Oleg Garuk

I was a senior technical PM at Amazon and was pretty successful there. I had the impression that after Amazon I'd be successful anywhere, so I left chasing more money at a fintech startup. Unfortunately, it didn't go well — I wasn't the right fit and left after about a year. At that point, my confidence was shaken.

When I joined the program, I was initially hoping to get a job within a month. But I started understanding there was a lot of ground to cover. The structure was incredibly valuable — before the program I was trying to do everything at once with no idea if I was going in the right direction. Having a plan made me stop panicking.

I spent about four hours a day on preparation for six months. The program helped me land interviews with four companies — Coinbase, Square, Amazon, and nCino. I received offers from both Amazon and nCino, giving me the luxury of negotiating and choosing. nCino actually came as a referral through the program.

I was able to negotiate effectively with nCino to close the compensation gap with Amazon, and ultimately chose nCino for the more interesting work, fully remote setup, and the chance to try something new. The program provides all the tools a product manager needs to land the job.