Becoming a Product Lead: lessons on career, growth, and innovation from 10 years in observability space

Thorsten Roth, now a Product Lead at Dynatrace, began his journey as a Technical Product Manager in 2013. Over the past decade, collaboration has been the keystone of his growth—whether through clear communication, building strong relationships, or leveraging his sharp technical expertise at the core of Dynatrace Platform.  

In this episode, Thorsten unpacks what makes the Product Manager role at Dynatrace unique, the critical role PMs play in driving innovation, and why collaboration skills are so essential. He also provides insights for aspiring PMs, including what you should know before applying and how the focus areas within Dynatrace’s PM team are structured. 

We also explore Thorsten’s decision to leave Dynatrace after eight years for a CTO role at an Austrian scale-up—and his eventual return a little over a year later. What led him to come back, and what did he learn from this experience? Tune in to find out.

Where to find us:    

• Connect with Sue Quackenbush on LinkedIn
• Connect with Thorsten Roth on LinkedIn

Discover the opportunities at Dynatrace and take your career to the next level: careers.dynatrace.com

Transcript

Sue

So welcome everyone to today's episode of Real Talks. I'm your host, Sue Quackenbush, Chief People Officer at Dynatrace, and I am very excited to have Thorsten Roth, who is our Product Lead within our technology organization.

Thorsten

Thanks, Sue. Thanks for having me.

Sue

Well, thank you and congratulations on your promotion to Product Lead. But I'd love to understand, as someone who's not in the engineering organization, what is the role of a Product Manager and how it has evolved at Dynatrace.

Thorsten

So basically, the role of a Product Manager is to make sure whatever our customers require from a value perspective, we can offer within our Dyna trace platform. So I'm not saying that our customers are telling us what we need to do within our product. It's more to understand their pain points, also their use cases and making sure that they are somehow then are landing  within the product. This also means, of course, it's a lot of talking to different stakeholders, external stakeholders, but also internally because as we also follow this kind of mantra to say we are always our first customer. So customer zero, so to say. And, of course, then also the close collaboration within the R&D organization. So this is true with Engineering. This is true with Architects, our Product Management peers. And of course, combining all those things, in the end, should result in a great product.

Sue

And when you think about our product management and approach to product management and what you've seen external to Dynatrace, how is it different?

Thorsten

Yeah, it's a little bit that in many of the companies out there, Product Managers usually do not have a technical background. So, at least, this was true a couple of years ago at Dynatrace. This changed a little bit as we also have in all different roles. So now we have product management for go-to-market. Now we have Product Manager for product experience. We have product management for other areas to focus on, like growth, for instance. And of course this is then also changing the background, also from an educational perspective or, also from a career perspective, but nevertheless, they're part of the product management group. And now they can also be very dedicated in an area, which is also super helpful because back then the Product Manager was seen like, I would call it, as a Swiss Army knife, which is no longer true because, yeah, it would be too overwhelming. And now having this dedicated focus is clearly really helpful.

Sue

When you think about innovation, how do Product Managers contribute to maintaining our innovative edge?

So I believe, as a Product Manager, you have a main role, or you are the main contributor to innovation because while we are talking to so many different customers in all the different verticals-so this is true for huge banks, financial institutes, then insurance companies, well-known retailers, automotive space and so on-so basically we need to cover all of them, so to say. And they're all having the same problems. So they have software which seems to be not working perfectly. Right. So that's the reason why we are here. That's also one of the purposes, we want to try to help them, to support them. And of course, then as a Product Manager, you always hear things that are not working in terms of, hey, we're having a problem here, how Dynatrace as a platform can support this. And with taking all this kind of feedback, then we always sit back in a more, let's say, strategic format and also consider, okay, what does this mean? How can we cope with certain use cases or huge pain points our customers see within our platform. And back then I was working as the first Product Manager for our Grail data lakehouse. And this was a huge project back then. And also back then, the need was, how can we ensure that our customers can analyze all the rich data we are providing with our platform. And then a couple of years later, to be honest, because as I said, huge project then, Grail, the data lakehouse, was born and we developed  this.

Sue

Now I'm going to switch subjects just a little bit. You know, when we think about Dynatrace and the continued growth, and we're doing a lot of recruiting and bringing talent into the organization. What should the Product Manager know when applying to Dynatrace?

Thorsten

I believe as a Product Manager or to be a Product Manager at Dynatrace, you need to understand that you need to be a very collaborative person, so communication shouldn't be a problem at all. Of course, you also, depending on the area, should have a certain understanding in your focus area. So for the more product-related ones, of course, a technical background is super helpful because usually you talk on the same level with engineers, and you need to understand also the customer's voice. So because then you also have an audience like engineers, architects, and so on. When you're in the growth area, of course, your background is a little bit different. But I would say as a Product Manager you should also be very open. So what I mean by open is usually you're always the person; if something is going on, you are reacting first, which means you want to understand what's going on by, for instance, something is not working or why a customer is asking for support. Then, usually, a Product Manager is the person to jump in directly and support as much you can. And, of course, then doing the right things there.

Sue

Well, that's wonderful. And when you think about listening to the pain points of our customers, does sometimes that feel like you're always putting out fires or is this, you know, someone who has to be really excited for a challenge because you're raising challenges pretty much every day?

Thorsten

Indeed. That's true. Sometimes, we have this kind of challenge, also with customers. But on the other side, I believe that's also one of the great things about working with our customers because as soon we have a workaround, we can support with our platform. And we know they are currently in a hot season, so the holiday season is coming, right is already here. Then they will also send you a text message or an email to say, hey, this was really helping, this was super important to make sure that we can have a good holiday season and so on. So I believe that, at least for me, it's always very rewarding, which means everything what we did before. Of course, it can be a challenge, and it is sometimes a challenge, but at the end, it's about the customer. And if they are happy and they are seeing the value in the platform, that's the maximum of reward we can get as Product Managers.

Sue

You've been with the organization really started in 2013, so you've been with the organization for a long time. You also stepped out of the organization and then came back. And I would just love to get your thoughts on your journey.

Thorsten

Yeah, sure. I started at Dynatrace when Dynatrace was still, let's call it a small company, based out of Linz, as you know. And I started basically there as a Technical Product Manager And there was also a certain point in time when I also considered leaving the company. And basically, the main reason for that was that I got an exciting opportunity to become a CTO for a scale-up here, based in Linz or close to Linz. And I was also approaching my 40s, and as you can imagine, you also start thinking, oh, maybe this will be the last opportunity to face a challenge like this. And therefore, I took the decision and said, okay, maybe this is one step in the next career path. And that was the reason why I took this kind of decision.

Sue

That sounds very logical, and I totally can understand it. So what made the decision to come back to Dynatrace?

Thorsten

So, yeah, first of all, I have to say it was unbelievable the return at Dynatrace because this warm welcome I received back then from all the different colleagues and I grew with them from a professional perspective, but also many of them became friends. So I was always very, very aware of what's going on at Dynatrace and also where the company is still moving. And I was also then feeling again, hey, I want to go with Dynatrace again.

Sue

And when you think about Dynatrace in the future, right? What are you excited about most?

Thorsten

So, of course, I'm still excited most to see the company growing again. So because I believe we are doing pretty well from a platform perspective and I'm also very excited to see our Linz Headquarters in Austria to be built because currently, we have a construction site here. So on both sides, we are extending all building and this will be also super exciting for us.

Sue

So I thank you for sharing your experience with Dynatrace and the ability to have connections globally and be able to have relationships and spend time with Dynatrace all over the globe.

Thorsten

Thanks. So it was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Sue

Thank you everyone for tuning into today's podcast. If you'd like to follow us, please do so on Apple and Spotify.