Shammi Quddus is a product manager at Google, working in payments. She calls herself "a big fintech nerd". She grew up in Chittagong in a family of academics, earned a karate black belt, went to MIT on a full scholarship, and started the leadership program that became BYLC. She went on to study policy at Harvard Kennedy School and business at Stanford before moving into product management. She describes her first ten years of career as "Brownian motion": moving around until something changes your direction.
In this episode Ahmed Fahad walks through that path with her, and asks the practical questions: how she got into MIT, how she learned to speak in public, and how someone from Bangladesh can get a job at Google.
Chittagong to MIT
Both her parents were teachers in Chittagong, and their expectations ran toward the usual professional careers. Shammi took up karate in the 1990s, often as the only girl. She earned a black belt and medalled at the nationals. She persuaded her parents by pointing to women on TV: "this is what it looks like."
She wanted a holistic education abroad, not just academics. She learned how by reading the blogs of American high school students, and applied to 14 universities. At MIT, admission is need-blind, and she got a full ride covering tuition, room and board. In her year, she was one of two people from Bangladesh admitted. She graduated in 2010 in environmental engineering, with a minor in economics.
BYLC
At MIT she won the Davis Prize: $10,000 to pilot a leadership program in Chittagong in 2008. It brought together young people from English-medium, Bangla-medium and madrasa schools. That program became BYLC. Its core idea is that leadership is taught: it is an activity anyone can learn through practice. Fourteen years on, it has thousands of graduates across school, professional and entrepreneur programs. The flagship is Building Bridges through Leadership Training.
Water treatment plants and a first tech product
After a job at the engineering firm AECOM, she decided not to be a practicing environmental engineer. She joined Water Health Bangladesh as general manager, running a team of 25 and putting up three water treatment plants, including in Sitakunda and Hathazari. When the business struggled, she sold water treatment equipment to keep making payroll. Next, she built a simple telemedicine app with friends. It was her first tech product, and the moment she found that she loved building things with users: she was "PMing without knowing."
Harvard, Stanford and getting into product
Policy decided too much of what made or broke the water business, so she applied to Harvard Kennedy School. She wanted strategic and financial skills, so she applied to Stanford for an MBA, and squeezed the two degrees into three years. At Stanford she found the words for what she loved: product management.
Coming from a non-traditional background, she got no calls for PM internships at first. Her strategy was to aim for product-adjacent roles at startups with a global focus, pitching her understanding of Asian markets. A product strategy internship then opened the door to PM interviews. Google is her first PM job.
How to get into big tech from Bangladesh
- Two tracks. Engineering roles can sponsor foreign hires directly. Non-engineering roles, product management included, usually come through a degree abroad and the visa path that follows. Regional roles in hubs like Dublin and Singapore, some focused on Bangladesh, are another way in.
- An international-standard resume, written in the situation, action, result format.
- Two to three years of solid experience: managing projects, presenting and handling stakeholders.
- A top-notch LinkedIn with full descriptions of every role.
- Interviews: product design and execution cases for PM roles, hypothetical behavioral questions for strategy and operations roles, and at Google a system design interview for PMs.
On coding: a PM doesn't need to be a coder, but needs enough technical aptitude to read code and understand engineering decisions.
Public speaking, as an introvert
She is an extreme introvert who had a panic attack on stage at age seven, so being a clear speaker is "like 25 years of work". Her method:
- Practice alone, in front of a mirror.
- Work on articulation.
- Speak on topics she cares about.
- Use visuals.
- Type out and rehearse the first five minutes three times. After that, her nerves settle.
The line she lives by comes from her father: never say "I cannot".
What the conversation covers
- Growing up in Chittagong, and karate
- Why study abroad, and getting into MIT
- Environmental engineering, economics and the Davis Prize
- Founding BYLC
- Water Health Bangladesh and a first tech product
- Harvard Kennedy School and Stanford
- Breaking into product management
- A PM's day at Google, and Google's levels
- How to get a job in big tech from Bangladesh
- Public speaking for introverts