- Shailesh Chauhan shares strategies that helped him grow his career growth across Big Tech companies.
- He emphasizes saying no to your managers and resisting the urge to showcase how much you know.
- Overcommunication is crucial in fast-paced environments to ensure alignment and clarity.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shailesh Chauhan, a product manager at Meta in the Bay Area. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified his employment history.
I began my career in civil engineering in India and moved to the US for a master’s in the same field. While studying at the University of Illinois in 2011, I realized that software was driving a big chunk of innovation, and I wanted a career in tech.
I started taking coding classes and built my skills to the point I was hired as the first product manager at a small startup in the Bay Area. I spent five years at the analytics software startup and saw it grow from a company of 10 to one of over 1,000 employees.
I left the startup in 2018 and joined Uber as a product manager the same year. Two years later, I moved to Amazon and worked as a product lead for Amazon Web Services. In 2022, I made a career switch to Meta, where I work as a machine learning product lead.
Four strategies have helped me switch industries and scale my career:
1. Learn to say no
Saying no is extremely hard, especially as a junior employee. You tend to overwork yourself, which can be a risk to your reputation if you overpromise and then underdeliver because you took on too much.
Denying some requests can earn you more respect from your managers. It demonstrates maturity and strategic thinking because you don’t allow yourself or your team to spend time on any random thing thrown at you.
I see it as my job to think about what are the biggest opportunities for me and what I want to say yes to. This allows me to carve out time for projects that are important and save my team’s time.
One way to tackle this is by asking counter-questions about whether what your manager is asking will benefit the final product or the team. Another way is to list tasks you think are important and have high impact and ask your manager: “Hey, I understand that this may be important, but how would you relatively think about it?” Now, you can say no gracefully.
2. Be the dumbest person in the room
This is a strategy I first learned at the startup I worked at, where I was surrounded by senior leaders from Google. I was the first person hired on the product team, and I felt pressure to project what I knew about our product. But I found it more valuable to listen carefully to get a full picture of the company and product so that I don’t fight over things I don’t really believe in.
Since then, I have found it valuable to play the “dumb card” and ask as many questions as possible, focusing on questions that uncover insights for other people. It is tempting to show that you are knowledgeable and that you have experience, but that should come from your work, not your words.
Early in your career, being quiet can be hard because you feel the need to fill any silent moments in meetings and one-on-ones. It’s OK to embrace the silence instead of saying something redundant. Listening intently helps you bring in fresh ideas, which helps you prioritize your long-term career development over the short-term wins at that meeting.
3. Focus on relationships beyond work
I focus on building personal relationships with the people I work with because good relations go beyond company and country boundaries. Also, I do my best work when I am surrounded by people I trust and enjoy working with.
I ask myself whether someone I am working with would want to work with me when they leave the company. If the answer is no, I try to work on that relationship so that it lasts beyond our day to day work.
4. Over-communication is key
Sometimes, people feel that they should not repeat themselves after making a point. But I think overcommunication is a feature and not a bug, especially in fast-paced environments where there are so many people and priorities, all working across multiple time zones.
So even when I feel like I risk sounding redundant, I choose to repeat myself because there are always one or two people who miss a message you send. I utilize different channels and make sure that everybody understands me and is on the same page.
