The 2x Women in Tech Podcast with Chelsea Behrens

Brittany Rogers, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft

The big takeaway on this episode of The 2x Women in Tech Podcast is: Don’t let what you think you don’t know stop you! Brittany Rogers had an English Literature degree and no particular interest in anything technical. And, yet, she has built an amazing career with a broad range of roles at both Amazon and Microsoft. 

This conversation teases out just how transferrable so-called “soft skills” can be within the tech industry, especially in the product management space. Brittany lays out first steps for transitioning into tech. More than writing code, the strongest candidates demonstrate flexibility and adaptability. The fluid nature of business requirements also makes the ability to communicate, synthesize information, write reports and facilitate among groups highly valued. As an English Literature major, Brittany would hardly have imagined a career in tech. But she has loved the robust challenge and a learning curve supported by her adeptness with reading, writing, galvanizing teams, and managing milestones.

Brittany defines terms, deconstructs various roles, highlights highly coveted skills and shares her best advice for women who may be limiting themselves because of false assumptions about what they have to offer. Learn about how to transition into a variety of roles within the tech industry and, in particular, what product management looks like from the inside.

Key Takeaways:

• What’s the goal of product management? Understanding customer problems and creating solutions to those problems. It’s a collaborative endeavor that can involve multiple teams and priorities.

• Brittany’s Top 3 Optimal Skill Sets for Product Management:

  • The ability to absorb ambiguity and unfamiliar subjects/challenges.

  • The ability to be flexible and drop what you’re doing abruptly in response to changing circumstances or fluid requirements.

  • The ability to empathize with and advocate for your user, always putting their agenda ahead of your own.

• Brittany shares her career journey:

  •  An undergrad liberal arts degree from Western Washington University led to early tech-adjacent on-the-job training at a small company that got her started in the space. She worked with XML (a coding language), product and global team management — all experiences that have served her well throughout her career.

  • Brittany went on to a series of roles at Amazon, where she put her passion for reading and writing to work in content, program management, marketing and ultimately her ideal niche in product management. 

  • Brittany has more recently transferred her skill set over to her current role at Microsoft.

• Product management wasn’t something Brittany would have imagined as a good fit, given that she wasn’t technically oriented. But in fact she had exactly the skills to facilitate a great customer experience.

• While engineers do populate the product management space, there are also many people with other types of backgrounds (liberal arts, business, marketing) who also make an excellent fit.

• Distinguishing between project, program and product management:

  • Project Management: Involves a finite project.

  • Program Management: Involves multiple projects under one industry or sector umbrella.

  • Product Management: Overseeing projects having to do with an app or tech device across teams (hardware or software engineering, digital, marketing).

• Brittany’s recommended first steps for getting started in tech: 

  • Building a network through platforms such as LinkedIn, meetups and other professional groups.

  • Look for a mentor who can make introductions and provide experiential support.

  • Tap all the online research and resources available.

• Beyond FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google): Brittany breaks down some of the differences to consider when looking at large versus small- or medium-sized tech companies. What do you want in terms of culture, values, interests?

• Top Takeaways from Brittany’s Nine-Year Tenure at Amazon:

  • Invest in relationships early and constantly. They produce opportunities you would not otherwise encounter.

  • Even (or especially) in the world of remote or hybrid work, it’s important to make maintaining personal connections a priority.

  • Speak up! The only way to seize opportunities is to communicate that you’re interested and eager to learn.

  • Criticism and hard questions are not personal.

• Brittany’s strategy for learning to absorb criticism: Decouple your personal commitment to projects from totally unrelated business goals or impacts that may factor in.

• Work is work. Home is home. Brittany tries very hard to focus on her husband, child and other activities when she’s off the clock.

• Transitioning during pandemic: Brittany has met people through onboarding modules for new employees, which she has leveraged to make connections. She’s intentional about looking for opportunities to meet up in person or even through virtual Microsoft-sponsored events.

• Priorities now and then: Mental health takes precedence compared with earlier in her career, when Brittany was happy to volunteer for extra work and overtime hours. 

• Product Management is fast-changing, dynamic and full of resets that can be briefly disconcerting but build a robust set of knowledge in the long term.

• Brittany’s Best Advice: You may think you know your skill sets or what you’re good at, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways you can deploy those skills within a tech context. There’s cross-over and multiple ways to migrate what you bring to the table.

Episode Resources

• Brittany Rogers on LinkedIn

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