Welcome to Tech Atypically 👋, your weekly blog for navigating the challenges of ADHD and being in the tech industry.
I am an ADHD and product management coach, helping you change one belief and take one action each week.
Part 17 of the Things I Wished I Knew Sooner Series, a series about being diagnosed with ADHD late in life.
Belief: I have to know I’m a good product manager to be successful and land my next job.
Reality: That’s the wrong question — the one that moves you forward is what kind of product manager you are.
Action: Trade “can I do this job?” for “what kind of work do I want to do?” and let curiosity replace the verdict.
Welcome back to Things I Wished I Knew Sooner, a series about being diagnosed with ADHD late in life.
“Am I a good product manager?” is one of the most common questions I hear in my coaching practice, and it weighs on the people who ask it. I know the feeling well, because I carried the weight of it a few years ago when I was burned out and unemployed for eighteen months. It was one of the most difficult periods of my life
For a while, I thought I had to answer it before I could land my next role or call myself a product manager. What I wish I’d known sooner is that the question itself is the trap. There’s no fixed verdict waiting to be uncovered, and no magic resolution of the doubt, even if you manage to answer it. What moved me forward was replacing the “am I” with “what kind.”
I used to believe that answering the question — was I a good product manager? — would give me the confidence to find my next job. I needed the answer so my imposter syndrome and insecurity wouldn’t show up during my interviews. If I could figure it out, I’d finally nail the interviews I kept failing.
That belief got loudest after I left a small company that nearly broke me. I’d done five years at Amazon and three and a half at Tableau, so I figured if I could succeed there, I could succeed anywhere. I was wrong, and the place burned me out horribly. By the time I left, I doubted everything: whether I was a good product manager, whether I’d ever get hired again, and whether I should be in tech at all. I had the same runaway questions I hear from clients now — maybe I should quit and become whatever random trade job came to mind (mine is plumber).
That’s the trap of treating “good enough” as a fixed yes or no: every failure becomes evidence to confirm the belief you suck. When the binary is the only frame, a bad fit doesn’t read as a bad fit. It reads as a verdict on you.
What I missed was that “good product manager” isn’t a single standard you either meet or fail. Take ten product managers from ten different companies, hand them the same problem, and you’ll get ten different solutions — and the right one depends entirely on what the company needs and whether it makes money.
My burnout taught me the kind of PM I am, and Ravi Mehta’s “What’s Your Shape?” guide gave me the language to name it — the work I’m built for and the conditions I need to do it well.
I’m strong at scaling a product that already has traction, at being the connective tissue across a lot of stakeholders, at taking an established vision and spreading it. I’m not a zero-to-one founder, and I don’t do well as the only product manager in the company— I need a bigger team and other PMs to bounce off of. None of that makes me good or bad. It makes me a particular kind of product manager, suited to particular kinds of roles.
That reframe changes the job search. If you’ve ever held the title, you’ve already cleared the hardest bar — earning the title at a job. So the useful question was never “am I good enough?” It’s “what kind of product manager am I, and what do I need from a role?”
Without that — without knowing who you are or what you want — you’ll measure yourself against every LinkedIn post and job listing, and you’ll never come out enough. The self-doubt follows you whether or not you land the dream job, hanging over you until the next burnout or bad performance review. And when you stumble, instead of having the resilience to get back up, you’ll feel relief at finally “being found out” — and run, only to repeat the whole cycle.
The shift that frees you is moving out of the yes/no binary and into a question you can work with.
Replace “can I do this job?” with “what kind of work do I want to do?”
“Can I?” is a binary, and the binary is what keeps you stuck. It puts your whole worth on one of two outcomes: pass or fail. It also doesn’t measure if that role was a fit for you.
“What kind” takes you out of that. You don’t have to be a product manager the way anyone else is — I do it with ADHD, on my own schedule, alongside photography and coaching and a newsletter, because that’s the kind that fits me.
When you frame the search around the kind of work you want, you stop auditioning for a verdict and start describing a fit. You show up to interviews with energy to learn more, versus fear of being judged.
Let curiosity replace the verdict.
Instead of “what am I missing from these jobs?,” ask “what work do I enjoy?” That tells you the search terms, the roles, and the conversations worth having.
It also lets you be honest with employers: here’s what I’m great at, here’s what I want. Maybe a role is only an eighty percent match, and that’s allowed — good enough to try, good enough for now.
Curiosity takes the pressure off. You’re no longer defending a fixed self; you’re learning what happens next.
Notice where the binary is stealing your energy.
When you’re terrified of being wrong, you spend almost all your energy hiding the fear and barely any showing up. Ninety percent goes to holding yourself together, ten percent to the actual interview.
The “what kind” question gives that energy back, because there’s nothing to defend. You can show up as who you are — which, as a neurodivergent person, is the only version of you that won’t burn out maintaining a facade.
If you’re reading this, wondering whether you’re a good product manager (or whatever your title happens to be) — the answer is yes, you are, and you’re asking the wrong question.
The one worth asking is what kind you want to be. It’s harder, because it asks you to practice self-acceptance and vulnerability — to know what you want and to say it out loud. And that’s not easy in a job market this competitive, one amplified by social media telling you all the things you’re lacking. But it’s the only question that leads somewhere other than the same burnout cycle, over and over.
Breaking that cycle maybe one of the hardest things you'll ever do. But it's worth every bit of the work to regain control of your life.
That’s what I wish I’d known sooner — being good was never a verdict to earn. It was a fit to understand, and a choice about how I wanted to show up.
Grieving a life lost to being diagnosed late in life.
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