Ciarán O'Connell

• Age: 43
• Location: Dublin 6, Rathmines
• Occupation: Product Manager
• Income: $45,000
• Education: Master's in Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin
• Company size: 7
• Years in role: 1.5

“I'd rather build something that ten people love than something a thousand people tolerate.”

Ciarán O'Connell is a Product Manager at Kompas Learning, a seven-person AI startup in Dublin building tools for secondary school teachers. A decade ago, he was a Senior PM at a major fintech, managing a team of four and earning three times what he does now. He had the corner office, the RSUs, the whole script. Then the divorce hit, the burnout set in, and he realized he was optimizing a system he didn't believe in. He took a year off to cycle the Atlantic coast and read a lot of Ivan Illich. When he came back, he wanted to build something that actually reduced friction for people who needed it, not just another conversion funnel. He took a 60% pay cut to join Kompas. The founder had a prototype and a mission, but no product discipline. Ciarán brought the process: the user research cadence, the prioritization frameworks, the brutal honesty about scope. His workflow is a mix of Linear, Figma, and a lot of Claude for drafting and analysis. He is a power user of AI, but deeply skeptical of AI replacing human judgment in product. He believes the machine can summarize, but it can't decide what's kind. Last quarter, he made the unpopular call to kill a flashy AI feature that was technically impressive but confusing teachers. The engineers were frustrated, but the NPS went up. He measures success in teacher retention and student outcomes, not vanity metrics. He is frugal with the company's runway because he feels the weight of every euro spent. He drives a second-hand bike, wears plain merino wool shirts, and doesn't care about fancy dinners or industry schmoozing. He values deep work and deep conversations. His relationship to time is anxious—he feels the nine-month runway like a countdown. His relationship to money is careful—he tracks every euro. His relationship to status is indifferent—he measures himself by the respect of his peers and the impact of his product. He is cautiously optimistic that Kompas will make it, but he is already planning what he will do if it doesn't. He is not going back to fintech.

Background & daily life

A day in their life

6:30 AM: Wake up, black coffee, check Hacker News and Product Hunt while stretching. 7:30 AM: Cycle to a coffee shop in town. Review the day's priorities on a notecard. 9:00 AM: Stand-up with the team on Google Meet. Ciarán shares the raw user feedback from yesterday's interviews. 10:00 AM: Deep work block. Writing a spec for the new grading assistant feature. 12:00 PM: User interview with a history teacher in Kildare (remote). 1:00 PM: Leftover curry at his desk while triaging the bug board. 2:30 PM: Meeting with the CEO to discuss the pricing page redesign. 4:00 PM: Walk around the block to clear his head. 5:00 PM: Reviewing the engineer's pull request for the dashboard. 6:30 PM: Cycle home. 7:30 PM: Run along the canal. 8:30 PM: Dinner (pasta/eggs on toast). Reads a chapter of a book on platform strategy. 10:00 PM: Reads a few Substack posts, then a novel to wind down. Asleep by 11.

Lifestyle

Ciarán lives in a cramped one-bedroom flat in Rathmines with no dishwasher or dryer. He cycles everywhere on a battered Dublin Bikes subscription. He batch-cooks lentils and stews on Sunday to save money and time. He runs three times a week along the Grand Canal, training for a half-marathon. He doesn't drink much—maybe a single pint of stout with a friend at a quiet local pub. His social life is small but deep: a few close friends from college and his fintech days. He tracks every euro in a spreadsheet and has a strict no-eating-out rule on weekdays. He reads non-fiction before bed and listens to tech analysis podcasts on his cycle commute.

Work life

He is the sole Product Manager at Kompas Learning, a 7-person AI startup building workflow tools for secondary school teachers. He reports directly to the founder, a former history teacher. His days are a chaotic mix of user interviews with exhausted teachers (often after school hours), writing specs in a messy Google Doc, triaging bugs with the three engineers, and gently pushing back on the designer's scope creep. The pressure is existential—runway is roughly nine months. He uses Linear for tickets, Figma for mockups, and Claude/ChatGPT heavily for drafting user stories and synthesizing research. He loves the mission but misses the resources of big tech. He feels the weight of every decision acutely.

Relationships

His ex-wife Aoife lives in Galway; they are amicable but distant, texting mostly about shared finances. His mother lives in Cork; he calls her every Sunday without fail. His closest friend is Dara, a teacher in a DEIS school in Dublin, who gives him brutally honest, unfiltered feedback on the product. He has a weekly coffee with an old mentor from his fintech days, a seasoned PM who keeps him sane and reminds him that startups are marathons, not sprints.

How they decide

Research-heavy but decisive. He gathers data from user interviews, product analytics, and competitive analysis, but he hates analysis paralysis. He makes a call, communicates it clearly in writing, and moves on. He is deeply influenced by a small trusted circle—his mentor and his teacher friend Dara—but is highly skeptical of general consensus, hype cycles, and decisions made on authority rather than evidence. He is cautious with scope and budget, but willing to make bold product bets if the data is clear.

How they sound

Speaks plainly and directly. Avoids buzzwords unless they are surgically precise. Uses phrases like 'Let's cut the fluff', 'What's the job to be done here?', 'I'm skeptical, but show me the data.' He has a soft Dublin accent that comes out more when he's tired or with close friends. He is formal and structured in writing, but casual and dry in speech. He actively avoids talking about his salary or complaining about money. He swears rarely but effectively.