Get answers from product management leaders
Mckenzie Lock
Netflix Director of Product • August 4
The candidate must “spike” (“8/10” or higher) in all of these areas, in order of importance: 1. Critical Thinking Given how many decisions and complex problems are thrown at PMs, this the #1 most important attribute I screen for. They don’t need to be a rocket scientist (top 0.5% of population) but they should be exceptional at this (top 5%). Good looks like: * Take large ambiguous problems and break them down into smaller pieces * Uses logic to convince others * Gets to the root of the issue: Think about things from multiple angles but then focuses on what matters (this is key and hard to find). The more senior a candidate the more critical thinking/problem solving looks like: starting the why and bigger picture, being principles-based, helping others to structure their thinking (good frameworks, simplifies and structures conversations etc.). I usually test for this both in the initial phone screen and through a product thinking interviews (case questions, panels) 2. Drive PMs have a lot of responsibility, get very little direction, and get too much credit and blame, so they need to a) self start and b) be motivated to keep trying even when faced with obstacles. Good looks like: * Ownership over outcomes vs. just doing the activities? A former manager of mine once called this “an insatiable desire to ship” * Self starter - Can we throw them at a problem and trust them to figure it out without hand holding? * Vigilance - do they generally think ahead to the outcome they are trying to achieve? Do they proactively address what may get in the way? This is very hard to screen for in an interview but you can get signals from behavioral questions, their questions to you, and follow ups. 3. Bridge Building There are two parts of bridge building 1. EQ - not easily coachable 2. Communication - this includes both written and verbal communication skills and both the quality and frequency of comms. Verbal and written comms are usually coachable. It’s ok if someone isn't a perfect communicator because people improve on this over time. But it’s not ok if they don’t have sufficient EQ. Good looks like: * Self aware - seeks to know (and improve on) their own strengths and weaknesses, self reflects without defensiveness * Situationally aware - skillfully navigates people situations and figures out how to influence others towards an outcome * Concise and clear answers that are easy to follow, verbally and written. I usually test for written and verbal comms in the panel exercise and interview questions. I test for self awareness and situational awareness in behavioral interviews.
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Kie Watanabe
HubSpot Group Product Manager • October 13
This is a two-part question. Let me first articulate how I like coming up with ideas for new opportunities, followed by how I like to make decisions about what to build. Hopefully, you don’t mind that I’m thinking about “opportunities” because it might not always be a feature that’s the right solution. I should start by saying that there isn’t one right approach to coming up with ideas. In my experience, I’ve had success ensuring that there are: 1. Insights from the four lenses: Customer, Business, Market, Technology 2. Effective methods to facilitate ideation At the core, you have to have a deep understanding of the underlying user pain point you’re trying to solve through a thorough investigation of the Customer by talking to customers and product usage. You might actually learn very quickly that the user problem is around discoverability or activation, not necessarily a feature gap. Ideally, the customer impact is so deep that it translates effectively into Business impact. The Market context is critical to help understand how your user will experience the product within the broader competitive landscape and the direction an industry is headed. Finally, the Technology lens offers insight into what capabilities could be used as part of a solution. Preferably, these four lenses come together through cross-functional ideation that has the right participants (e.g. PM, UX, Eng, and even folks go-to-market teams). In a hybrid world where we’re working across time zones, I’ve enjoyed having the opportunity to ideate together synchronously and asynchronously. In terms of decision-making, the ideation process should lend itself to initial layers of prioritization. I won’t go into prioritization frameworks here, but there are many out there. They do tend to distill back to impact and effort and sequencing. At HubSpot, depending on the type of decision we are trying to make, we may use a “driver, approver, contributor, informed” DACI model used by other companies we admire like Atlassian.
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Tamar Hadar
The Knot Worldwide Senior Director of Product | Formerly Trello (Atlassian) • February 2
As a first PM, you will need to be very judicious with how you allocate your time and resources. In fact, I think that’s true for larger companies as well. There are always going to be more ideas than resources available. As a product manager, you are responsible for translating the company’s vision into a roadmap so your first priority should be internalizing the company’s goals. Is it to drive sign-ups? Increase retention? Increase MRR? Or something else altogether? Narrowing in on that top goal helps to weed out work that may be less relevant. Once you’ve identified the top goal (there may be more than one), filter out any initiatives that do not map to this goal. The exceptions being pressing engineering initiatives (i.e. a platform upgrade, reducing technical debt etc.) or time-sensitive projects. Hopefully, you’ve been able to narrow down your list through this process of elimination. This is where a prioritization framework will come in handy. My go-to is the impact/effort matrix. It is very similar to ICE and RICE but simpler and more visual. For each initiative, assign an estimated impact to a measurable goal and a level of effort. Make sure to collaborate with your engineering and design counterparts when evaluating each initiative. This will reduce the chance of your own bias getting in the way and lead to better prioritization. For those initiatives left on the cutting room floor, think of a way you could still make some progress—is there an MVP you could run to learn something while the teams are working on the selected initiatives? There might be a low-cost way to validate assumptions via user research or data deep dive so that by the time you go through this exercise again, you are able to make a more informed decision.
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Ravneet Uberoi
Uber B2B Products | Formerly Matterport, Box, McKinsey • August 31
Before investing in engineering resources you want to build conviction around the following: 1. Is there a market need? Are you fulfilling a true gap in the market? 2. Do you have a differentiated vision to deliver on this need? 3. Is there willingness to pay? 4. Does the business model make sense such that you see a path to ROI for the business? 5. Is there a clear route to market (you know how to sell / acquire customers)? 6. Does your business have (or plan to have) the capabilities to deliver on this product (ex operational, technical or other expertise) such that it is strategic to expand in this direction? Overall you want to be able to articulate what the investment unlocks for the company and how.
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Reality these days is that we mostly work in remote settings, and even when we do go to the office, some people will be dialing in. As a result, I believe 80% of the strategies have to do with focusing on the fact that we are all people, 20% are tactics and adjustments for remote settings. General alignment strategies: * Build trust ahead of time. This is fundamental and driving collaboration without it is hard * Focus on common goals. There’s typically a higher goal that teams can easily align on (e.g. Revenue, Engagement, Better experience), and the differences show up as you start double clicking into the “how”. Starting the discussion with a longer term view can also help in skipping tactical disagreements and alignments * Frame, rather than take a position. With common goals in mind, center the discussion on what the characteristics of a good solution are, rather than starting with comparing options. This helps setting a more objective ground before jumping into the solutions * Call out your biases (easier to do when you have trust). In an environment where there is trust, I expect my teams to be able to call out other considerations that may cause them to pull in a certain direction, those can be different stakeholders that push in other directions, past experience and others. Some of those reasons may be valid, some may not be valid. Calling them out can help the entire team work through them. A few remote specific tactics: * Set the right structure, if possible. This includes minimizing the number of time zones each team has to work across (In my organization we are trying to limit ourselves to 2 time zones per team, when possible). If you can, hire senior enough people in the right locations to be able to run autonomously. * Invest in getting to a clear strategic direction. Having an upfront debate on the direction is time consuming, but can then help in setting the guardrails for autonomous decisions that can happen within the teams, locally. * If you do have the opportunity to meet in person, do so. Especially when working across time zones with little overlap, a good relationship would allow you to accomplish more offline, and can dedicate the overlapping time for working more effectively through the tougher topics. While I still mostly work from home I prioritize going to the office when team members from other offices are coming to town (and I am writing this note from the airport, while waiting for a flight - going to visit my team in Austin!)
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Katherine Man
HubSpot Group Product Manager, CRM Platform • May 3
I’ve held roles as both platform and non-platform product managers and I’d say being a platform product manager is definitely the most challenging but rewarding. The most challenging part is your solutions are more abstract and less obvious. Instead of building solutions directly for customers, you’re buildings tools for customers to build the solutions themselves. Does your head hurt yet? Let me give an example. Let’s say you’re trying to let customers customize the way their HubSpot UI looks. While you could try to build all the customization requests you get, no two customers want the same thing and it’d be impossible for our product teams to keep up with that demand. Instead, you build tools for external developers and admin users to configure the UI in the way they need. But how do you figure out which tools? Here is the usual process for regular product management: 1. Collect customer use cases 2. Identify a pattern 3. Build a solution that solves for the majority of use cases. Here is the process for platform product management with an extra step: 1. Collect customer use cases 2. Identify a pattern 3. Identify a pattern across solutions 4. Build a solution that solves for the majority of use cases. Still confused? Let me make the customization example even more specific. Let’s say you notice that a lot of customers want to display their HubSpot data in a table format on the CRM record page. Taking a non-platform approach, you’d build out every single table request that customers make. But this isn’t scalable. Instead, you build a configurable table component that customers can populate with their own data and then display. Believe me, I struggled for a long time with this adjustment in thinking but I promise if you choose to pursue it, you’ll love the wider impact that you’re able to have on customers!
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Vasanth Arunachalam
Meta Director, Technical Program Management | Formerly Microsoft • February 3
I love this question because it flips one of the previous questions to focus more on the individual. IMO the success of a Technical Product/Program Manager largely lies in the ‘What’ and the ‘How’. What impact did they have? This individual measure of success should be tied to the business (product or platform) goals. The TPM should directly be held accountable for delivering on those goals. This is also the (relatively) easy part to measure (Eg: How many new users signed up for the app?, How much incremental revenue did the feature bring?, Did the platform ship on time?“ How did they land that impact? This is the ‘hard to measure’ part. For a TPM it is equally important to demonstrate leadership qualities such as - high EQ, deep Empathy, Conflict resolution, crisp communication, ability to influence without authority etc and overall be a kind and respectful individual. Often peer feedback has proven to be an effective means to gather these signals.
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Marion Nammack
Braze Director of Product Management • February 8
Let’s say that a product team and an executive team are aligned on the goal of improving customer satisfaction with the product (measured by a CSAT survey). The product team will then do research and perform experiments to validate the best way to impact customer satisfaction. Including executives in the research process via stakeholder interviews is a great way to get input early - executives are viewing things from a much different perspective than team ICs and often have great ideas. When the team prioritizes opportunities to pursue, the framework they use for prioritization can also be used to convey their point of view on the best way to impact customer satisfaction. If an exec suggests making an adjustment to the roadmap during the team’s roadmap review, seek to understand why and dig into their thought process. Then, seek the truth. Is there a quick way to validate or invalidate the feedback? What does the objective evidence point towards as the best opportunity to impact the goals? For more on this topic, I recommend “Cracking the PM Career” by Jackie Bavaro which has a chapter on working with executives.
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Avantika Gomes
Figma Group Product Manager, Production Experience • December 21
There are a few that I consider important to set up (and refine) as you grow your team: 1. Processes for top-down sharing: As your team grows, knowledge sharing becomes harder but also more critical. PMs can only do their best work when they have context about conversations and updates from across the organization. For instance, "context" could include new product updates, changes in company strategy, takeaways from executive conversations and board meetings. I'd explore ways that you can provide this context either synchronously (e.g., through a team meeting) and/or asynchronously (e.g., through a "here's what's top-of-mind" slack message or email 2. Processes for upwards sharing: It's important to also think through the best ways for your team to share what they're working on (product updates), but also for them to share feedback on how the team is operating (upwards feedback). This is necessary with a smaller team too, but in larger teams becomes more challenging to do this ad-hoc and 1:1 - additional processes like a recurring survey or a shared product launch calendar. Keep in mind that this is not just important for you, but for the entire PM team and XFN partners too, so be sure to do this in a transparent way. 3. Team-building processes: Often overlooked, these are important to increase the cohesion and connection that your PM team feels. I like to use a weekly meeting or a private slack channel to share wins, talk about product news, share personal updates. It should feel like a trusted space for your team to share their thoughts and get to know each other more personally. Also, in today's remote climate where team members can often feel more disconnected, you might want to think through team rituals (e.g., beginning of every meeting with a win, learn and a "smile" - something that made you smile in your personal life) and in-person bonding (e.g., as a team, we meet in person once a quarter). A helpful tip - carve aside 30 mins each quarter to also do some "housekeeping" of your team processes. Audit what's working and what's not, which meetings are useful vs. not, what are themes from your team surveys. Iterate on your team processes just like you'd iterate on a product!
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Ajay Waghray
Udemy Director of Product Management, Consumer Marketplace • August 25
I think the best way to break into the industry as a PM is to get after building tech products yourself. Personally, I left a well-paying job in the energy sector to work on a start-up with no reliable paycheck. Thinking back on that experience, it was crazy beneficial to learn how to work with designers & engineers to build a great product or feature. The act of building a product or feature is the best teacher. I’m not advocating that you should quit your job and not get paid to build stuff like I did! There was a lot that wasn’t so awesome about that. 😅 But I definitely WOULD encourage everyone here to think about how you could do that in your spare time. What problems are you passionate about solving? What kind of product or feature could help you solve that problem? How could you bring that solution to life? How can you talk to prospective customers about it? Even PM candidates that make wireframes or prototypes to show a product that solves a real problem have a leg up over most of the other candidates. I’ll take someone with drive, initiative and passion for the work 10 times out of 10.
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