Hey everyone, my name is X. Yes, just the letter. At Google, I'm a
Program Manager for a department called
Responsible Innovation. Most of us, in our everyday
life, use program management. When you have only a couple hours left in a day and you
have to figure out, well, do I clean my house or do I go to the grocery store? How long will each
of those task takes? Those are just
different elements or variations of program management
and project management. My path to program management
is pretty non-traditional. I didn't go graduate
from a great college. In fact, I dropped out of high school and I
dropped out of college. So a GED is the highest
credential that I have. After I dropped out
of high school, I taught myself how to code. I built a whole
bunch of websites, but realized, like, I didn't have the responsible skills to
make me a "mature adult." So I ended up joining
the military. After spending eight
years in the Army, I traveled the world
building apps for really big companies and
governments around the world. When I came into Google, I realized I could
still be technical, but then I'm just using
the skills I already have. So how can I grow myself as a person by learning new skills? That's when I heard about
the program manager role. The program manager role
at Google is super cool because it varies depending
on which team you're on. If you're a program
manager on Google Cloud, that could look
very different than being a program
manager in YouTube. That switch up and that change from coding all day long in
front of a computer screen was something that was really, really attractive to me. Some of the biggest
skills from my past and my history that helped me become a program manager and make
that transition from somebody who was managed by
program and project managers, to actually becoming one myself, was taking a little bit more accountability in
my personal life. There's lots of things I
want to learn in life. I started doing things
like making schedules to practice, like,
different instruments, like the bass guitar. Each of my roles, whenever I worked with a
project or program manager, I also made sure to
check in with them about why they were doing
what they were doing. I'm someone who doesn't
really learn from books if you can't tell by
me dropping out of school. So I always found somebody
who was willing to teach me why they were doing what they were doing,
because that's how I learn. I tend to be more kinetic. I learn as I go.
Program management to me was a natural calling. Not because I like to run around and tell everybody what to do, but because I have a real personal passion
for bringing people together and getting everybody on the same page to move
towards the same goal. Whether that's convincing
all my friends to go to my favorite vegan
spot in downtown LA, like four times a week, or whether that's getting
us all together to resolve conflict or to work on an idea and collaborate on
projects on the side together. Those skills that you use in your everyday life
to keep your task together can apply to program and project management very easily. You just have to be a
little bit more intentional around them and there's a
lot more paperwork involved.