Humbly Confident Product Manager at You Need A Budget (YNAB)
Posted on: 06/09/2022Location: (REMOTE)
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Tags: figma moment nest android
About Us and Why Weâre Hiring ============================= We build âYou Need a Budget,â the best budgeting software around. (But people in the know call us YNAB, which is pronounced âwhy-nab.â) For more than a decade, people have been buying YNAB and then telling their friends what a difference it has made in their lives. [Google us](https://www.google.com/search?q=ynab), or read some of our reviews [on the app store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ynab-you-need-a-budget/id1010865877), and youâll see what we mean. We love building something that has a huge positive impact on peopleâs lives. Weâre a software ecosystem that includes personal budgeting apps for web, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Android phones. Our mission is to make sure the whole world knows that a budget is the best life and financial planning tool ever inventedâand help make it simple and joyful to use one. YNAB is growing, and so is our product team. Youâre the product manager weâre looking for if youâre collaborative, results-oriented, creative, persistent, and disciplined. (So far, so good?) You love solving complex problemsâboth internally and for our usersâand know what it means to build a mature, evolving product. Youâre customer-centric and have a knack for developing a deep understanding of usersâ needs, and you could say the same about understanding the challenges a SaaS business like YNAB faces in the larger market landscape. You probably organize things in your sleep and enjoy making sense of chaos, but youâre also comfortable living in spots where messy is THE place to be. You communicate for a living and you know it, so you understand the language of development and design, marketing and support, and use those languages well in all mediums, from face-to-face, to long-form, to comments in a Figma file. You expound on decision-making strategies for way too long at summer barbeques, but somehow keep people listening. **Requirements (these are real, actual requirements):** * You must have at least **five years** of experience working in the SaaS industry, at least **four** of which were as a product manager. Complex, data-rich applications are a plus. * You must have experience in cross-functional product development. And we really mean that cross-functional part. Thatâs a super brief intro to what weâre looking for. But first, you need to know if youâll even like working with us. Letâs talk a bit about life at YNAB, and then weâll go into more detail about this role. Weâre profitable, bootstrapped, and growing. YNAB was founded in 2004 and we havenât taken any outside fundingâweâre in it for the long haul. We have one overarching requirement when it comes to joining our team: our original [Core Value Manifesto](https://docs.google.com/document/d/16hufsixsrv1j2jZkWUgQmeKpNfQRsacnnK2xTVwO0ew/edit) has to really click with you. If youâre nodding emphatically while reading it, youâll probably really like it here, and we canât wait to hear from you! We live our Core Values every day at YNAB, and we mean it when we say we are an equal opportunity employer. We believe that a diversity of backgrounds, abilities, beliefs, and experiences are critical to our success, and we are passionate about creating a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative environment for all employees. All are encouraged to apply as we continue to grow this smart, hard-working, and diverse team who loves working together to build something that matters. We also work really hard, together, to make working at YNAB an amazing experience, and we are (humbly) proud to have been named [Fortuneâs #1 Best Small Company to Work For for the last two years. We](https://fortune.com/best-small-workplaces/you-need-a-budget/) have a team full of truly exceptional peopleâthe kind youâll be excited to work with. Weâd love to introduce you to a few of them! **Who youâd be working with:** Weâre talking product management here, so youâll be working with a lot of different people. We canât even list them all, really. So weâll start with (just a few of) your fellow product managers: Elena, Hannah, Lee, and Milène. **Elena** started at YNAB as a support specialist, and empathy for the user experience remains a big focal point for her. Elena is an ever-optimizer, constantly trying to make our processes more efficient. Pre-YNAB she worked in the cheese industryâif youâre a fan of fromage, you can look forward to many tasty recommendations! **Hannah** loves building empowered, innovative, and trust-filled teams and is deeply invested in helping individuals and communities change their financial narratives and realities. She has a penchant for prepositional phrases and an abiding absorption with acronyms (and alliteration). Sheâs also a dancer and performing artist. **Lee** is passionate about pattern recognition and paring down complex problems into simple solutions. He loves trivia, word puzzles, and finding the exact right vacuum attachment for the job. Lee firmly believes that some leftovers are better when not reheated. **Milène** joined YNAB from the data world and is eager to make YNAB more data-informed but not data-obsessed. She regularly helps her friends better manage their finances and can now scale this passion through her job. Outside of work, you can find Milène trying the latest NYC restaurants, planning her next travel adventure, or emptying her mind with a jigsaw puzzle. And as we said above, youâll also cross paths withâwellâprobably everyone else. People like **Sophie** and **Scott** (a couple of our developers), **Cindy** and **Adam** (both designers), **Angela** (our Head of Support), and **Kelly** (our product marketing specialist).How Youâll Work at YNAB ======================= Now that youâve met some of your potential future teammates, letâs talk more about YNAB as a company. Hereâs how we operate: **Live Where You Want**Weâre a fully remote team, so you can live and work wherever you want (with a reliable internet connection!). That said, youâll be working predominantly with folks based in North America, so we expect that youâll be willing and able to work North American hours for a significant portion of your time. Proximity doesnât influence productivity, but it sure does help with communication sometimes. **No Outrageous Hours** We want everyone to have a full life outside of YNAB, and we seldom work more than 40 hours per week. There have been a few occasions where things got busy and people had to put some extra time in. But then they took some extra time off, so it all balances out. We work hard and smart but weâre in this for the long haul. **Take Vacation (Seriously)**We want you to take vacation. In fact, we have a minimum vacation policy of three weeks per year. Five weeks feels about right (plus two extra weeks for our company-wide December break). Itâs important to get plenty of downtime and get out and do something. Weâll look forward to seeing pictures of your adventures in our #office\_wall Slack channel! **The YNAB Retreat** When the pandemic isnât keeping us from traveling, we get the teams together once a year to catch up on spreadsheets and powerpoints in a Best Western conference room. Just kidding. So far, weâve done [Costa Rica](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fs1TN-jrDI), a [gigantic cabin](https://www.youneedabudget.com/if-you-feel-guilty-spending-money-youre-doing-it-wrong/) in the mountains, a beach house in the Outer Banks, a ranch in Montana, and most recently, [Laguna Beach](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js5pNTDKiZE). We work together, play together, and reinforce the bonds weâve made as a team and company. Every year, we leave refreshed, motivated, and excited for the year ahead together. **Up Your Game** Weâre serious about helping you improve your craft. We *budget* for it (hey-o!). Think conferences, online courses, and subscriptions, dedicated time away from work to learn something new⌠itâs really up to you and your manager. But we love to see our people growing. **U.S. or International? Great!** Our team is spread across the globe, including Switzerland, Argentina, Scotland, Canada, Iceland, and all over the United States. We currently set up team members who live in the U.S. or U.K. as employees, and those who live in other countries as independent contractors. Youâre an equal part of the team no matter where you live! **Benefits**For full-time W2 employees in the U.S., we offer fantastic health, dental, and vision insurance, where we cover 100% of the premium for you *and your family.* No need to check your vision, you read that rightâ100%. Although if you did need to check your vision, NBD, weâve got you covered! For full- and part-time W2 employees in the U.S., we also have a Traditional and Roth 401(k) option. YNAB matches your contributions up to six percent, and matches vest immediately. (Are you a personal finance junkie like our founder Jesse? He set up YNABâs 401k to have the lowest fee structure possible, where all plan costs are paid by YNAB, *not your retirement nest egg*. The investment funds available are fantastic, passively-managed, ultra low-cost index funds. Youâre not a PF junkie? Trust us, itâs awesome.) For U.K. employees, we also contribute six percent to your pension. **Competitive Compensation**The starting salary range for this position is $105,000 - $121,000 annually. We consider raises every year, and have a bi-annual profit-share bonus. YNAB wins, you winâthat kind of thing. **Other Tidbits** * Once you start, we DEMAND (in a friendly, ALL CAPS IS YELLING way) that you fill out your âBucket Listâ spreadsheet with 50 items. (Thatâs harder than it sounds!) * The bucket list really helps in deciding what we should give you for your birthday and the holidays. * Weâre all adults. Thereâs no need to punch a clock, or ask for permission to take off early one afternoon to go see the doctor. We look at what you accomplish, not how long youâre in front of a computer. * Weâre currently trialing a four-day work week! For us, this means four regular days of work followed by a three-day weekendâŚ*every week*. This is new to us, and we're learning a lot, but we're excited about what it could mean both for the company and our team members. * We want you firing on all cylinders so weâll set you up with a shiny new computer and replace it every three years. * Did we mention that YNAB makes a huge, positive difference in peopleâs lives? You may not think that matters much, but then a few months down the road youâll realize itâs made your job really, really enjoyable. Donât underestimate this one! If this sounds like your ideal environment, read on because now we want to talk about you, and how youâll play a big part in changing peopleâs lives.Now, back to you, our new Product Manager... ============================================ **What Success Looks Like:** Our goal is for every YNAB user to achieve life-changing financial controlâand for the whole planet to realize it is possible. No small thing, right? In 2022, weâre focused on helping all users see YNAB fit their needsâfunctional, social, and emotionalâas they resolve financial struggles. Looking inward, youâll also help us evolve our systems and processes to deliver top-notchâdare we say life-changingâexperiences to our users. Weâve been growing. A lot. Weâve worked hard to create teams that are autonomous and outcome-focused, but weâll never be ones to rest on our laurels. We expect you to speak up when you see an opportunity to improve our organization and processes, and to embrace change as we continue to grow. **Youâll need to:** * Regularly ship real value to our users. You can both live two years ahead of your team and support them in the present moment as you shepherd work from discovery to ideation to release to follow-up. In particular, youâll work hand-in-hand with a product designer on your team to jointly develop a vision, prioritize projects, and execute on strategy. * Understand the user journey, not just the one in our apps, but also the one in the real world as users resolve their financial struggles. * Be comfortable with multiple discovery and ideation strategies in your quest to make YNAB consistently better. You enjoy talking to customers in user interviews and usability testing and have a knack for summarizing research in a concise way for teammates. * Be a curious, persistent, and quick learner, staying ahead of new ideas, technologies, and other opportunities to help YNAB users take total control of their money, and maybe even sleep better at night. * Understand deeply that at YNAB âcross-functionalâ isnât code for âdesigners and engineers.â We know that great ideas can come from anywhere, so support specialists and marketers are also members of our flat product teams. * Learn the design principles and financial logic of our apps like the back of your hand. Then learn our engineering processes like the back of your other hand. Then find another hand for internalizing our brand, marketing strategies, and support ethic. * Synthesize and make sense of ALL THE DATA and information about our products, for yourself and to help others across the organization make better decisions. Youâre fluent in quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysisâand are cautious about the failings of each. * Communicate, explain, persuade, explore and otherwise get all the things done in asynchronous formats. Yes, we like talking to each other in real-time, but as a remote team, much of our collaboration is asynchronous and written. * Be intensely curious. Period. * Oh, also, not to the exclusion of anything else, but youâre intensely curious about how people learn, what motivates them, how they change and develop habits, and how behavior inside a product might change behavior outside it. * Be comfortable speaking the language of software development and product design. If youâre also comfortable diving into HTML and CSS (or even one of the programming languages in our development stack!), thatâs a plus, but itâs not a requirement. Being conversant across all disciplines is key. * Manage key partner relationships, from day-to-day communication to contract negotiation. Thatâs twelve bullets, but letâs still say that your success as a product manager comes down to this: Your ability to approach product development as holistic, simultaneous, problem-solving of both user and business goals. And if we havenât yet spilled enough metaphorical ink on this idea: We work collaboratively here so youâll listen to ideas, questions, and critiques from teammates with grace and patienceânot because thatâs nice, but because you see this as critical to our shared success. That said, you know your stuff and can eloquently and logically explain decisions and, not for nothing, make them when the rubber hits the road. Full stop.How to Apply ============ * **Apply below by 11:59PM PDT on Sunday, June 19th.** Firm. Itâs a real deadline. The kind you love. * Attach a PDF of your cover letter. + In your cover letter, introduce yourself and explain why this position is of interest to you, and why you would be a great fit. Please limit this section of the cover letter to 1.5 pages at most. + Include the word âevaluateâ somewhere in your cover letter. + On a separate page of your cover letter, answer the following questions (with each response being about a paragraph in length): - What attracted you to this position? (This is not about what attracted you to the software.) - What criteria do you look for when searching for your next company or position? - What are your favorite and least favorite parts of your current job? - Tell us about a time when you had to learn something new to excel at your job. - We love someone with a perspective about product development. Answer, in one paragraph: How early is too early to ship? How late is too late? * If you have a prepared resume, attach it in PDF form. If you donât have a resume because you arenât even sure youâre looking to change jobs, thatâs fine! In that case, please just include an informal list of your work and education history or a link to your LinkedIn profile. * Our goal is to make the recruitment and hiring process as accessible as possible. If we can help you with an accessibility need, email us at accommodations@youneedabudget.com and indicate the role youâre applying for in the subject line. (Please note that we can only respond to messages related to accommodations.) * Though we know it is customary in some areas, weâd prefer it if you didnât share a headshot in your application materials. Thank you! Weâre excited to hear from you! P.S. We'll send you a confirmation email once you apply. Please add that email to your safe sender list to ensure that future emails come through. (If itâs not there, be sure to check your spam or junk email folder.) P.P.S. If youâre not interested in this position right now, but know someone who might be, weâd appreciate you passing this along!