“Product Marketing at Dynatrace represents the promise of what the role is supposed to be. And it’s not for the faint of heart,” says Logan Franey, about to celebrate the end of his first year as Sr. Product Marketing Manager for the company. “Our product management and engineering teams in Europe are the brightest minds and pool of raw talent I have ever seen.”
His first year at Dynatrace, Franey says, has been a career builder.
“What I’m most proud of over this first year is how my cross-functional solution team has not only performed, but also collaborated and grown together,” Franey says. “I’ve worked very closely with hardcore technical product folks and they have really helped raise me up to a level of expertise where I’m able to add value exactly where product marketing needs to, which in turn has improved the team’s quality of strategy and execution, depth of understanding, and velocity.”
Franey began his career in IT project management, leading cross-functional technical teams through the software development lifecycle and supporting process improvement initiatives in a large Program Management Office. While he wouldn’t quite say he was bored during that time, he does his desire for more experience led him to co-founding a small eCommerce business.
“Entrepreneurship taught me how to be scrappy, but also how to think about every single function of a business: sales, marketing, product, ops, data analytics, and more,” he says. “That experience really pushed me towards eventually targeting Product Marketing roles to leverage my academic background in psychology to understand customers, think deeply about strategy and execution, and to get as close to sales as possible, where the action is.”
Franey restarted his career in product marketing at Adobe, working for the digital experience wing of the company. He says he learned what world-class product marketing really looks like, and the experience reaffirmed his love for serving the often unsung heroes in IT organizations.
And he still wanted more impact, ownership, and personal growth in his career. This took him to Dynatrace.
“I sensed an attitude of accountability and ‘pushing hard to win together’ that I just hadn’t experienced before. I really had to bring my A-game during the interview process, making me respect the organization even more and giving me a better sense of the challenge I had been seeking,” Franey says.
Once he joined the company, Franey was excited to find that sitting back as a cog in a wheel could never be an option in Dynatrace’s dynamic atmosphere.
“You need to be comfortable with taking initiative in a fast-moving market. It’s up to you and your cross-functional counterparts to ramp up really quickly. A really high bar is set early on, which forces you to rise to the occasion while you’re still building up your confidence,” Franey says, “So you better have that coming in.”
Franey says that, while many organizations pay attention to collaboration, innovation, and accountability, at Dynatrace those values are elevated. “You can challenge any idea in any forum, as long as you can back it up with evidence or experience. And you can also be challenged, so you really need to understand what you’re talking about and put a lot of thought behind ideas.”
“With much of the R&D organization residing in Austria, Dynatrace has an organizational culture based on respect that leads toward the open and honest expression of ideas, healthy debates that we call ‘sparring’, and goal-oriented collaboration to solve problems in order to win in this highly competitive industry,” Franey says.
“We have a bias towards action, but we ensure we’re doing the right thing for our customers, our employees, and the long-term competitive advantages of the company. We think really long-term, but with our R&D team releasing code into production at least every two weeks, we can build and adjust product-market fit within weeks and months, not quarters or years. It’s really encouraging to spend time thinking deeply about, preparing for, and presenting on strategy for product or GTM, then actually see it come to fruition quickly,” Franey says.
The message is clear. Product Marketing at Dynatrace can be as fast-paced and challenging a role as it is a rewarding one.
“If you don’t proactively seek opportunities to talk to customers, to present internally and externally, and find a better way to do things, then you can’t be an effective go-to-market leader,” he says. “But if you are someone who seeks out new challenges, loves to grow personally and professionally, and wants to be part of some crazy growth in a public tech company, this can be an amazing opportunity,” Franey says.
During his first year at Dynatrace, Logan says he has grown in his new role, and that he knows his contributions helped the team move forward. As for his next year at Dynatrace, Franey says he looks forward to the next set of challenges.
“I’m excited to attack new markets and expand to new buyers with a greatly differentiated product that pushes the bleeding edge of what’s possible in AI and automation,” Franey says. “I always look forward to sneak peek demos from our R&D team for capabilities I could only dream about, then hearing that we’ll have it in product in the next few months.”
“Our market can change in a split second and we have to be constantly vigilant of new technology trends, competitive pressures, and nascent opportunities to quickly assess and own to maintain our competitive advantage,” he adds.
