Transitioning Across Multiple Product Roles & Career Growth With Dami Oludumila (Dumss)
Program Manager at Webflow
About Dumss:
“If I could summarize my journey, it would be a case of just chasing curiosity but doing it in a way that manages and mitigates risks”. - Dumss
Dami Oludumila (popularly known as Dumss) is a Program Manager at Webflow; a global leader in the no-code website builder market.
Dumss has enjoyed a rich and varied career in tech, traversing a range of roles. Her professional journey has spanned data analysis, coding instruction, product ownership, user experience research, and research operations. Presently, she holds the position of Program Manager, overseeing insights management at Webflow.
Dumss has been able to transition across many roles and she doesn’t settle for just any company. Also, if you follow her on Twitter, you’d find out that she has diverse interests and in some way, she pursues her interests.
“I have always had multiple curiosities. The constraint of sticking to a single field wasn’t going to work for me. During my time in university, my primary focus was on economics, yet you would often find me spending time with engineering students. Sometimes, I would even attend their classes out of interest”. - Dumss
Apart from being a badass techie, Dumms is the founder of Vizible Africa; A product that is committed to showcasing African products and producing content on how to build in Africa. Vizible Africa has 2 content-facing arms:
Rapport - A newsletter that showcases African startups building exciting products that solve problems for people.
Build - A podcast that brings you conversations with operators, founders, and investors in Africa.
Getting into tech and committing to it was about flexibility for Dumss, she wanted to be able to explore as much as possible.
“I got introduced to tech by attending conferences. Due to how wide tech was, it felt like a good space to just stay in”. - Dumss
Transitioning Across Multiple Roles:
After being amazed by her tech expertise, our conversation shifted to Dumss's remarkable ability to smoothly transition between various roles. Dumss's secret lies in her pursuit of curiosity, which is not merely impulsive exploration but rather a structured and personal framework.
However, she emphasized the crucial prerequisite of setting clear intentions regarding the types of jobs she desired and the growth she aimed to attain through each role.
“I was looking for jobs that will make me focus on research and also a company that had a senior person that I could learn from. Something that was really important to me was ensuring that there was a senior person that can guide me so that I won’t get frustrated when I don’t get something”. - Dumss
A Framework For Transitioning Across Roles:
As mentioned earlier, it's not just luck that has guided Dumss on her path to tech. She has been deliberate and purposeful in her journey, to the extent that she has developed a replicable framework that anyone seeking to transition can adopt.
Now, let's delve into it:
Identify Your Transferrable Skills:
“The first thing for me is, what are the transferrable skills? You always have transferrable skills. There is something that you did in the previous role that you can apply in the new role. Figuring this out will help you with foundational skills and the confidence to enter your new role. Look out for the requirements and reflect on what skills you can transfer from the old role to the new role”. - Dumss
Develop Unfamiliar Skills:
“Transitioning can be overwhelming because you feel like you don’t know anything because it’s an entirely new space and you think you don’t know anything about the new role but if you go in with the mindset of building on similar skills in your current role, it gives you the confidence to chase the new space.
For example, maybe you are a UX researcher trying to transition to Product Management, you would already be adept in product discovery, you just need to focus more on building your product strategy skills, learning product metrics, etc”. - Dumss
Identify The Best Way You Learn:
“Filling the gap and figuring out the structure is about figuring out how you learn, do you need structured learning like school or not?
You need to be reflective of how you learn. Since you know the requirements and the transferrable skills you already have, you need to figure out a structure to fill in the gaps for the skills and knowledge you don’t have”. - Dumss
Share What You Learn:
“The next thing is to share what you are learning. Have the confidence of a senior person without claiming to be a senior person. If you are reading a book or an article, share insights into parts of it that interested you the most. Find a way to share what you are learning”. - Dumss
Set Yourself Up For Feedback:
“Be teachable, be open to new knowledge, and don’t go into spaces thinking that you know everything”. - Dumss
Navigating Career Growth;
Interestingly, Dumss holds the distinction of being the second Nigerian to join Webflow, having previously worked as a UX Researcher at PagerDuty, another major global company.
Dumss has demonstrated significant growth in her time at Webflow. In less than three years, she has moved up from Research Coordinator to Program Manager, leading insights operations. You can tell that there has been growth on Dumss’ part.
She generously shared valuable insights into how she strategically positioned herself for growth, and you too can apply the same system:
Prioritize having a mentor at your job:
“I make sure I don’t join a company where there is nobody that can mentor me. Being accountable to people that have more experience has helped me grow.
When I joined Webflow, I was joining to be managed by the director of design. He is someone that had crazy experience, knowledge, and crazy insights. I already knew that there was much to be learned by this guy.
When I was at PagerDuty, my manager was someone with 4x and 5x the experience that I had. When I create research reports, I would submit them to him, and he would meticulously review and provide feedback by red-lining various sections. Over time, I reached a point where I no longer needed to send my research reports for his review.
Having a senior person at the company puts you in a position to be under someone who is obligated to teach you. It’s actually their job to help you improve”. - Dumss
Be Teachable:
“Be teachable, if I had left when my manager at PagerDuty was red-lining my work, I would not have grown. If you are teachable, you will learn. People will want to help you. My managers always advocated for me because they know I was there to learn.
My managers were invested in me because they saw improvement and they knew I was capable”. - Dumss
Do Great Work:
“A lot of times people get very political about career growth, focusing only on being visible. But when you are visible and you don’t do good work, there will be no one to defend you.
Your work will speak for you in places that you will not reach. It can just be a doc. you don’t know where the doc is going, so you have to make sure you are always bringing your A-game.
It’s fine to be a political, just make sure you are doing a good job”. - Dumss
Invest In Genuine Relationships At Work:
“Relationships are really important. Don’t just relate to use people for visibility or just to get ahead in your career, be nice to people and just be friends with them. Especially with senior folks”. - Dumss
Pick Up Challenging Tasks:
“Not backing down from a challenge. My manager has pushed me to chase intense and difficult projects. He trusted me enough to hand it down & with his support, I was able to deliver a project that had massive impact.
My managers challenged me on some crazy things and those are the things that got me promoted. You owe it to yourself to do things that push you out of your comfort zone. It really boils down to having a growth mindset”. - Dumss
Dumss also delved into the scenario where you are the first product hire in a company and lack a direct line of management or supervision:
“Sometimes, there are indirect mentors. There’ll always be someone more senior to you in experience. You can build mentors externally around different themes. For example, there can be someone that you can go to for strategy, there can be someone you go to for analytics.
Speak to your CEO, speak to your engineering lead. Conduct one-on-ones with leaders in the company just to learn”. - Dumss
Positioning Yourself For Global Companies:
Dumms is really international about working at large tech companies with great structure. As a bonus, I decided to dive into how she has successfully gotten roles at these companies:
Get Guidance Through A Mentor Or Friend
“During my master’s program, I had a senior folk at Microsoft who reached out to me and said, I want to mentor you”. - Dumss
Invest In A Great Resume:
“When I was applying for product design roles, I had so many people review my resume. If I got rejected, I would reach out to the hiring manager and get feedback. It was not an easy journey, it was just continuously improving my resume, and asking for feedback from anyone that would give me feedback at that point”. - Dumss
Focus On Compensation, Not Job Titles:
“One thing about me is that I don’t really care about job titles. I don’t care what the title is. Can I do the job? Can they pay me well?
A lot of times, people get hooked on titles. Titles are just an ego thing.
People just want to be called senior, and it has prevented them from applying for opportunities that would suit them. Different companies have different standards and all the companies I have worked for give senior roles to people with 8 or 9 years of experience. Their junior roles are given to people with 1-4 years of experience.Being an associate should not deter you from having company-wide impact. What you should be chasing is impact no matter the level you are at”. - Dumss
Conclusion:
In an upcoming article, I will be sharing more insights from Dumss around the Jobs To Be Done Framework and the concept of Customer Love. While I would typically inquire about Dumss's current reading list and share it here, you can find her articles and recommendations on Rapport By Vizible.
Subscribe to the newsletter, as it features fantastic content authored by Dumss.
I asked Dumss who she would like to read about in the newsletter and she mentioned someone I totally admire in the design space: Caleb Uzuegbunam, Founder of Asa Coterie.
Stuff I’m Eating:
Customer Love: A Deep Dive by Dumss From Vizible
Options For Building As A Non-Technical Founder on the Build Podcast by Vizible
Start-up Handbook By Julian Shapiro