The story of one dismissal, or How to look for a job now as a product manager in IT
A little history
So, my good friend, with whom we previously worked together, 5 years ago decided to connect his career with a project office in a state office that deals with IT solutions for the city of Moscow, i.e. the functional customer is the Moscow Government. The office offered participation in a state B2B startup within the framework of sports substitution and role of project manager/delivery manager. At that time, the income proposal was at the lower end of the market, but the project itself seemed interesting. It was successfully launched 2 years after the start, it entered the stage of development and support. The project manager has grown to become a product owner.
What happened next
Spoiler: The short-term decision was interesting, but I should have left earlier, having gained the necessary experience. The decision to stay longer in the long term turned out to be a mistake.
After successful implementation, the product and the entire team were transferred to another department with a different head of department. The project continues to develop, development contracts are regularly concluded, the product owner works, receives a letter of gratitude and is included in the work book.
There are no signs of trouble. Suddenly the head of the department invites the product manager, and they had a dialogue like this (there is no need to think anything out, the main thing is to grasp the meaning of the message):
— I want to promote another employee. You are no longer needed here. But I talked to my friends, and you can be transferred to another project.
“Shouldn’t you have discussed this with me first?”
– No, the servants do not have the right to vote, and no one here knows about the abolition of serfdom.
At the tempo of a waltz
A month later
The technical director and HR invite the product manager to a meeting. They regret to report that they did not find any new projects within the department (WTF?), and passed on the product summary to other colleagues who will someday contact him and maybe offer something.
In the meantime, they slip in an agreement between the parties with the condition that he leaves exactly in a month with a fixed date, and for this they will even pay him a salary for this month.
What's the point, brother?
Well, let’s say one department head acted unprofessionally to serve his personal interests. But it turns out that his management also behaves incorrectly towards the employee.
There is no correct offboarding, people don’t even try to come to an agreement, save staff and starve them out in the hope that the person himself will get tired of sitting without a job, he will finally find another one and leave. At the same time, there are no complaints about the quality of work and professionalism of the employee.
In this case, the organization will still pay, and then spend another +40-200% of the budget on onboarding a new employee, while losing competencies, experience and a loyal employee who has been successfully developing the product for 5 years. But, most likely, they will simply hire their “friend” for this position.
Has anyone encountered something similar?
Labor market
A little about what the search process looks like now for a product that, over 15 years of working in IT, has grown from a systems analyst to a product owner. For reference: 18 total years of experience, of which:
3 years in production and
15 in IT,
4 implemented projects in the field of finance, geographic information systems and public administration,
Work experience on each project from 3 to 5 years.
Summary first 3 weeks was in status “I am considering offers”but during this time only 4 HRs themselves found his resume and contacted himalthough experience and hard skills are relevant. The recommendation not to show your resume and to apply only to vacancies that interest you, in principle, works.
Spoiler: In principle, you can find a suitable place with standard working conditions in the market in 2 months.
From personal observations
Nowadays, both applicants and HRs look for suitable vacancies/resumes in a telegram bot, and it searches mainly by matching words, so there is no point in writing an original resume, almost no one will find or see it, unless you send it out personally. Experience and skills must be clearly tailored to the vacancies for which you are applying. They are also not original.
In 3 weeks a friend changed his resume status to “I'm not looking for a job” and started actively respond for the vacancies myself. For the response I prepared covering letterwhich, naturally, must be adapted each time to the vacancy.
I am interested in the vacancy
in your company. I have more than
years of experience in the field of strategic management, design and implementation of information systems in the field of .
For the last
I have been developing information systems in : full cycle and in the development/refactoring/migration stage in the role of Product owner. My scope of work includes the full cycle of project management from collecting requirements from the customer to successful implementation and assessing satisfaction with the customer and key users and organizing effective interaction in several integration teams ~ of employees. Before that, I had more than
years of experience in the development of .
Perhaps my experience will be useful for the development of your company's products.
Response statistics for 2 months:
75 responses,
12 invitations for an interview, including:
9 HRs called to chat, tell about the vacancy and ask the candidate questions,
8 HRs eventually agreed on a time for an interview with their immediate manager and team, 1 did not call back,
3 never got in touch,
26 refusals,
37 have not been viewed.
Moreover, the messages about viewing and refusal came simultaneously, i.e., as if HR did not actually look at the resume, but immediately clicked “Refuse”.
Spoiler: They didn’t agree on ₽350 thousand; at the final stage they chose another candidate.
If you want, you can find it for ₽350 thousand, if you set such a goal, but the search will then drag on, because such offers are very rare, even isolated.
It is possible to find a position of senior/leading product manager for ₽300 thousand, if the experience and self-presentation are sufficient.
Taking into account the fact that the person had not changed his job for 5 years, and indexation and increases, especially in the state government, were small, he received offers of +30% to his monthly income.
If a person changed jobs more often, then most likely the increase will be smaller, because income in the same industry for the same position is almost equal, and salaries do not grow with real inflation of 200% from year to year. Well, it’s also a well-known fact that new employees are offered more than the “old” ones are indexed.
37.5% – the percentage of successfully passed interviews. The average statistics for the industry is slightly lower: 1 offer per 10 interviews. The job search is still ongoing.
Who is hiring
The total number of vacancies opened in IT in 2023 increased by 6%, but if you slightly expand the sample by year until 2020, the picture is no longer so positive and here you can see, for example, an indicative reduction in vacancies for frontend developers by almost 50% , and this is one of the most popular specialties.
Which companies and in which areas are recruiting:
Almost half of the vacancies in Fintech.
Banks: Sber and Tinkoff have a lot of vacancies.
System integrators. Large, formerly foreign companies, now bought by Russian management, work either for banks or for the state government. In large companies, the staff was reduced by 20-50%, because… There are no foreign projects, employees have relocated, there is no international experience.
Actually, state-owned companies themselves: from the Central Bank and the Ministry of Digital Development to Roscosmos and Rosatom.
A little business: mainly e-commerce, retail.
Very little productionFor example, there are individual vacancies at Sibur and Severstal.
What can get in the way when searching?
From personal observations of B2B project management in government, which differs from the banking sector and commercial organizations:
PMBOK – a theory that no one applies. When applying for a job, they ask about training and certificates, which are formally necessary, but in practice most issues are resolved according to the principle “I'm the boss – you're a fool, you're the boss – I'm a fool”. You can at least hang yourself with certificates, they won’t be useful here.
Everyone wants to plan releases and manage requirements Scrum And Kanbanbut it still works Waterfallbecause the process depends on government contracteven if it is a life cycle for 90 days.
Preparation of functions in the LCC takes another couple of months and begins in advance, so this the cycle lasts for 5-6 months, including the life cycle period. During this time, some functions lose relevance, others change, new more important, urgent, necessary ones appear, but there is nowhere to cram them in. Kanban would really help here, but in practice it doesn’t work with government contracts. Therefore it appears technical debt.
Technical debt is the tail that wags the dog. It is inevitable, it is static, it is not reduced, but is replaced by other functions from new government contracts. This is a constant unsolvable problem with all the attendant risks.
Tasks are managed in tracking systems, but Metrics are of no use to anyone and do not affect anything.. Management wants one number. All other indicators are of interest only in colorful presentations.
Implementing metrics, checklists, monitoring, checking DORs is only interesting for the project manager personallybecause this does not affect the quality of contractors’ work and releases in any way, since it is not included in the standard KPI of a government contract.
Contractors are the cheapest in the market of system integrators and most often in the absence of foreign companies, which have been prohibited from participating in competitions since 2020, these are now lured companies organized by friends, living off one or two related products. They receive little, they offer employees little too, hence all the ensuing problems of insufficient quality and competencies.
People who really work over the product, – ordinary, normalbut many of them quickly realize that the industry/product/organization is not suitable for them, so There is a high turnover among analysts, developers, architects, and administrators.
People of the level head of department/department most often for a long time have reached the limits of their competence. They communicate a lot with customers-officials, which also leaves its mark.
And there is a lot of this. There is really no need for new effective management methods in the state administration. The project manager can use them, but it is not systematized in the same way as in IT banks or commercial companies. The management technology stack in Gosk is smallerTherefore, when entering the market, an employee loses, although he has rich experience and motivation to develop.
On front-line projects, the situation with control technologies is a little better.
This is the subjective opinion of one employee from the inside. It is clear that in other state-owned companies the experience may differ, in some cases dramatically. However, it does happen. In the absence of foreign customers, government contracts have increased. Commercial companies and private businesses do not always have the money and opportunity to develop their own IT stack. The project management market still exists, and it is quite large, although now it is more concentrated in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tatarstan and a little in Siberia. There is a lot of import substitution, but there are often not enough specialists and technology stacks. When large foreign IT companies spent huge budgets and resources on product development, introducing only a boxed solution, now a lot has to be reinvented like a wheel, but there are no resources.
Spoiler: The chances of finding a “dream job” for a senior/leading product manager through a personal internal recommendation are much higher.
What do you think?
