Miles Duncan

I'd been in product for thirteen years, almost always in highly regulated, complex industries — I was even a CPA in a former life. For the last five and a half years I was at Amazon on the devices and services team, leading their extended warranty and third-party accessory marketplace. Then on June 5th, 2025, I was laid off, and what followed was a ten-month journey that consumed my life seven days a week.

I got some early market reaction — Coinbase reached out and I passed the first two rounds on my own, and Walmart took me to the final stages — but the interview styles were nothing like what I'd seen at Amazon. About 95% of my rejections came from trying to move into fintech without direct experience; recruiters wanted people who had already done the exact job. The biggest thing I learned was that you can get through that, but you have to sell yourself as low risk — a quick learner bringing skills and traits the market actually wants to buy, with the industry knowledge becoming part of the ramp-up. I found Intentional Product Manager after watching an interview with someone from the program who had landed at Coinbase — exactly what I was trying to do.

The scariest part of being unemployed is the silence — no recruiters, nothing on the calendar. So I treated the program like a real pipeline: I stacked practice interviews and internal reps so I was always moving forward and always game-ready, like an athlete drilling three-point shots before the game. Along the way I realized I was becoming a better product manager — I did ten case studies, four presentations, and six documents, each one sharper than what I'd been producing at my last job. The mental health component was just as important. I had two breakdowns — once when four fintech offers in final rounds all fell through at the same time — and the career coach and mindset coach gave me a safe space to fall apart and get picked back up. Unemployed, with no health insurance, that support kept me grounded.

I landed my role as Director of Product Management at KLDiscovery, an eDiscovery company, where I'm building AI automation tools that cut the human time it takes lawyers to move a case from acceptance to court. They didn't hire me for legal-tech experience — they hired me for product sense, frameworks, and cultural alignment, and trusted I'd learn the industry. After thirty days, my boss told me word for word, "You're killing it — it feels like you've been here for a year." I walked in stronger than I was before I was let go. If you're considering the program, think of it as an investment not just in your career but in your mental state. It was one of the largest purchases I've made in a while, and the one I've regretted the least.