Career Stories: A Chat with Sonia Biddle, VP of Product

Welcome to Careers Stories! Follow this series, where we’ll hear from Depop folks at various stages of their career journey, as we shine a light on how they reached their version of success – and the people that helped them along the way. This week, we're chatting with Sonia Biddle, Depop’s VP of Product

Early Career

The economy crashed in the US just as I graduated from University, and the finance job I had lined up went down in flames with it. It took me forever to find a job so I worked as a waitress at a restaurant in San Francisco. One of the regulars, who turned out to be a very successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, told me that he got his start by working as a telephone support agent for a big electronics company and came up with his first startup idea after hearing the customers have similar issues. His advice was to find a company or industry that I had interest in and just apply to any and all entry level customer service jobs to get my foot in the door. Since I had always hated my summer internships at financial institutions (I was really bad at math I don’t know why I majored in Finance), I took the opportunity to apply to any support role at any tech company in SF. I got hired at an email service provider, doing phone support for the 6AM shift. It wasn’t the most glamorous job but it exposed me to a new type of role I had never heard of before, a “Business Manager” on the tech team. This was my first introduction to Product Management (as it would later be called) and I was instantly hooked by the idea of using technology to solve customer and business problems. 

How the early experiences shaped my career path

When I was in high school I got an after-school job at a property management office in Manhattan. I had been babysitting for the owners for many years at that point and I guess they trusted me enough to let a 15 year old answer the phone and file paperwork. One of the things that immediately struck me was how diverse the property management team was - people representing every ethnicity, age and demographic - making up a collective management team who ran 100 residential properties across NYC. I had never worked in an office setting before and had made some assumptions about what types of people would work there. The CEO later told me that diversity in the workplace was his secret sauce to success, and having a team that reflected the melting pot that is NYC enabled him to build a business that met the needs of its customers in authentic ways. This value became ingrained in me and to this day I don’t think there is anything more important in a Product team’s success than fostering diverse and varied perspectives.

Journey to current position 

This maybe isn’t a popular sentiment, but I do credit some of my career growth to sheer luck. Yes - hard work, ambition, developing your skill set - are all critical, but sometimes you just need to be in the right place at the right time. I joined Etsy when there were about 80 employees and they were just starting to see meaningful growth. When a startup is that size, roles and titles get pretty blurred. Everyone is wearing many hats and doing whatever they can to help move the business forward. At Etsy I had an opportunity to contribute to different teams, try different roles, and move around pretty frequently (I changed jobs/teams every 15 months on average during my decade tenure there) – and while that constant change might be exhausting for some, I found it extremely energising. It made me realise that I wanted to be a generalist rather than a specialist, because I wanted to ensure that my skill set would be applicable to many different problem spaces and enable future mobility. I love joining a new team, learning about a new solution, and digging into a new opportunity. The only constant in product management is change, so you might as well embrace it!

Life at Depop

I had never heard of Product Management until working in Tech - When I discovered it, it felt like the perfect intersection between the customers and the business, plus you got to come up with ways to use technology to solve people’s problems which is fun. I happened to be a Program Manager on a team that was responsible for integrating a new platform after an acquisition. Halfway through the project the PM quit, but the team sort of just carried on. I took on the PM tasks and they eventually offered me the role. 10 years later I got the opportunity to lead the Mobile Apps teams at Etsy, a predominantly web-centric and web-focused company. We were inspired by Depop’s mobile-first approach and really loved all the native features - saved searches was one of the first things we copied in addition to a home screen with engaging and vertically scrolling recommendations. Fast forward 4 years later, Etsy ends up acquiring Depop. I was on maternity leave at the time and when I heard the news I immediately reached out to Kruti (my CPO at the time) to say if there was an opportunity/role I would love to be considered. I guess what I learned was - don’t wait around for people to offer you opportunities, if you want something raise your hand, contribute, make it super clear what your aspirations are. With a little luck and lots of hard work, it might work out! 

Career advice you'd pay forward

Build relationships with everyone around the business. Invest in getting to know people, what they do, what they care about. Be proactive in contributing and participating in cross functional projects or initiatives. If you establish a reputation for being someone that can help with any problem, opportunities will be easier to come by.