Joining ResearchGate in Berlin

As I laid out in my multi-part blog series on leaving Japan for Berlin, I started working at Fyber, a Berlin-based advertising technology company, in October 2016. I joined the company with the intention to stay there for quite a long time, gaining an understanding of the advertising technology space, working with great people and developing my skills as a product manager.

My Challenging Experience Working at Fyber

The first few months went very well as I built relationships with talented individuals across the organization and began to grasp the fundamentals of adtech. However, as I have seen and will continue to see in other positions, the only constant in this world is change. Just as I was getting the hang of things, the Chief Product Officer left the company in late December. It was a big blow to the team, but I took it particularly hard as he was one of the main reasons that I joined the company.

Following his departure, the product management team went through a reorganization. It became part of the technology team reporting to the CTO as opposed to having its own C-level executive sitting independently from both tech and business. I had been brought onto the team with the understanding that our independence would be one of the key ways that we could have the impact that we needed to in order to make Fyber into more a product-driven organization, so it was certainly a surprising change for the company.

Nevertheless, after the holiday break, I dove right back into my work in a team focused on improving the company’s ad delivery. However, not long afterward, I began to feel that there was something lacking in the product manager role at Fyber. In my previous product management experiences, I have been able to lead a team and drive the vision for the roadmap while managing development sprints. Adtech is very complex and takes 6–12 months before being able to understand most of the conversations happening around you. Though I got up to speed on my project quickly, I felt that it would be quite some time, perhaps even longer than 12 months, before I would be able to have the kind of impact that I was looking to have on my team due to the topic’s complex and technical nature.

I also recognized that I missed working on something that a user is directly interacting with. I like to work on something with an interface that I can work with designers to tweak to improve user experience and increase conversion rates. It’s something that I enjoy doing and feel it is an area where I can add some value, but the B2B-heavy adtech space does not create as many opportunities for such interface design as I would like.

In Germany, there is also the concept of a probation period for any new employees at a company. In my first 6 months on the job, the company can let me go or I can choose to leave the company with only 2 weeks’ notice. After the first 6 months, at Fyber the notice period becomes 3 months on both sides. Therefore, as I was coming up on the end of my probation period, I knew that it was a good time to investigate other options if I was beginning to have second thoughts.

Re-engaging with ResearchGate

With all of that in mind, I decided to start a small job search focused only on companies that really interested me in Berlin. In total, I spoke with 8 companies, finished the interview process with 3 and received 2 offers across a period of about 1.5 months. Though both offers I received were attractive, the one that truly caught my eye was from ResearchGate. I had started interviewing with them during my last job search and was disappointed that I could not finish it when I took the Fyber offer before coming to Berlin. I kept in touch with them over my first months in Berlin and was able to pick up where I left off as I started looking into new opportunities.

ResearchGate is focused on making science more collaborative, open and transparent, and it has done an excellent job in achieving its goals so far. With tens of millions of dollars in funding, it has grown quickly in the Berlin tech scene. Over 11 million researchers have signed up on its platform and it has become the place for researchers to connect and share their findings with the world.

When I got the offer from ResearchGate and heard from the CEO about his plans for the future of the company, I knew that it was an opportunity that I could not pass up. I will join ResearchGate as a Product Manager in late March and look forward to working on some new projects there over the coming months.

Thanks for your continued support and keep an eye out for more updates in the near future!

Originally published at www.davidemcneill.com on March 10, 2017.