How I Got Into Tech: Senior Product Manager Maggie Brenner

On our careers site, we encourage candidates to tell imposter syndrome to take the day off — in other words, don't let a confidence gap, or a lack of a traditional tech resume, get in the way of applying to HubSpot. (Ready to take the leap right now? Check out our open positions.)

One of the best ways to reinforce this idea is to tell the stories of how current HubSpotters got into tech, especially if it was through an unexpected or nontraditional path.

Here, Senior Product Manager Maggie Brenner shares her story. (Full transcript below.)

Transcript:

Hi, everyone. I'm Maggie Brenner, and I'm a Product Manager at HubSpot. I started my career a number of years ago working in the education space both as a middle school teacher and working in operations. At some point along the way, I was looking to figure out what to do next, and a friend reached out to me encouraging me to apply to an education technology company in Boston.

I ended up joining that company, which focused on supporting school districts to manage their English learner programs, as what was called a "Senior Implementation Manager".  At the time, I really had no idea what it meant to work in tech. I didn't know how valuations worked or how deals are tracked in Salesforce or that joining as employee number 30 was pretty early stage for a tech organization.

Joining at that point enabled me to grow into lots of roles over the course of the five years that I was there. I was able to participate in a design sprint and I was mesmerized by the blend of ideation, customer focus and strategic thinking. That kicked off my quest to figure out how I could turn that one day experience into a full-time role.

After talking to everyone's "friend of a friend", I realized that Product Manager was the right role for me. It took me a while to hone my narrative but after a bit, I realized that I've been developing lots of products along the way. Between the curriculum that I implemented to teach a large class of seventh graders, to the feedback system that I developed while managing a group of after school instructors, I realized that I've been developing hypotheses and testing them out all along.

Along with sharpening my story, learning some core product concepts and learning from other Product Managers I knew, I was able to break into the sometimes elusive PM role. I've been pleased to realize that lots of concepts that I worked on at my last company, whether customizable dashboards or permissions, remain important challenges to work on at HubSpot. I'm learning an incredible amount every day and I'm also continuously excited by how much I'm able to leverage from my past experiences.

Want to work for a team that tells imposter syndrome to take the day off? Check out our open positions and apply.