I left my PM role at Meta building AI Agents. I gave up $750K in compensation. 99% of people would kill for my role. So why did I choose to leave? My 6 years at Meta have greatly exceeded my expectations! ❤️ I built products on the FB, IG, MSGR, WA apps across consumer, advertiser, well-being and AI first products. ❤️ People at Meta have a unique combination of immense kindness, world class talent and insane ambition. That makes the place magical. ❤️ Every product I worked on had meaningful impact on an insanely large number of people & businesses. And then I got the opportunity to be the founding PM for AI Agents. It brought me back to my roots in AI. It was a wide open product space. The team would work closely with Zuck. It was a career defining role - yet I decided to leave Meta! My career journey has been about continuously (Re)Defining my Mission. When I look back my personal mission, it looked like this: 💚 2002 - 2010: Build cool technology (CV Research & Eng at Startup) 💚 2011 - 2017: Build products that people want (PM @ Yahoo & Yelp) 💚 2017 - 2022: Build products that makes people's life better (PM @ Meta) I restated my mission again based on challenges I faced between 2011 & 2017. My gaps in leadership skills led to slower career growth. I took a long path to figuring out what skills I needed and how to develop them. Developing these skills unlocked my potential at Meta. I now want to accelerate this journey for others. 💚 New Mission: Build products that help people cross career chasms and reach their potential 💚 Goal: Change the career trajectory of 1M people by helping them improve leadership skills I took the first step by launching the Influence Without Authority course last October. 28 people signed up for the course, rated it 9.8/10 and wrote great feedback. But I went back into the fun, high visibility, intense work of Meta AI Agents right after. During down time, I would be unhappy that I hadn’t made more progress towards my personal mission in months. And this kept repeating again and again Until one day Priya (my wife) said “If you have one of the best PM roles at Meta and you still can’t stop thinking about your personal mission, maybe it is time to leave.” At the same time people started to reach out and tell me that the course was having positive impact. Two things stand out: 🎄 One of the people from Cohort 1 shared that they got promoted to Director by applying the principles from the class. 🎄 Another person who took the course in Cohort 1 sent their spouse to take the course in Cohort 5. And it was time to go All In! I’ll continue to teach the Influence Without Authority course Cohort 6 is on Dec 9th & 10th. I will develop content, community, and products to help people grow skills across the leadership skills pyramid. I have immense gratitude to you all for your support. I wouldn't have had the courage to take this leap without your support!

@levelsio @marcospereeira Scale of efficiency is relative my friend. For you it is not spending $5K, For large company it is reducing project price from $200K to $50K. For US govt it is reducing it from $10M for icons to $500K only!

@paulg @ThomasSowell the more money the speciality makes and the more taxes they have to pay the more likely they are to vote republican. This is probably a better explanation.

@goldstein_aa @suchenzang what is this about? :-)

Same Event - Different News! Let's talk about how polarizing main stream media is!

@MrStand_Fast @BillAckman are there any public videos of what the view from a blackhawk cockpit would look like at night?

@paulg a similar quote on FB office walls that I loved was "What would you do if you weren't afraid?"

@businessbarista Was there an activity you did with him?

@aakashg0 @colorsofchloe Incredible episode!!

@ankurnagpal Yes please

@CanadaKaz Old habits die hard? Ha? :-P

@nikitabier What will nikita with all that opportunity??? :-p

@levelsio My friend you just built the 1 person $billion company!

@ankurnagpal Would love to read

@paulg What type if product do they build?

@deviparikh I buy both versions and seamlessly switch between kindle and audible based on activity: walk, shower and bed.

@TaraViswanathan share one of your fav insights :-)

@clairevo Channeling that chaos into productive outcomes is what big tech PMs get paid big bucks for! :-)

The transition from a good product company to big tech is like going from top college football player to the NFL roster. people struggle to make that transition. Here is why: There is no training program that prepares you for the higher standards you will be held to, velocity of execution that is expected, adjusting to working with top tier talent all around you, increased product complexity and organizational complexity. I wrote myself a slide deck on how to operate well as a PM at Meta after 18 months inside the company and shared it. Still well received as i get notes from people from time to time. And ran a program called Skip PM Circles with 400 PMs at Meta! There is significant churn in year 1 among big tech hires. It was not that publicly discussed about until the Meta layoffs in 2022. There are a lot of internal support systems. But people need coaching to make that transition smoothly! The counter intuitive part is that people are least likely to seek help during that first year. Because everyone who joins big tech goes in thinking they are under levelled and they arr going to prove why they deserve a promotion in 6 months. Yes I was the same when I got to Meta in 2017! In summary people need coaching and a strong support system to learn to thrive in big tech!