Julian Dunn

AMA: GitHub Senior Director of Product Management, Julian Dunn on Developing Your Product Management Career

December 1 @ 10:00AM PT
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Julian Dunn
Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management3y
There are a couple of factors to consider here: Are you learning anything new in your current role? If not, would staying with the company, even if it is in a different ...
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How do you manage the 1000 questions and tasks that are shot at you when you are a PM in an early stage startup?
I'm the first PM in a startup that used to be sales led. I'm trying to set up the proper discovery processes, prioritization tactics and strategy, but I find that extremely hard to do as I'm getting carried away in the day-to-day tasks around requests, issues reported and project management.
Julian Dunn
Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management3y
I've definitely been there! As you correctly intuit, your first order of business is to buy yourself some time to develop a strategic point of view and a roadmap that sup...
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461 Views
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What's something that you didn't know it took to become a Director back when you were a senior product manager?
Something that you didn't know you would need to do that you only realized later.
Julian Dunn
Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management3y
A few of things: Know what, when and how to delegate. Delegation has such a negative connotation in industry (being seen as letting garbage flow downhill) but I believe ...
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Julian Dunn
Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management3y
My answer to this depends a lot on whether the "director" title includes people management or not. Personally, I believe that it should, and that the IC (individual contr...
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463 Views
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Julian Dunn
Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management3y
It can definitely be a steep learning curve, because at Staff+ PM level you are expected to have strengths in one or more areas of product management that aren't often ex...
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479 Views
2 requests
Do you think it makes sense to grow PM competence within the organization or hire people from the broader market to succeed faster?
i.e. how much should we focus on and invest in the teammates who could switch/transfer in their roles vs pay for the new PMs coming from other organizations as new hires?
Julian Dunn
Chainguard Senior Director of Product Management3y
This is a tough question to answer because it is so situational. For example - I have seen organizations where PM is so immature that it is essentially a project manageme...
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