Which companies accelerate PM careers most
A first-ever deep dive into the impact 50+ companies have had on alumni trajectories
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When people ask me where they should try to go work, outside of rolling the dice on the next rocket ship, I encourage them to find the company that (1) is best at teaching them the craft of product management and (2) has a track record of creating an inflection in the careers of the PMs who’ve worked there. The problem is, I’ve never really known which companies do this. Until now.
I teamed up with Jason Saltzman and Ethan Elias at Live Data Technologies—which tracks hiring, firing, and promotion data for 160 million people worldwide—to see what the data tells us about which companies create the biggest acceleration in the careers of their product managers.
To do this, we looked at six data points to understand which companies’ PM alumni go on to see:
The most promotions
The fastest immediate promotion
The fastest rise to leadership roles (e.g. to VP, CPO, Head of Product)
The highest rate of becoming CPOs and Heads of Product
The highest rate of becoming the first PM at another company
The highest rate of becoming founders
Out of this, we triangulated a list of top 10 companies for accelerating your PM career. Below, I’ll share the raw data, but first. . .
My biggest surprises and takeaways
The new startup mafias: Palantir, Plaid, N26, Ramp, Intercom, Revolut, Duolingo, Uber, Notion, and Coinbase. The standout company is Palantir, where almost a quarter of Palantir PMs went on to start their own company. Almost a fifth of Plaid PM alumni went on to start a company, which is also incredible. Of older and larger companies, LinkedIn, Google, Intuit, and eBay made it into the top 15. Impressive! Props to LinkedIn for being the most founder-friendly big company.
Fintech is dominant—5 out of the top 10 companies! Did not expect that. It’s probably no coincidence that the PayPal mafia has been so successful. One explanation, shared by my buddy Dennis Yang (PM at Chime), is that fintech nurtures strong product leaders because fintech work is on hard mode—lots of risk/fraud vectors, difficult stakeholders (e.g. compliance, regulations), and endless complicated tradeoffs. Another explanation could be that fintech PMs leave to join other fintech companies or start fintech startups, and since they know that space well, they’re more likely to thrive.
FAANG companies lag behind. eBay, Intuit, and LinkedIn are far ahead of companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta, and Amazon in these lists. One explanation is that PMs at FAANG companies learn how to operate well within that specific company and are less successful elsewhere. Another explanation is that the best PMs at FAANG companies are happy and don’t leave, and so we don’t see their trajectories in the data.
There are an equal number of B2B and B2C in the top 10. You can do great no matter which direction your career goes.
The top two companies are based in Europe! MEGA.
The raw data
Summary
Top 10 companies that most accelerate a PM’s career
Here’s a best-effort ranked list of the companies that the data shows most accelerate the careers of their PMs, factoring in all of the above data points. For each company on the list, I’ll show the categories they ranked in the top 10 for.
1. Revolut
Revolut, founded in 2015 and headquartered in London, is a global neobank and financial technology company, with around 10,000 employees and last valued at $45 billion.
They topped the list with the most impressive all-around stats, ranking in the top 10 in six different categories.
2. N26
N26, founded in 2013 and headquartered in Berlin, is a neobank that offers online banking services across Europe, with roughly 1,500 employees and last valued at around $6 billion.
N26 is especially strong at launching product leaders, ranking first in both CPO rate and Head of Product rate, and in the top 10 in four other categories.
3. eBay
eBay, founded in 1995, is an online marketplace for buying and selling goods, with around 12,000 employees and a market cap of approximately $30 billion.
eBay ranking this highly is one of the most surprising results from this analysis. It beat out every FAANG company and then some, ranking in the top 10 in four different categories, including first in most promotions after leaving.
4. Plaid
Plaid, founded in 2013, makes it easy to connect your bank to apps that you use, with around 1,200 employees and last valued at about $13 billion.
Plaid is one of the smallest and also one of the newest companies on this list to rank highly, making it particularly impressive.
Not shown, but they were also 13th at Most Promotions.
5. Intercom
Intercom, founded in 2011, is an AI-first customer service and messaging platform, with around 1,000 employees and last valued at $1.3 billion.
Intercom is one the smallest companies on this list to rank highly, and shows strength in many attributes.
