Turning a failure into a win as a Product Manager

Dr Bart Jaworski
3 min readSep 23, 2023

A Great Product Manager will always consider changing any setback into an opportunity! In fact, perhaps there aren’t any real losses — just different ways to win! Here are some of my life’s examples:

I got my first IT internship when I was fired from an English Teacher position (as an abroad student), which led me to find a different job.

and then,

I got my first real job when the company that promised me an internship bailed out and I was forced into job search mode.

and then,

I coded from scratch an internal, amateur as hell, internal CRM there when I didn’t have the tools to find clients’ data quickly. It was still used there 4 years ago when I left.

and then,

When I got my master’s, I had a choice: A local industry job (and give back scholarship money they paid me), keep on with the job I had since the last paragraph, or start a Ph.D. track. I decided to take 2 out of 3, paid back the scholarship, and told myself 6 months later I would choose 1 of them and leave the other. 7 years later I became a doctor while working remotely full time!

and then,

I started to look for a better job when someone else got the promotion I thought I deserved. That got me to…

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Dr Bart Jaworski

I am a senior Product Manager at Microsoft. My online courses have helped thousands to develop their Product Management careers. I would like to help you too!