Vasanth Arunachalam

AMA: Meta Director, Technical Program Management, Vasanth Arunachalam on Building a Technical Product Management Team

May 4 @ 10:00AM PST
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Meta Director, Technical Program Management, Vasanth Arunachalam on Building a Technical Product Management Team
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Vasanth Arunachalam
Vasanth Arunachalam
Meta Director, Technical Program ManagementMay 5
Building with intent is key. As a first PM or TPM, you are often running a one-person show. You wear multiple hats and you tend to be scrappy, flexing to what the business needs you to do. That approach works wonders up to a certain scale but soon exposes its flaws. When you think about scaling o......Read More
517 Views
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Vasanth Arunachalam
Vasanth Arunachalam
Meta Director, Technical Program ManagementMay 5
Expanding the team from 1 to multiple people comes with a set of pitfalls that I’ve learned the hard way. And many other factors such as Org culture, line of business, product lifecycle etc, have a telling effect on the type of pitfalls you’ll encounter, so take this with a grain of salt. Here ar......Read More
1176 Views
3 requests
Vasanth Arunachalam
Vasanth Arunachalam
Meta Director, Technical Program ManagementMay 5
Prioritization is key. I don’t believe in dividing ‘all’ available work across my team. I believe in ensuring my team focuses on the top business priorities and are having the most impact. I typically encourage my team to do a few things but do those really well and not ‘peanut butter’ themselves......Read More
530 Views
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Vasanth Arunachalam
Vasanth Arunachalam
Meta Director, Technical Program ManagementMay 5
For the first part of the question - * I stared my career as an Individual contributor IC) and as you know that is all about specific product/platform strategy and top notch execution. I talked about the day to day of an IC in my previous AMA. * When I transitioned to a manager role with......Read More
698 Views
7 requests
Vasanth Arunachalam
Vasanth Arunachalam
Meta Director, Technical Program ManagementMay 5
I’ll try to answer this question to the best extent possible because I havent worked at a company that had formal SCRUM master roles. My understanding is that the SCRUM master focuses on ensuring the team and the individual team members are set up for success (via daily stand ups, educating on be......Read More
733 Views
6 requests
Vasanth Arunachalam
Vasanth Arunachalam
Meta Director, Technical Program ManagementMay 5
“Change is the only constant” is a cliched phrase in the industry but the reality is not far off in many lines of businesses. At Meta we often get to work with the best available information in hand and not afraid of pivoting when that information changes. That comes with a degree of ambiguity, c......Read More
747 Views
6 requests
Vasanth Arunachalam
Vasanth Arunachalam
Meta Director, Technical Program ManagementMay 5
I talked a lot about evaluating the success of a program, measuring the success of a Technical PM etc in my last AMA on the topic of "Technical Product Management".  https://sharebird.com/h/product-management/ama/meta-head-of-technical-program-management-vasanth-arunachalam-on-technical-produc......Read More
1165 Views
3 requests
Vasanth Arunachalam
Vasanth Arunachalam
Meta Director, Technical Program ManagementMay 5
I love this question. Typically one does not boot strap their career as a Technical PM, at least not until recently (Some companies including Meta are hiring Technical PM interns now who start their career as a TPMs which is great). So the most common TPM career progression stems from Engineering......Read More
1331 Views
3 requests