Олег Онопрієнко Історії 9 January 2026, 09:00

“I’m tired of putting out fires.” How a product manager deliberately left IT for her own business at CustDev

Valeria Kuryakova got into IT right after university, worked as a project and product manager, managed teams and made decisions based on data. But at some point she realized that the system did not allow her to develop the product, and her role was reduced to “fighting fires”. Valeria told dev.ua how she decided to leave the industry and build her own direction — analytics and in-depth consumer research.

The path to IT

After graduating from KNEU in 2014, Valeria had only one requirement for her first job — the ability to use English. This led her to the Kyiv office of Netcracker as a Sales Operations Coordinator. The job was prestigious. Valeria worked at the intersection of the interests of top management and the sales department and even visited the company’s headquarters in the US four times. However, after two and a half years, Valeria felt that there was too much coordination and not enough opportunity to make her own decisions.

"I wanted to become an analyst, I moved to another company. But we didn't get along with the company, and I quit after five days. That was the moment when I clearly understood that the approach to working in a company is important to me, not just the name of the role."

After that, Valeria started applying for all possible junior vacancies, from tester and business analyst to project manager. At that point, she was ready to try different roles to better understand what she liked best.

The decisive moment in choosing a profession was when, while reviewing vacancies, her father aptly noted that the role of Project Manager perfectly suited her character: a love of organization and communication.

“I remember complaining to my dad that I didn’t know what profession would suit me in IT. I opened the DOU website with descriptions of professions and started reading to him (it was 2016). When I read an article about project managers, my dad said, ‘This is it, this is for you. You like to organize everything and communicate with people.’ And that very accurately described my strong point — combining people, processes, and results,” Valeria recalls the times of looking for a job in IT.

A month later, she was invited to an interview for the position of project manager at Miritec.

"At the interview, it was nice to talk to the manager, he asked a lot about my experience, education (I have a professional education, project management at KNEU), and a few hours after the interview, I got a call with an invitation to work," recalls Valeria about the beginning of her work as a project manager.

Valeria received an offer on her birthday and that's how her work in IT began.

Product success and loss of interest

After 4.5 years of working as a project manager, Valeria felt the need for change. Having mastered process management perfectly, she sought to influence not only the “how” but also the “what” and “why” of creation. Her goal became not just to organize development, but to shape the value of the product and understand the motivation of users.

In 2020, after completing her training, she moved to Product Management, where she began to systematically work with the needs of the audience and directly influence product decisions.

Valeria recalls how she worked on a gaming product, coordinating two cross-functional teams using a full scrum methodology. All decisions were made solely based on user behavior analysis and data, not subjective feelings.

“This was a period when I systematically combined data, user research, and product solutions. It was this experience that later formed the basis of my approach to working with consumers and castdev research,” said Valeria.

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The decision to leave IT was made due to disappointment in her last company, where the role of product was degraded to “backlog management” and constant “firefighting.” Valeria tried to implement cross-functional teams, but encountered resistance from engineering leads.

“In such a model, it is difficult to talk about product development or user value. There was one interesting direction in building an internal CMS that I led. I suggested changing teams to cross-functional ones, because front and back are very inefficient separately. Without this, decisions were made slowly and often without a holistic vision of the user. Many agreed, but engineering leads were against it. I realized that in such a system I would not be able to implement a product approach,” Valeria said about the resistance to changes from colleagues.

After that, Valeria again started looking for a product position in the job market. She was afraid of ending up in a company again where decisions were made simply because “the big boss said so,” or where they simply copied competitors’ features.

“One day, during meditation, I had an insight: I could leave IT, but take with me the most valuable thing — working with solutions, data, and consumer research,” she shares the moment the idea of working directly with businesses came to her.

The decision to change her career vector came easily to her thanks to her confidence in her own abilities and understanding of the value she could bring to companies.

“Although I continued to apply for product vacancies at the same time, I didn’t completely close the door to IT. But I also started studying social networks to start managing them as an expert and testing them. Plus, I had a financial cushion, which allowed me to make decisions calmly, without panic,” Valeria shares her experience.

Training and a new direction

Valeria is convinced that Customer Development and deep consumer research are the foundation not only of product management, but of any business that seeks to avoid “random” decisions. Understanding what really drives people and why they choose a particular product has become her favorite part of working in IT. This is where Valeria found clear justifications for each step.

Over time, I clearly saw a pattern: the strongest product solutions emerge where there is real data and consumer research.

According to Valeria, this approach allows you to find growth points not only in the product's functionality, but also in marketing, sales, and communications - turning ideas into specific priorities. Going beyond the IT sphere, Valeria realized that it is this systematic approach that is critically lacking in most traditional businesses.

Valeria said that at the start of her new career, everything seemed quite simple, because she was in her element - at the Discovery stage, shaping the product, developing the methodology, and testing the value proposition.

“The first clients even appeared by themselves. Because businesses lacked understanding of their consumers,” recalls Valeria.

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The real challenges began later, when the task arose to go beyond "word of mouth" and establish systematic lead generation and clear positioning of services.

In her studies, Valeria chose a pragmatic approach and gained knowledge for specific tasks for immediate implementation in her work. She mastered the structure of content and Instagram management from Katya Borisenko, the basics of marketing from Genius.space, and working with offers and funnels from Tatyana Zinchenko. Additionally, she involved sales experts and attended specialized workshops, turning each training into a practical tool for her clients.

Her background in IT became the foundation of her current approach. She transferred product logic to traditional business: decisions should not be made intuitively, but based on data and analysis of customer behavior. This also applies to working with websites: her recommendations are based not on “design for design’s sake”, but on logic that covers the real needs and objections of the audience. A striking example was the redesign of an online store on the Khoroshop platform, where all changes were based exclusively on insights from consumer research.

About money and self-employment

Despite the success with clients, the financial side remains a challenge. Valeria honestly admits that she has not yet returned to the level of IT salaries and sets this as a goal for 2026. The main problem is instability, as projects last 2-2.5 months, and payments come unevenly.

“I quickly realized that in such a model, you need to think not in months, but in project cycles. Over time, I learned to perceive these periods not as a “failure”, but as an investment stage,” she explains her new financial philosophy.

In her new job, what she appreciates most is the opportunity to devote 95% of her time directly to her favorite thing — research and analytics. For comparison, in IT, even at the best of times, half of the working day was “eaten up” by meetings, agreements, and presentations. Valeria is impressed by the variety of tasks and complete autonomy in planning, although she admits that such freedom requires iron self-discipline.

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The main source of inspiration was the visible result of real changes in products, services, and customer communications that are implemented thanks to her recommendations, which makes the business more conscious.

Despite this, she sometimes remembers the atmosphere of the IT sphere with nostalgia. As a team player, she sometimes misses the feeling of a stable team, joint brainstorming sessions, and the drive of teamwork, because in consulting, people change from project to project.

“Now it is there, but not on a permanent basis — teams change along with projects,” said Valeria.

She also misses the full product development cycle — from ideation and testing to analyzing success metrics. And, of course, in times of financial lull, she smiles and remembers the stability of a regular salary that a job guaranteed.

“The turning point for me was conducting over 100 in-depth interviews with consumers. At that moment, I realized that I had learned how to conduct a conversation in a way that would extract the maximum insights from any interview,” says Valeria.

Her main competitor is not other specialists, but the established “status quo”. Many businesses still either ignore consumer research or try to imitate this process using ChatGPT or internal resources without proper expertise. However, she sees this situation not as an obstacle, but as a growth area for the entire market. Her global goal is to popularize the culture of research so that as many entrepreneurs as possible discover this tool and start making decisions not at random, but based on real data.

Tips and plans

For those who are considering changing their field but are wary of losing stability, Valeria advises them to act carefully, without making sudden leaps.

"Have a financial cushion, calculate the business model, test demand and several channels of engagement. If there are no children or strict obligations, it is quite possible to do this in parallel with working in IT as a pet project. And only dare when the test has shown that the model works," Valeria noted.

She admits that there are moments of doubt, especially when it comes to P&L reconciliations in challenging months. But it’s also a reminder that she’s not just building an abstract idea, but a real business that requires constant development.

Valeria's plans for the future are ambitious - to create a full-fledged consumer research agency and systematically develop this culture in Ukraine. This week, she started working on a platform with an AI assistant that will allow more businesses to conduct consumer research (faster and more affordable).

"We have many customer-oriented businesses that lack not intuition, but quality information from their own consumers. And this is where I see the long-term value of my work," Valeria concluded.

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