happy not to really bring in product management disciplines so they are going to stay in engineering led business and that business analyst is now a Product Manager and they’re somewhere in here as well.
So there’s many different scenarios. There’s a couple of interesting things about this community of Product Managers.
First of all, money becomes a big motivator for this community, because they are still moving up the salary arch. They know it, you know it, I know it, there’s still a lot of room for them to grow and they want those salary opportunities.
Now because folks sometimes in this situation are moving for money, sometimes there’s too much movement, too often. So you see people making changes, more often than what perhaps you might like.
And as a result of that, how does that impact that the candidate? Well they may not have ever released anything. They’ve never stuck around long enough to see something through, own it, iterate on it, dog-food it, you know, build a business, build the customer base—because they’ve moved on.
And so for that reason, there’s a lot of noise, and you as a hiring leader, and I as a recruiter, need to spend and invest more time really qualifying those candidates and really asking the tough question, ”Have you ever released something in market?” That’s what we want to know. We want their product story.
Now in cases where I chat with candidates—and if you’re a candidate watching this, listen carefully, because we might have already had this conversation, you and I. You will know that my recommendation to a Product Manager who hasn’t released something in market yet, my advice is this—stay where you are. Stay where you are if you can, and see it through.
Get that product in market, iterate on it, make it better, grow your customers, grow your users, develop APIs, get connections into other products. Whatever it is that your business model is, do it and do it well, because guess what, it's hard everywhere, it's hard where you are right now, yeah well it’s going to be hard where you go next. But you have already been entrusted with a tremendous opportunity and responsibility. Your boss is counting on you to develop a product that will grow that business, that someone can sell, that someone will want to buy, and that will get implemented, that the Monthly Recurring Revenue is going to grow because of the work that you’ve done with that product.
So stick with it, is my feedback for someone who hasn’t yet released something, because that ultimately is what creates your product story. Every product manager becomes more valuable when they have a product story to share and can share what they did with whatever product they were given when they were first hired. And that product story riddled with highs and lows, riddled with successes and sometimes embarrassments, is what helps you grow in the salary arch.
If someone has launched something in product, and they have the stories of the heart-ache and the successes and the wins and the lessons that they learned, that person is considered a very valuable candidate. And I’m sure there is an employer out there watching this, who is nodding their heads saying yeah, yeah she’s got it. That person is more valuable than someone who is going to learn at their expense. So, I digressed, but that’s my feedback if you haven’t released product.
Now, also talking about this community, is that you know there’s a lot of reasons why a product manager who’s in this group may be looking to make moves in addition to the opportunity to earn more money.
It’s possible that the product, that they have achieved were hired to do. That whatever the problem was that they were hired to solve, they’ve done it. Maybe the product is now going into maintenance mode, any good product manager does not want to be in maintenance mode of anything. They want to be building and iterating.
Maybe the company has been acquired, and although the new employer may be saying, “oh yeah, we’re going to keep you as a separate subsidiary,” lets face it, you and I know what’s coming. It may take a year, it may take 5 or 6 years, but one day that will all collapse into the larger acquired company and you’re out. Or you should want to be out because then nothing really new is going to be happening with that product that you’re currently managing.
Maybe there is a new Chief Product Officer in town and that person has come on board with a very specific mandate and you’re not a part of it. You know that product team is going to turn, because they have a mandate to bring in some fresh people with different skills, and there’s going to be a change.
Whatever the reason, this community of people, they move, and you want to be looking closely.
Another interesting quality about this community of people, especially those who don’t have a lot of actual experience, who haven’t actually launched anything in the market. And if you’re a hiring manager watching this, you may smile as you hear this. This community might have a resume riddled with all kinds of decorative graphical things. They’ve got many fonts, they have colours, things are underlined, italics, bolding, there is bar graphs, circle graphs, there is the sort of the five dots to signify you’re a hundred percent of something but no one ever actually has all five dots coloured in because actually who wants to say “I’m great at everything” or maybe it's the circle that's not fully completed to say “I‘m 100% of something” because of whatever reason, but these are resumes that have lots of distraction elements.
I find it interesting that many Product Managers who have that kind of a resume are in this lower salary bracket here and it’s to camouflage the fact that they’ve actually never released product. I know this is a controversial thing I’m saying, but I find there’s a connection, because as we go up the salaries of the guys who are really releasing some pretty epic world class product that’s adopted by and used by, it seems everyone, they don’t have the artist work on their resumes. It's about the statistics and the results and so you want to be aligning yourself more to stats and data driven metrics then all of the art work, especially since you’re not being hired to be a graphic designer. Just a thought.
So, anyways, that's where we are at. So this community is going to be moving. Take a closer look. It's all about product story and sifting through the resumes. It's a noisy place, this is a noisy place, lots is happening in here, so take a closer look at those candidates because within that community, there is always some real gems who have actually launched product in the market and who can probably do it for you.
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Part Two Transcript:
Alright. So we have been talking about this group of Product Managers who are working hard. And they are working hard moving up the salary arch. Learning and growing skills, building experiences into their toolbox, and sometimes, this community is even taking a step back to take a step forward in the bigger picture of their career.
That could mean a situation where a Product Manager is currently responsible for an on-premise product. And then someone sees value in their skills, and thinks they’d be a great cultural fit for an opportunity to move into managing a SaaS platform. And any wise candidate will recognize that that’s really an opportunity to grab when it comes along. And so taking a step back in salary to be able to move forward into a more modern tech stack? I mean that’s huge.
So bottom line, this group is moving along, moving along, and we’re now going to begin to talk about the next largest group of Product Managers that exists.
And that group are sitting at about $120K - $125K, and that’s the second largest group of Product Managers outside of this group. Not all of these Product Managers are going to be able to get into that salary group, because not all companies will pay that much for an individual contributing Product Manager. There’s plenty of companies that won’t. But there’s plenty of companies that do, and we’re going to be talking about that next.
I also want to begin by pointing out that this next salary group is really sitting at a bit of a plateau. There isn’t a lot of movement up and down in salaries, kind of that $120K - $125K is where a lot of folks are going to sit for possibly a long period of time.
So I’m excited about telling you about that group, and what we’ve learned and discovered in our career of recruiting Product Managers.
Alright. So who is in this next group of Product Managers? Because they do represent the next largest group of product folks in the market. Those who are sitting at the $120K - $125K mark.
Well in general terms, they’re referred to as Senior Product Managers. That means that they already have experience releasing product in market. This is not about how many years you’ve been trying, or how many years you’ve been in the business. This is generally about actual product release experience. This person has figured out a way to monetize an idea. This person has figured out how to grow a product, from maybe being a one product company to an actual suite of products and a platform. They’ve actually done something to build a business.
That’s generally, what is considered a Senior Product Manager who might sit in this salary group. This person owns the voice of the customer. They are looking at the market. They understand the competitive landscape. They understand who if they could they would build API integrations into, and who they’d want integrating into their stuff. This is the strategic thinker.
And, in cases where it’s a startup, this person might still be doing the role of a Product Owner as well in that kind of a hybrid situation. It happens. There’s lots of grey area.
Now one of the cool things about this community is hearing their product stories. And if you’re ever in a situation where you’re interviewing or talking with Product Managers who are Senior Product Managers and they’re kind of in that salary range, you want to understand the story of what they did, and what it was like to get it to where it is today. Because that’s where the value comes from. Those are the lessons that you can’t learn in some course that you take, or in an online community and forum. You have to experience that for yourself.
Now the other thing that we begin to see in this salary bucket, the $120K, $125K, sometimes $130K, is an emergence of candidates who are called “lead.” Individuals who are now being given some responsibility over maybe Business Analysts or Product Owners. And so, they’re taking on some of that leadership, sometimes even the management side of a group.
And in some cases, And we’ve certainly worked on our share of these kinds of roles, someone might even be a Director. They might even have a director title, Director of Product. And they’re earning $120K, $125K, maybe $130K. But the company is small, the product is early on. And often the plan and the vision that a founder has is “listen, come on board, I’m going to give you the Director title coming in, you’re going to be an individual contributing Product Manager, but, the moment that we get our next round of funding, and as long as that product is in market, which it would probably need to be for us to get the money, you are going to begin to build the team. And then you’ll be a real legit Director of Product.” So we see that.
So this group, still is a mix of folks, it’s an interesting group. Not everyone who is making those incremental steps along the arch in this group are going to get here, because not all companies will pay $120K, $125K, $130K for an individual contributing Product Manager. But there are plenty of companies who will.
So that’s what this community looks like, and now let's get into even a little bit more detail about that profile.
Ok, so there are some things to be mindful about if you are Head of Product, and we’re now talking about this individual contributor who’s earning $120K, $125K, maybe even $130K, because this group we’ve already said, is going to plateau. There isn’t going to be as many opportunities for them to move up in their base salary. There’s just fewer of them. We don’t get a lot of roles where, hey, going in it's a $140K base.
We are going to talk about those higher salaries in a moment and put that into context, but for the most part this is going to be a plateau which means that, that community is moving for reasons other than money.
They’re open to moving for a whole other bucket of reasons. And it leads to some really interesting conversations. So for example some of the things I hear when I reach out to folks who are in that group are things like this. “Heidi I’m interested in making a move to solve problems I haven’t yet solved. I want to solve new problems.” “Heidi I’m tired of working in the payment tech space. You know I’m in my third payment tech company. I’m done. I need to move and do something different.” “Heidi I’ve done food tech now two or three times, my companies keep getting acquired and I’m interested in making a move out of food tech. I’m interested in anything other than food.” Or, people will say things like this: “Heidi I want to work for a company that's missional. It's important to me that I’m contributing to a greater good. That I am working for purpose, that I’m helping someone better their life, or quality of life, that I am solving problems for mankind, for human-kind.”
This is, I have these conversations. People are interested in being a part of something that is greater than what they are part of, and that if they find it will rank high in their reasons for making a move, even if it means that they might have to make a lateral move in base salary or even sometimes take a step back. Can be powerful.
The other thing that we hear from this community is that folks will be willing to make a job change if the next move advances their technical or their product skills, moving into that sort of next generation of tech. So I’ll hear folks say, “I want to move into machine learning, into robotics, into autonomous anything, AI.” Ok almost everyone is doing AI, but you know AI and all those things, so this becomes a really big motivator for candidates.
And the other interesting reason we hear that community want to make a change is they want to work on a product that they would be a user persona of, a product that they would see personal value from and understand it as a user.
So I find it always interesting why people move because that's really the heart of a person, and this person, you know, is going to be moving for some different and interesting reasons than maybe this community.
Now the other thing that we begin to see from this group is that because they know there aren’t a lot big advances in their base salaries, that advancement is one of the ways to grow their salary, and so we begin to hear a lot of folks in that group saying I really want to get a call about the Director of Product role. I believe that I’m ready to be a Vice President of product. Heidi I am ready and only want to hear about roles to be Head of Product.
So we begin to hear that. That's a whole other conversation for another day. But this is, this is something that resonates with that community.
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Part Three Transcript:
Well this is an aside from our video series and I am talking to you: the Senior Product Manager who has done a fantastic job. In fact, you’ve done everything you were hired to do, you’ve released product, you’ve built a business, and you feel that you are ready for the next step.
In fact when you and I speak soon, you are going to make a point of telling me you only want my phone call if I'm recruiting for a VP, a Director or a Head of Product role because that's what you want to do next.
Well I’m rooting for you, I want that for you also. I want you to live your dream, I want you to be successful, and I want you to run Product at a tech company in Toronto. Here are some things to think about as you search for that next opportunity.
Number one: it's really hard to make that transition from being an individual contributor to the next level. It's hard to do that outside of the company who you work for. The general sort of thinking is that if your own employer won’t promote you, why would anyone else give you that opportunity? You actually are a high risk hire. When you’re thinking about all of the other candidates who you’re competing with, and I can assure you those candidates are Directors or Vice Presidents, sometimes even Chief Product Officers, the unfortunate state of the Toronto technology scene right now is that there simply are not enough leadership roles for all of the great candidates who are either in the market or are ready to make a move to their next role because maybe their product is done, its matured, its moving into maintenance, and those folks are actively looking and are ready and looking to make their next move. That's the community who you are competing with. People who are already in that job and for that employer many times, they are a low risk hire. And they’ve done the job that they are being hired to do.
So what can you do? How can you move up into that next level? Well this is the advice that I give to candidates in your situation.
Number one: book a meeting with your boss. Does your employer know what your aspiration is? Do they know it is your desire to be a Head of Product, whatever that title is called? They need to know that in case they’re thinking about adding that role into their company and might consider you as a viable candidate.
But more important than that is that you don’t want to go into that meeting all about you and telling them what you want. You want to seek their counsel and their feedback about you. Would they consider you for that role if it were available, and why and why not? What are the opportunities that they’ve identified you still need to develop so that you are ready for that role should it become available in your company? How do they want you to contribute to the business that maybe you haven’t even thought of, and maybe you’re not contributing in the way they would want you to if you were to step into that next level of responsibility.
Are there projects that you could undertake in your firm to instil confidence to the leadership that you’re not just one of a certain peer group that you’re actually now ready to become part of that senior leadership team.
Talk to your boss, listen to their feedback, be open to critique, and work on it. Show them that you’re committed. Be the best person, be the best employee that you can be in the job that you’re in, and work towards getting promoted internally.
Yes that's going to be hard, and yes you’re going to be stretched, and that might be a really uncomfortable conversation. But guess what, you know what's equally hard? When someone gives a chance on you in a role that you’ve never had and now you are up to your neck having to learn and do the job. That's tough, and when you have allies around you at your current employer, people who have confidence in you, people who are rooting for you, don’t you think that it will be easier for you to achieve those milestones and those goals in that team of support that you’re in today, then in an entirely new business where you don't know anybody and they’re maybe even skeptical as to why didn't they get the job that you got. Think about it. So have that talk with your employer, be stretched, and do the best job that you can.
The other thing is that, think about companies where you could add immediate value and contact that Founder, that leader directly.
It's very difficult to move out and up with a recruiter, leveraging a recruiter, because let's face it, recruiters are paid, our companies are hired, to present candidates to an employer who meet their requirements. And if I am recruited, sorry, if I am hired, if the services of Martyn Bassett Associates are engaged to help a company hire a Head of Product, most likely the requirements that I, Heidi, am working against include only presenting candidates who have done the job before. So that rules out anyone who wants to do it. I am under the gun to present candidates who actually have.
You might have an easier time going out and up if you have a personal relationship with a CEO or a Founder who is willing to take a chance on you because maybe there is some history or maybe you work for a competitor, and they that know you can add immediate value to what they’re trying to accomplish.
I hope this has been helpful. I want to see you live your dream. I want to see you successful running product if you are not already doing that.
If you have any questions about this, do shoot me a message and I am happy to talk it through with you. Heidi@mbassett.com
Are you getting ready to hire a Product Manager? We've created a free checklist to help you refine your requirements, plan the interview process, and get aligned on competitive compensation.
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Part Four Transcript:
Well we’re now at that point where we’re talking about everyone else's base salaries. Those hard to believe ones that sort of start at the $130K mark and go as high as $165K. Who are these people? How are they in these situations where they’re earning that kind of a base salary for being an individual contributing Product Manager?
Well again, all situations have explanations and reasons, there’s a lot of grey area everywhere.
But from my personal experience recruiting folks who I discover are earning these kinds of salaries, there are some commonalities.
And this is what it looks like.
So often times, these folks are not working on native mobile apps, or even B2B SaaS platforms.
These are the people who are working on hard, large, hard core large backend infrastructure systems. Those backend systems that everything else is built on, that keep companies operating. And those companies are global. These folks are responsible for products that are used globally in very complex environments. And these folks have often been with these firms for quite a while.
These folks are not often the ones who are making quick and rapid frequent changes. Sometimes these folks are, and I am thinking of one individual in particular, individual contributing Product Manager making $165K, it might even be that this person is making $170K but here is their situation: they worked for a Canadian technology company who got acquired, and then the acquiring company over time really didn't invest in that product and it sort of, it’s been in maintenance mode, but you know what, the revenue is being generated by that product for something like $70, $80, $90 million dollars globally. There's customers counting on that thing being operational, and so this person is responsible for that. And he is paid a lot of money to keep the lights on and to keep it going. Alright.
Yes this individual knows that he is not growing his Product Management skills. This person knows that he’s working on something that is in maintenance mode and kind of legacy, but you know what, at that salary he is ok with it! And maybe you and I might be too. So that’s that situation.
So there’s lots of unique situations in the market place which, you know when you scratch the surface, it’s understandable why.
Alright. I hope this has been helpful. If you have any questions about this or anything related to salaries and Product Management, if you want to dig deeper and talk about your organization specifically and how you should be looking at your salaries to retain or to attract talent, anyone in our firm, myself would love to have a conversation with you about that. Heidi@mbassett.com
We hope this has been helpful, until the next time.
Are you getting ready to hire a Product Manager? We've created a free checklist to help you refine your requirements, plan the interview process, and get aligned on competitive compensation.
Click here to download your free checklist