[hamstrung]

For me it was time and luck. Some patterns I have noticed:

1. Product groups suck. Avoid those unless you want to feel the burn.

2. Avoid sales engineering where you are either billable, have targets or have a million customers.

3. Find a group/area going through lots of growth (cloud is the spotGCP/Azure/AWS). It's much easier to ride the macro waves. Avoid groups with lots of competition/in-fighting.

4. Make friends and be good company. People prefer good company over good workers.

5. The longer your tenure, the more likely you are able to engineer whatever role you want to have. You will also have the network to support you.

[qjx]

> Product groups

do you mean the people working in product. i.e. PMs?