Not talking your values but your value! Your value is what you bring to the market. This evolves and like all things needs fuel to grow or it slides into a zero state. Coming out of college you have a head full of knowledge that is the same as everyone else unless you have been smart enough to have interned or pursued conference sessions somewhere that discusses current application.
Your value is baseline and minimal at this point. You can learn to leverage your interpersonal skills or ability to learn, many companies like this state even for more seasoned staff, not many which are innovative though. Innovation takes experience in the real world, experience in other seats and with failure. Yes failure is a great teacher.
The base of our society like it or is and will always be merit, no civilization has advanced without a meritocracy baseline. As a species we seek the best and that appears from work and more so from facing down adversity. Many feel their value is based on success rather than experience. Steve Jobs was proud of his failures and embraced them like so many before him.
Embracing failures, moderate performances and success is a key that many look for in teams. One of the reasons baseball is a great sport is the 163 games per season and winning 100 of them is top tier performance.
Let’s look at your value curve as if you are a ball player. First you emerge from college showing some promise so you are recruited and placed in the farm system to prove your worth and mature your stuff as a professional athlete. This is the same for the PM out of school, you get the staff role and show you can scope and run a project.
Next you get the first mid reliever role, (2-3 mid innings) in PM that is a product extension or mature product P&L if you are a star. Finally a starting role as a product lead puts you in the drivers seat for the first time, don’t be shy you will have great releases and bad ones but you if good will learn to spot and correct in process the tendencies that take products off to the failure heap.
When speaking to PMs about opportunities internal or external embrace the failures or more so the learning you took away. When you ignore failure arrogance sets in, when you fail to learn stupidity sets in. Raise your value and learn from yourself and others.
