Which companies accelerate PM careers most

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:

1. The most promotions
2. The fastest immediate promotion
3. The fastest rise to leadership roles (e.g. to VP, CPO, Head of Product)
4. The highest rate of becoming CPOs and Heads of Product
5. The highest rate of becoming the first PM at another company
6. 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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. There are an equal number of B2B and B2C in the top 10. You can do great no matter which direction your career goes.
5. 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.

6. Intuit

Intuit, founded in 1983, builds financial software products such as TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Credit Karma, with around 20,000 employees and a market cap of about $180 billion.

Intuit is the oldest and largest company to rank highly, and is especially good at incubating product leaders.

Not shown, but they were also 11th at Founder Rate.

7. LinkedIn

LinkedIn, founded in 2002, is the world’s largest online professional network, with around 19,000 employees and a market cap of about $30 billion.

For a larger, older company, LinkedIn is notably impressive at minting founders, beating out companies like Uber, Meta, and Stripe.

Not shown, but they were also 11th at CPO Rate.

8. Palantir

Palantir, founded in 2003, builds tools for government, defense, health care, and private companies to assist them in integrating, analyzing, and deriving insights from vast amounts of complex data, with around 4,000 employees and a market cap of about $150 billion.

Palantir is a standout at fostering founders (ranking first by far) and first PMs at other companies.

9. Deel

Deel, founded in 2019, offers an HR-tech platform for global hiring, payroll, and compliance services, with around 4,000 employees, last valued at $12 billion.

Deel is the newest company on this list to rank highly and, alongside Discord, seems to accelerate the rate of promotions of their alumni PMs most.

10. Discord

Discord, founded in 2015, is a voice, video, and text chat app, with around 600 employees and last valued at $15 billion.

Discord is the smallest of the companies on this list to rank highly, and is punching well above its weight.

Notable mentions

1. Ramp (~800 employees, founded 2019): Particularly strong at creating founders—which is extra impressive since it’s so young.

2. Ranked 3rd at founder rate

3. Ranked 5th at first PM rate
4. Ranked 10th at time-to-next-promotion after leaving

5. Nubank (~7,000 employees, founded 2013): Strong all around but not ranked highest on any specific dimension.

6. Ranked 6th at Head of Product rate

7. Ranked 7th at first PM rate
8. Ranked 8th at fastest risers
9. Ranked 9th at fastest promotion

10. Notion (~500 employees, founded 2013): Especially strong at creating first PMs at other companies.

11. Ranked 2nd at first PM

12. Ranked 4th at CPO rate

Disclaimer

Why you may not see a company you expect here (i.e. opportunities for future deep dives):

1. We didn’t look at every company in the world. We only looked at companies with enough history and data to reduce noise, and we handpicked about 50 of those companies based on feedback from readers. If you think we missed an important one, please leave a comment with the company name.
2. We only looked at PMs who left the company. For this analysis, we focused on finding companies that create the biggest impact on that person’s career after leaving. This means if a company is great at keeping their best PMs, we wouldn’t see that in the data.
3. We are looking at historical data. As you know, past performance is not a guarantee of future results. For companies that have been around for a long time, we are looking at performance across their entire history, which also means we don’t know if they’ve been getting better or worse.
4. We can’t 100% isolate the variable that most contributed to the career trajectory. It could be mentorship that PMs got at the company, or it could be that the company hires strong people. It might simply be that the company logo on a resume creates more opportunities. That said, for whatever reason, if you join the companies we highlight below, good things will probably happen for your career.
5. The sample sizes are not huge. Even large companies may not have tons of PMs, and so if a few of these PMs go on to do something great, it can make a company’s numbers look great. Also, if you leave and get a fancy title or many promotions at a lower-quality company, that’ll make the company you’ve left look better than it is.

Broadly, this is our first shot at doing this analysis, and I’d love to hear what you think (for our next pass).

Future deep-dive opportunities

Every question we answered while doing this analysis created several more questions, so we forced ourselves get this first pass out. Here’s what we’re thinking we’ll do for V2:

1. Look at more companies. (Please leave a comment with companies we missed.)
2. Look at which companies are doing the best lately vs. all-time historically.
3. Look at trajectories within a company vs. only looking at alumni.
4. For “founder rate,” what’s the rate of successful startups, not just starting a company?
5. Look at case studies of some of these top 10 companies to see what they’re doing to help their PMs become great.
6. Look at other functions, like engineering, design, etc.

We’d love your thoughts! Leave a comment.

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Thank you to Jason Saltzman and Ethan Elias of Live Data Technologies for the data and analysis, and Ben Hawkins and David Prentell on design.

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