From Physical Therapist to Product Developer at Hinge Health

Dr. Ryan Sharkey, PT, DPT, OCS is a Product Manager and Physical Therapist. His wide range of professional experiences, from clinical practice, practice management, freelance entrepreneurship, and product management creates a unique perspective on businesses, both small and large. Below, he outlines his learnings about navigating organizational size considerations when building your dream career.

While getting a non-clinical role in a tech company is more common for clinicians today than it was 10 years ago, it can still feel like a daunting process full of a lot of unknowns and rejection. I wanted to share my story of how I went from treating patients in the clinic to a product manager at a tech company. While I feel really fortunate that my journey went as it did, there are some key learnings from my journey that I would utilize if I had to do it all over again.

I’ve highlighted some key takeaways in this article that I’ve learned through my career. They seem simple, and they are…but learning from experience created a lot of depth underneath each simple statement.

1. Start small: Smaller companies produce greater opportunities for growth
2. Learn everything about the business you can from day 1
3. Smaller companies have fewer “experts” so you can learn by doing.

With that said…

Let’s dive in.

Question 1 — What was my career path before and during Hinge Health?
Question 2 — What was my first opportunity in a non-clinical role?
Question 3 — What were the biggest challenges (and opportunities to grow) when I took that non-clinical role?
Question 4 — Looking back, how would I have approached that transition differently?
Question 5- What are some resources I’ve found that have helped me along my journey beyond the clinic?

Question 1 — What was my career path before and during Hinge Health?

My first 7 years after graduation from Physical Therapy school was pretty traditional. I worked at an outpatient clinic in rural Oregon as a generalist, though the nature of the setting gave way to a lot of patients dealing with chronic pain. I also worked closely with our orthopedic surgeons treating both post op and local sports athletes. What started to blow me away as I continued working in a rural community was how far people were driving to get care. It was upwards of 70 miles each direction for a 30 minute appointment. I was questioning the value of that interaction vs. the almost two and a half hours that person could be spending doing things they really enjoyed.

Ultimately, as I progressed in my career I felt like I wanted to have a larger impact on patient care as a whole, but the opportunities in the area were limited. I didn’t really know what else was out there for a clinician, but I took whatever opportunities came to me, and made a few of my own. I started by creating marketing content for my clinic, got an opportunity to build an anatomy course for high schoolers, and put together a few blogs on different topics that I found interesting. As a whole, none of these things directly got me the job at Hinge Health, that’s the sort of thing that I applied my passion for learning to simply because I was interested, and it ended up serving me well once I started to get exposed more to more experienced professionals in marketing and product.

After talking with a friend in the health tech industry, she turned me on to Hinge Health, where there were no positions open that were remotely relevant to me or my experience. I still went for it and ended up getting connected with one of their sales reps and applied for a position anyway (I didn’t get it). After another month I saw that there was a PT consultant position that opened up, so I went through the same channels, connected with one of the PTs, applied, and ultimately got the job.

Question 2 — What was my first opportunity in a non-clinical role?

In June of 2020 I got the PT consultant role where I was the 280th employee at the company, so it was relatively small. The role was a mix of calling members who were struggling in Hinge Health’s chronic pain program on the phone, manually reviewing applications for members who were trying to enroll in the program, and working on side projects.

After a few months the company made a major announcement, and I was being asked to hire more PTs, work with our product teams, onboard new hires, and keep up with the normal daily workload. While it was a lot at the time, that’s the start up mentality when your company is in hypergrowth.

You need to wear a lot of hats, but you’re also exposed to a lot of different roles and responsibilities at the same time.

Question 3 — What were the biggest challenges (and opportunities to grow) when I took that non-clinical role?

The biggest challenges were not knowing what I didn’t know. I didn’t have a huge understanding of what the product development process was, so I needed to learn fast.

Over my first year at Hinge Health I committed myself to learning as much as I could about the whole business. I learned about how our commercial B2B sales process worked, and what exactly was driving value for our customers, I learned about our product and some of the issues our members were having when using it (both clinical and non-clinical), and I learned about our B2B and B2C marketing approaches so I understood how we were positioning ourselves as a company. I read pretty consistently on topics about product management (Inspired), company growth (blitzscaling), and marketing (different) to keep me up to speed with where things were heading.

The commitment to learning multiple parts of the company helped considerably to ground me in how to think and prioritize different decisions, so I could give some of the opportunities I came across the right balance between the clinical needs of our members and the business focus of the company.

Question 4 — Looking back, how would I have approached that transition differently?

Speed and moving quickly can be huge advantages. Looking back, “how can I help you move more quickly” wasn’t a question I often asked, but probably should have. Especially early on I didn’t ask how I could take things off others plates, and I should have, even when it wasn’t my job.

In a startup there is a world of opportunity to “learn by doing” vs. asking someone else to take on something you don’t know a lot about.

Question 5- What are some resources I’ve found that have helped me along my journey beyond the clinic?

Understand where your skill sets fit into a company. I really love how Blitzscaling describes it. If you’re in a small start up, like a Series A or B company, you’re going to be asked to do a lot of things and often it will feel like you hair’s on fire. In more established companies you’re going to be asked to specialize and hone in on a smaller piece of the puzzle. I, personally, like being at a smaller company because often you get pulled into things that seem unrelated simply because there’s no one else to do the job, and that’s where you learn a ton about different areas of the business.

Here are some resources I follow:

• Want to know more about product management than you’d care to learn? Chat with https://www.lennybot.com/
• Marty Cagan — Inspired
• Blitzscaling

So — that job you could love is the culmination of a journey, and the start of a new one. You got this.