Navigating Career Transitions And Embracing Creativity In Tech With Jillian Funes
Tech innovation is successful when we appreciate everyone's input, encourage creativity, and foster a culture where ideas can grow, leading to a brighter future through breakthroughs. In this episode, Jillian Funes discusses the narrative of creativity, resilience, and passion in the tech world, particularly on her transition from software engineering to Technical Product Manager. She explores the importance of cultivating a creative atmosphere within teams, with a special focus on how psychological safety plays a critical role in fostering innovation. Jillian shows that building genuine connections and valuing every voice has the power to transform. Tune in now!
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Navigating Career Transitions And Embracing Creativity In Tech With Jillian Funes
Our guest is Jillian Funes. She is a Senior Technical Product Manager at a FinTech company. We'll talk about career transitions as Jillian has moved from software engineering to management and then to product management. We talk about building a supportive community, creating psychological safety, and ways to overcome routine and lack of passion or creativity. Grab a snack and as always, your favorite beverage, and get ready to learn about career transitions and creativity in tech with Jillian Funes. Jillian, I am so glad that we get to sit down and do this, but before we get into the question side of things, can you share with our audience a little bit about yourself?
Thank you for having me as well. My name's Jillian Funes. I'm a Senior Technical Product Manager at a Series A FinTech company. We work on the financial ledgers and calculations behind loans and credit cards. Exciting stuff there.
Let's start with your career journey so far. I'm particularly interested in learning more about your transition from software engineering to management and then to product management.
I've done a little bit of everything, so I'll give you the high level and then if you want me to dig in anywhere, just let me know. I started my career as just an associate software engineer and I was at a large Fortune 500 enterprise corporate company. I did that for a couple of years. I moved up quickly though, and so I started managing people. I had my team, but I felt like I moved up a little too quickly and I wanted to hone my engineering skills.
I took a step back, went to a new company, and went back to being a software engineer in IC while also doing a little startup stint on the side. I was working full-time and also doing the startup. I was there for four years before we were acquired, but that's when I learned that the product might be a better fit for me because we were such a small team before we got acquired. We didn't have product, design, project managers, or any of that. It was just like, "Jill, we have this problem." I got to own it. I got to define it. I have to determine what the solution is. If there were any graphics involved, I got to do that. I did the data architecture. I did the back end and the front end. I did all of it. I enjoyed that.
When we were acquired and we had all of those teams, I realized some of those responsibilities were going to go away for me. I was reevaluating what's the right fit for me. I started looking into products and was like, "I think product is where I belong." I ended up finally making that jump and I've been a product manager officially for about a year and a half.
I want to dig more into your startup experience, but before we do that, I am very curious about you having the insight to say, "I moved up too fast and I want to take a step back," because not a lot of people do that. Can you speak more about that? What led you? Was there a particular moment or a bunch of challenges that led you to decide to take a step back?
Honestly, I was young at the time, so I was probably three years out of college. I was probably 24, 25, and leading my team of people quite a bit older than me. I had this deep-rooted imposter syndrome. I've gone through school, but I've only had 3 years of hands-on experience as an engineer and now I'm managing people with 20 years of engineering experience. I didn't feel like I was as knowledgeable as they were. I want to get to that level or at least feel like I am in the same ballpark before I'm leading people at this level. That's where that came from.
That's very impressive. I have to reiterate that not a lot of people have the insight or the self-awareness to take a step back in their careers. It's commendable that you made that choice. Speaking to that imposter syndrome aspect of things, do you think that went away? I know the answer or feel like it's similar for a lot of us, but did that change anything for you going back and getting more experience?
It never goes away, but with age, you realize that it never goes away and that you're not the only one who has it. The biggest thing for me was getting to a place where I felt I could express that. Once I started saying it, everyone was like, "I have that too," then it’s like, “It's not just me, it's fine.” If everyone has imposter syndrome, then nobody has imposter syndrome. You learn to deal with it and cope with it.
If everyone has imposter syndrome, then nobody has imposter syndrome.
That's an interesting approach. When someone else said, "I have imposter syndrome too," I was like, "No way, you don't. You're so good at what you do." My imposter syndrome was being minimalized in some way. It was cool to see a VP that I looked up to and be in a one-on-one with her and her going like, "I have it too." I'm like, "No freaking way you do." That was such a light bulb moment in my head that we all have it. I don't know if there's a solution to it or a way to manage it, but I love that approach that as with age, you get comfortable with accepting that everyone, including me, has impostor syndrome.
Honestly, I heard this quote or someone said, I don't even know if it's a quote, but they were like, "The funny thing about confidence is that no one knows if it's real or not." You look at someone with this absurd level of confidence. They very well could just be faking it and they're just faking it better than you. I think everyone is faking it, just trying to get through. When you realize that, it's like, "What do I have to be worried about?" Everyone feels the same.
I think about that one. I also wonder if there is something to accepting that this is what I think is a good approach right now and it might change, I might be wrong. That doesn't sound very confident, but I wonder if fake it till you make it, versus admitting that I'm on my path to "making it," so this is what I have to offer right now. I could be wrong and I'm happy to listen to that.
I am a huge advocate for saying, "I don't know. I will find out, but I don't know right now." That can equally show confidence. It takes confidence to say, "I don't know in this scenario."
That's an excellent point. It does take a certain level of confidence in yourself and your ability to say, "I don't know, hope you find out, or I can figure it out but at this moment I don't know." That's a very good point. Going back to your journey. I remember when we talked first, you came across as a very creative person and it was interesting to see how you were bringing your creative side to tech. Usually, we think of tech as analytics and technical skills. We don't think of it as being very creative. I'm curious to know how you've managed to express and cultivate your creativity while working in this technical field as maybe as an engineer, be it a manager, or now as a product manager.
It's an interesting thing that when you think about tech, you certainly don't think of creativity. You think of Liberal Arts majors as more of the creative types. When I was a child growing up, I don't think anyone would've guessed tech for me because I was very crafty. I liked drawing, creating, pottery, and whatever I could get my hands on. At the end of the day, creativity to me is just building things and solving hard problems. You find ways within tech to also express those I like drawing and painting. If you have a real passion for something, it's just in your nature and your personality, it's just going to ooze out of you. At some point, it's going to find a way into your day-to-day work.
As I said, my very first role was as a straight-up software engineer at a large Fortune 500 company. I worked on internal management systems. Not a lot of care about the UI or the obvious things where I could have creative outlets. Again, it just oozed out of me. It would be any little minuscule area where I could show my creativity.
As I said, it can be through problem-solving, but even in the smaller things like I needed to make a template for an Excel doc. I would obsess over the format, making it aesthetically pleasing or when I started getting into managing and leading projects, all of the documents that I made were important to me that they weren't just text dumps on a page. I wanted them formatted and nice to look at. Those sorts of things. It's those little moments throughout the work that you're doing where you can't help yourself where I would find those outlets early on.
Creativity sometimes also shows up in how you end up solving the problem. There can be multiple ways of solving a problem, but how a creative person's brain will try to look into a solution and find alternative ways to approach a problem or maybe creative ways of giving up the work within the team. Wondering how you were able to cultivate that within your team as a manager, but I'm guessing you were quite young when you were doing that. Maybe an example from now as a product manager is how you were encouraging creativity within your team.
As I said, I had such imposter syndrome that just did exactly what everyone else is doing. Try and make sure I'm following the format and doing the right things. As I move on in my career and you get more comfortable going back to the confidence thing, you feel more comfortable expressing yourself. That's how I found product in that last role that I was at where I was doing everything. I got to express myself in several different ways. In cultivating creativity within your team, it goes back to that confidence. To me, it relies on creating an environment that provides psychological safety.
The people on your team don't feel comfortable speaking up and they feel like every time they say something, they're going to get judged for it or if they fail, they're going to get berated for it. Creating an environment where everyone feels safe is important. The other thing, when I'm tasked with leading a team or a group, as I move forward in my career, I'm finding it more and more important to place priority. I'm building real relationships within the team.
Some people start with, "What is the process we're going to follow? What are the norms that we're going to have?" I'm like, "Let's just have fun at first. Everyone gets to know each other." Once you create those bonds and real relationships within the team, that psychological safety comes next and then the creativity comes. Everything else falls into place eventually. If you start with that real bond at the beginning, everything else is easy.
Once you create those bonds and real relationships within the team, that psychological safety comes next, and then the creativity.
That's your creative brain. The first thing is we're going to connect. We're not going to start doing standups and things like a usual team within the first week we're going to do this. Within six months we're going to do this. That's your creative brain going, "Let's connect first. Let's figure out how we work and how we communicate with each other." Are there any practices that when you join a new team, how do you go about building that trust within the team then?
It's tough. I'm going through that right now and a lot is going on. Just full transparency, I don't feel like I'm doing the best job at it right now.
That's the confidence speaking.
It's very new so I'm going to give it time and continue to work on it. In the last team that I was on, I was the PM lead and we were a small focused team. I feel like we did such a great job of creating that bond and then everything just flowed easily after that. There were a couple of things that we did. We're a fully remote team. We use Slack for communication. We had our open Slack that the whole company could see, but I created a Slack channel that was private just to the team. There were no other leads, senior management, or anything. I emphasize like, "If you guys have a question, it does not matter how stupid it is. If you have a comment, 'Hey, I watched this show.' That's what this channel is. Whatever you want to get out of your brain like, 'I'm not feeling great about this. Can someone help me with this?'"
Trying to start that environment of psychological safety where everyone feels open and safe to say whatever is on their mind. That took us a long way. It all snowballed from there, to be honest. Just doing little things like encouraging. I hate this term small talk. It's easy in a meeting to hop on the meeting and be like, "What's the thing we have to do?" Having time to just chat. Every time I get on a meeting I like to start it with one weird thing that happened to me. Like one weird thing on my desk or just some little tidbit and I love that. I've always got some little random something you can talk about and break the ice and just make people feel comfortable talking.
That's a good approach. My neurodivergent brain always blurts out the most uncomfortable thing that I can think of. It doesn't always work, but once people get to know me then they're like, "There she goes again." That's a good way to get the ball rolling or get people comfortable with being themselves or sharing things. Especially things like what's on your desk. Since we're all remote we don't see someone's desk. Otherwise, when we were at work in the office, you would see pictures or little tiny things that people had on their desks that you would get to know people better or have something to talk about and connect with people.
Again, this is not my call to go back to the office, that's not my agenda, but just saying. We covered this a little bit, but in what ways do you believe creativity can be integrated into the work of software engineers, managers, and product managers? Is there anything you would want to touch on in particular?
I touched on my early career. I would find it through the little things, but when I moved into my next role, that's where I realized it's not just software engineering, that's not my only option. There are a million other roles that I can do that offer more creative outlets and products in particular was that sweet spot for me. I found my home now. Why the product is such a great role for someone creative is that when you look at an organization and all the departments in it, if you think of a hub and spoke, the product tends to be that hub with all the other spokes because we work so closely with almost every department, especially in a smaller startup.
I work closely with our engineers, design team, marketing, and sales. There is no limit to my creative outlet. I get to work with design on wireframes for new front-end products. I get to work with marketing on what is our pitch and what is our tagline. I get to name the products and do the designs for it and I get to work with sales and how are we going to present this and what's the positioning around it. It's never-ending in a product position, your ability to be creative. If you're in a tech role and you're like, "It is not quite my fit, I want to be a little bit more creative," and you're a very curious person, product might be your jam.
It's really never-ending in a product position, your ability to be creative.
I like that pitch. I would recommend cutting that part out just a little bit. If anyone's ever wondering why product can be an option for them. You did a good job pitching a product. In the same token, what would you say are some of the challenges for someone with a technical background like you and a creative background like you, what would you say are some of the challenges that you face or you've seen in your day-to-day product management work?
Being able to work with every department and having your hands in everything is a two-sided coin. For me that's fun and I'm never bored. I’m always doing something different. That might not be for everyone because you are context-switching a lot and you are managing a lot. Since you're working with so many departments, you may have 5 people from 5 different departments being like, "I need your help with this right now." It can be tough to manage and it's not for everyone, you mentioned being neurodivergent earlier, for someone creative and neurodivergent and maybe has a touch of ADD which I have, and naturally very curious, product in a startup role might be your perfect home.
I guess I'm in a different mental space lately where all the things that you were saying sound very overwhelming to me. That's probably because I've started too many passion projects. For work, I'm like, "Let me go in, finish my ticket. Code what I need to do and then just not have to communicate all of these things in different departments." It's interesting what your brain is capable of doing at different stages. I like how you mentioned neurodivergent and a touch of ADD can be beneficial because all context switching can be hard. We can also be good at it.
Don't get me wrong, there are times that I feel overwhelmed, but that's when the analytical side kicks back in and we're like, "Let's make the list, let's organize it, prioritize it, what's the most impactful thing? How long is this one going to take? Can we check it off the list quickly?" I'm a massive advocate for if something feels overwhelming, break it down into smaller pieces. Get it to the smallest possible atom that you can like, "Okay, I check this off." Once you check the first thing off the list, the rest flow after that. That's what brings me back to the ground when I start to feel overwhelmed.
The first small step is going to get that momentum and then you can roll with it. Now that you're done pitching products, I want to bring back our conversation or how you mentioned being one of the founding members of a small startup. I heard you mention how that experience impacted your career trajectory in general. Do you want to expand on that? Do you want to share more of what working for that startup or why you were to recommend it?
The one I did a couple of years ago very tactically helped me build my career because to do that, I was working with three other friends of mine. It was one other engineer. He was like, "We should use this specific programming language and framework," and I didn't know it. I was like, "Let's go with what we know." He pushed me like, "No, because even if this doesn't work out now we've learned something from it." I self-taught myself a couple of new things, frameworks, programming languages, whatever. In my very next job, I ended up getting that because I knew those things. On a super tactical level, it helped. More holistically it helps me look at the things I was building from a very different lens.
Again, I started as a software engineer at a corporate company. The company is this big, I'm working on this small of a piece of it and it's like, "I've got to build this button to do this thing." You have these blinders on and you're so heads down on the thing you're building. When you're building for a startup and it's your product and there aren't other people to build all the other things, do the marketing, and design, you have a very different vantage point. That might've been what I liked about getting my product going because the cornerstone of a product is you need to think about the customer first and be obsessed with the experience that you're providing them.
Creativity In Tech: The cornerstone of product is you need to think about the customer first and be absolutely obsessed with the experience that you're providing them.
I can't just build this button. I have to think about the entire product as a whole, and at the end, I'm building this button but what does that mean in the grand scheme? It also taught me when you're building something new, it's very easy to want to build 9,000 different features. There are only two of us. We can't build everything and we have to get it out the door. What's the minimal viable product that a user would want to use? How do we prioritize these 9,000 things? What's going to have the most impact? What's going to drive growth? Just thinking in a different way than I did before. It taught me a ton on that aspect.
Did you ever go back to software engineering or were you doing software engineering and getting the startup experience at the same time?
I was doing both at the same time.
I'm wondering how difficult it was. I'm thinking when you had that experience of this practice of prioritizing things, prioritizing features, prioritizing what the customer experience is going to look like and how we get there. As a software engineer, you might not have control over what you end up building. How you end up building, there's a lot of control over that. What you end up building, sometimes you may or may not have control over that. I'm wondering after you gained this knowledge or this skill of being able to prioritize the customer experience and then pick which feature should be billed and could be billed, did that make it difficult to go back to software engineering and just finish the task given to you or what was that experience like?
It wasn't that bad because, at the time, I was at a bigger corporate job, so I had that outlet for my side project. It wasn't too long after we started the startup that I went into my next role, and that's the one where I got to do a little bit of everything. I was very much doing prioritization. I wasn't fully determining everything that we were going to build, but I would get in a lot of input, and then prioritize off of that and determine, "Here's the problem but here's how we should solve it and the thing we should build next to solve it."
I'm glad that worked out because I can see you sitting there getting frustrated like, "Why am I building this? No one wants this." I'm glad it worked out. We are going to get into rapid fire now. The first question. What advice would you give to women considering a career transition within the tech industry? Such as moving from engineering to management or just completely from engineering or software development to product management?
I would say just don't let fear stop you would be the biggest thing. It gets back into the imposter syndrome that we mentioned before. Again, everyone has imposter syndrome, so when you're thinking about making a big move, it can be intimidating. I sat on the idea of moving into product for a year before I did it because I was like, "Is this the right thing? Am I going to be able to do it? Is this the right move for me?" Had I not put that fear aside and been like, "I'm just going to do it anyway," I probably would not be as happy as I am now. Think through your decisions, of course, but don't let the fear stop you.
That's great advice. That also speaks to the imposter syndrome aspect of things that we talked about before. There's confidence but also it will happen when it happens. It's a skill. You have to practice, you have to make mistakes and then it will come to you. As a leader in the tech industry, how do you encourage and support your team members to explore their creative potential? Are there any specific initiatives or practices? I know we touched on this before, but anything else you would like to add in terms of initiatives or practices you've implemented to foster an environment where innovation and creativity can thrive?
As you said, we touched on it before but I'll add to that and say, leading by example when we talk about you have to create a space where people don't feel afraid to blurt out ideas or ask stupid questions. If you see that other folks aren't doing that and you're like, "I feel like that's holding us back from not being able to say what we have on our mind and it's holding back our creative outlet," lead by example. Blurt out some things that you think are probably not a great idea but we'll get the ball rolling. Whenever possible, if we're starting a new big product or project or anything like that, it's not uncommon in product to be like, "I'm going to write a PRD," which is a product requirements document and I'm going to give it to the engineer. "Here's exactly what to build, here's how you do it, here's what I want in it."
Creativity In Tech: You have to create a space where people don't feel afraid to blurt out ideas or ask stupid questions.
I tried to take a very different approach and I'm like, "You're the engineer that's going to be working on this and maybe I'll bring in the designer,” or whoever else is relevant at the time. I'll just throw up a mural board. Let's brainstorm what this thing is going to do. Let's make a template and here are all the things we need to think through. Let's think through them together instead of just being like, "Here's what you need to build."
As an engineer, I appreciate it. I always appreciate a PRD but I also appreciate when we're involved in the process of building the thing out. Especially as you get more senior, as you get more experienced, you're like, "I've done this before, I have some thoughts on it, I've been the customer on the other side, let me be part of this process." I'm not a fan of writing PRDs, but I’m happy to figure out the direction that we can take. I'm sure engineers are a big fan.
I hope so.
What advice would you give to tech professionals who feel stuck in a routine or believe that their work lacks creativity?
That's a tough one but I would say find ways to get out of your routine first outside of work. Get into that creative head space. My manager in particular is a big advocate for "Get away from your desk. Don't just sit there all day, get up, take a walk, do whatever you got to do to get back into the creative juices flowing." It depends on what the situation is exactly, but try and get up throughout the day. Try and find side projects on the side. Try and find those little moments throughout your day where you feel most excited about your work, and then extrapolate on those. Maybe it's something really small, but now you understand, "This is a thing that gets me excited, how can I do more of this?"
I had a manager who would go for walks for our one-on-ones. He encouraged, in general. If you could have a walking meeting, just have that, this is back when we were in the office, it was nice. I worked by this Embarcadero area and so we could walk by the ocean, by the beach, and it was lovely. We would do that. Sometimes I would take my dog in and I would take breaks in terms of walking my dog out.
Since the pandemic, it's been hard. Since our work, our personal life, our creative projects, our passion projects. There's just one room for all of it, especially if you're living in the Bay area because it's expensive here. That's a good call. Sometimes it's stepping away from your area and going for walks. That's a good way to reignite that passion and get those creative juices flowing. What is your favorite creative outlet outside of work? Any hobbies or passion projects.
I always laugh when I get this one because it would be a shorter list of what I don't do on the side for fun. Since I moved into product, I didn't want to lose my engineering aptitude. I have a side project, I have a side up that I built and I do that for fun. I’m into woodworking, gardening, painting, drawing, and pottery. I do MMA for fun. I'm all over the place. I cannot sit down.
Where can people find all of this if that's okay?
The easiest place to find me is on LinkedIn. You won't find any of that side stuff but if you reach out to me and if you're into any of that, shoot me a message. I’m happy to chat always.
One last question, Jillian. Why after all these years and all these experiences, I hear you and I hear the passion for tech, but why would you recommend tech or stay in tech after all these years?
On a personal level, when about creativity and all this stuff, at the end of the day I'm a builder at heart. I just want to build stuff. I want to make stuff. I want to make cool things and I want to put them into the world. Nothing brings me joy more than I made this thing and I give it to someone and they're like, "That's amazing. I love it." That makes my whole day. If that's something you're into, tech would be a great outlet.
Even with the economy that we're in, when I look at the job market, tech is the most generous with its benefits and the life that you get to live. I get to work from home. My day is very flexible. The benefits are amazing compared to a lot of other industries. Tons and tons of room for growth. It's almost never-ending. Of the number of reasons I would give for getting into tech, I would 10 out of 10 recommend it.
Creativity In Tech: Tech is just the most generous with its benefits and the life that you get to live.
I could not agree more. Even though I have my qualms for tech. All those things you mentioned, that's a great reason. I have had another friend who said finances are a great reason and I love when people are honest about things like that. Benefits, flexibility, and things like that just make it a great field despite all of the bullshit that we as women or marginalized folks have to deal with. I appreciate it.
My husband is an electrician. I see the stark contrast in industries and I'm like, "You got to get out of there. You should get a tech."
Boot camps, try that. Jillian, it has been lovely having this conversation with you. Anything else you want to add or share with folks?
We pretty much covered it. I’m always happy to help and be a mentor or give advice in any way I can. Feel free to reach out.
Thank you so much for doing that. We need more mentors and more people like us in tech.
Important Links
Jillian Funes - LinkedIn
About Jillian Funes
Technical Product Manager with a passion for delivering innovative products and features that improve people's lives. 10+ years of experience in the tech industry, bringing products from ideation to launch. I bring expertise in data-driven decision-making, user experience design, product positioning, and marketing. My strong analytical skills and customer-centric approach enable me to identify new opportunities and deliver innovative solutions that drive business growth.
