Hey Milly, tell us a bit about your path to becoming a Product Manager. I was the kind of student who couldn't choose between subjects. I did Physics and English Literature at A-level - but no Maths, which raised a few eyebrows, and then studied Modern and Medieval Languages (French and Spanish) at Cambridge. I refused to pick between the analytical and the creative sides of my brain, which is either a strength or a character flaw depending on who you ask.
When I graduated in 2021, I had no clear plan except to get to London and figure it out. I ended up as a tech, product and design recruiter at an agency, which sounds like an odd place to start, but it was a crash course in how the tech world works. I was interviewing senior engineers, designers and PMs for companies like ZOE, Contentsquare and Consensys, which meant I had to get credible fast on what those jobs actually involved. I spoke to six or seven people a day on the phone, learned to write cold outreach emails and got a quick education in compensation, equity, funding rounds, exits, negotiation. All the things nobody tells you when you’re at school and university.
Finding Loomery was partly a product of that training. I'd become good at boolean search strings for surfacing candidates, and I used the same techniques to hunt for associate product roles. Loomery came up. Brett and Tim were slightly confused as to how I’d found them! There were only five people working in the perm team at the time, and they had a very small marketing presence. I didn't have enough experience for the associate role, so they offered me the intern position instead. Three months later I joined permanently as an Associate PM.
What inspired you to pursue your career in Product Management specifically? Somewhere in my time as a recruiter, I started feeling quietly jealous of the people I was placing. They were building things and they had fascinating CVs. They sounded like they were enjoying themselves, which felt almost suspicious?!
I loved to speak to PMs in particular. They painted such a vivid picture of their days; the decisions they were making, the problems they were juggling, how much of the business they got to touch. I remember placing a senior PM into Typeform's VideoAsk product and being completely gripped when hearing second-hand about the interview questions she'd been asked.
And I’m not going to pretend I wasn't drawn to the phrase "CEO of the product." I've always quietly fancied myself as someone with a point of view. 😍
What's one bit of advice you'd give yourself at the start of your career in tech? It's normal to feel like an imposter. I still do. Every new client, every new context, there's a version of me quietly (or loudly!) panicking. Early on it was much worse: I remember sitting in sprint plannings feeling like everyone was speaking Greek. APIs, CI/CD pipelines, all of it, and nobody thought to explain it because to them it was just obvious.
What I've learned is that the things that baffled me were actually quite simple, once someone took thirty seconds to explain them. The problem wasn't that I was slow, it was that I hadn't encountered them before. Smarts aren't measured by what you already know, they're measured by what you can learn.
So: go easy on yourself. You don't know what you don't know yet. Neither does anyone else.
Who have been the most influential role models in your career? At Loomery, I have to start with Tim. He gave me my first real PM role; trusted me with an actual client engagement before I'd technically earned it, and then made himself available at the end of every day so I could unload everything I hadn't understood. He'd just explain, very, very patiently. I owe him a lot, and I'm sure he's relieved those sessions are less frequent now. 😄
More broadly, I couldn't count on one hand the people at Loomery I still turn to for sense-checks, coaching and what I can only describe as genuinely esoteric rabbit holes. (George, you know who you are.)
I've also had frankly excellent women; at Loomery, at client organisations and elsewhere who I've really admired. There's something different about seeing yourself in someone, even superficially. You imagine yourself in their position, try it on for size, pay attention to how they operate in a way you might not otherwise.
For product inspiration more widely: Theresa Torres, Lenny Rachitsky - the classics. Recently I came across Tanya Reilly's talk on glue work, which I think every PM should watch. It names something real about the parts of the job that hold everything together but never show up on a CV. A few years old, but more relevant now than ever.
What's the best thing about working at Loomery? The culture, and specifically how little of it is performed. I work remotely most of the time. Nobody tracks my hours or asks me to justify how I've spent my afternoon. The deal is: do a great job for your clients and for Loomery. That's it.
There's also no particular reverence for seniority or authority. I've been sticking my nose into things that weren't strictly my business since my first week as an intern, and nobody (really!) told me to stay in my lane. And the team are kind. Actually kind, not just professionally pleasant, which is rarer than it sounds.
