Employee Number Nine

Jennifer Busensbark showed up in Chicago for AmeriCorps and never left.

She took her first job chewing gum and organizing executives at Wrigley company before finding her way onto the administrative team at ThoughtWorks - a global technology consultancy. During a downturn, the company turned to uptraining support staff to help with quality assurance.

17 years later Busenbark has sported the titles of Business Analyst, Project Coordinator, Scrum Master (before we called it that), Product Manager, and, most recently, Director of Product Management.

When Jen goes in, she goes all in. She spent over a decade expanding her role at ThoughtWorks before joining fledgling payment company, Braintree, as employee number nine.

Over the last seven and a half years Jen rode the wave from garage startup to explosive growth to acquisition through IPO and beyond.

She sat down with 100 Product Managers to share her journey and lessons learned.

Press play below to hear the full conversation.

I think there was an element of that. I think the biggest thing for me is I got too far away from executing and delivery of software. I feel very comfortable in being close to the product and having a say. I had a say, but we had PMs that I worked with that actually were working with the developers day to day and getting in there. I feel like I got really far away from that, and I really wanted to focus more on execution and on delivery. That's probably the main reason. I think also the size. I think I found when I look back at my days at Braintree, I think it's a wonderful company where I was the happiest in what size the company was. Jen Busenbark on leaving Braintree after 7 1/2 years

Also in this episode:

• What makes a good Quality Assurance person (hint: you gotta like breaking things)
• A brief history of Braintree
• Why having competition is really good for you