I’m a former consultant looking at the usual forks: tech PM, corporate strategy, startups, and PE. I’m less worried about the next 12 months and more about what compounds over 5+ years: scope, skills with long half-lives, and a network that actually opens doors. My early read, based on folks I’ve worked with or followed closely: big-tech PM compounds if you can consistently own problems close to revenue or retention and avoid becoming a JIRA traffic cop; corp strat is stable and senior-facing but can stall if you never own execution; startups can be rocket fuel or a wash depending on founder quality and market tailwinds; PE is elite training but risks narrowing your skill story to diligence and oversight rather than building. Positioning-wise, I’m mapping my consulting work to PM impact (user outcomes, shipped iterations), to strategy value (exec influence, decision velocity), to startup bias-to-action (zero to one), and to PE value creation (driver trees tied to EBITDA). For those who’ve lived it: which path actually compounded best for you over 5+ years, and what early signals in an offer or team told you it would?
here’s the boring truth: it’s not the path, it’s the manager and the market. pm compounds only if your manager shields you and your product has pull, not “vision decks.” corp strat compounds if you rotate into ownership, not endless QBRs. startups only work when the founders can recruit killers. pe? great if you like spreadsheets and herding portco cats. pick the boss you’ll learn from and the metric you’ll be judged on. everything else is resume perfume.
everyone fetishizes optionality. optionality without reps is just drift. big tech pm? comfy plateau unless you ship hard things. corp strat? deck artistry with a bonus. pe? golden handcuffs, and you’ll forget what users look like. startups? chaos roulette. you want compounding? pick the environment where feedback loops are short and you get blamed and credited. that’s it. the rest is linkedin cosplay.
my 2c as a 2nd-year analyst
shadowed pm + corp strat rotations. pm felt “real” when we shipped and saw metrics move next week. corp strat had exec access but slower loop. i’m leaning pm if scope’s legit and eng respects the role.
quick q: how do you vet a startup’s founder quality fast? i can’t read bs well yet. any tells beyond fancy logos and seed hype?
talked to a pe associate. sounded like reps = models, IC memos, some portco projects. great training, but i’d miss building. is it easy to go pe → pm later?
Think about agency, feedback velocity, and market tide. PM compounds when you’re close to core metrics and can influence engineering prioritization. Ask for examples of de-scoped work and why; that reveals real influence. Corporate strategy compounds when rotations include execution or P&L support; push for ownership of a decision that must show results within a quarter. Startups compound if the founders can attract senior talent repeatedly and the problem has a clear, painful payor. PE compounds if you’re staffed on value-creation work, not just diligence. Do a pre-mortem on each offer: what would make you plateau in 18 months? If you can’t name three specific plateaus and how you’d avoid them, you don’t understand the path yet.
I jumped from consulting to a 40-person startup thinking “scope = growth.” First six months were chaos: no roadmap, founder changed priorities weekly. The unlock was a brutally simple weekly KPI review that I drove. Once we aligned on two numbers, everything clicked. I learned hiring, GTM experiments, and basic product ops fast. Comp was bumpy, but the learning curve was insane. Looking back, it compounded because my work was undeniably tied to outcomes, and references from that period have paid off twice since.
Compounding tends to correlate with proximity to revenue/retention metrics and iteration speed. PM roles in products with strong product-market fit show faster skill reinforcement due to weekly data cycles. Corporate strategy offers senior exposure but slower feedback, so growth hinges on execution-linked rotations. Startups exhibit high variance; outcomes concentrate around founder quality and capital runway. PE accelerates analytical rigor and executive communication but narrows building experience. Evaluate offers by asking for recent examples of shipped decisions, their measurable impact, and who had final say. Shorter decision cycles reliably predict steeper learning curves.