Vasudha Mithal

My top-3 favorites purely from a product perspective: * Google Photos, for very delightful and practical uses of AI * Huckleberry, for attempting to solve the problems of new parents in a tech-first way * Tesla, for the beautiful combo of hardware and software to create an overall rich user experience (not factoring in leadership, political, health, or climate impact)

A few things: * A very deep understanding of the problems they are looking to solve. This gets reflected in how they speak about past experiences (why did you choose to work on a specific problem, what exactly was the need?) as well as any case study (are they asking intelligent questions to understand the need). * User-first approach: While solving the problem they identified, are they putting the user at the forefront? Are they clear about who the users are for the problem? * Clear communication * For more experienced positions and specific for B2B products, are they mature to understand roll-out considerations for a large group of stakeholders? What are the people and processes needed to make a roll-out successful?

No matter how many parents I saw before at work, I was nowhere close to realizing the true joys and challenges of working parents. A few things: * As you are solving world problems and developing your team at work, you are also growing and nurturing the leaders of tomorrow at home. I now think of my long-term contributions to society vs. a narrow focus entirely hinged around work. * Time is a privilege - I've learned more ruthless prioritization and now focus on how to maximize my impact. * Develop more empathy not just for parents or caretakers, but for everyone else. I probably have no idea about the challenges they are going through and will not really know them no matter how many happy hours, lunches, virtual water cooler chats, or informal 1:1s I go to.

For very role-specific hiring: "Knowing about the role, how does your experience and skillset fit the needs?" The best answer: * Reflects the candidate really understands our company, has done research to know what might be top of mind and has taken the time with the recruiter to clarify the role, paid attention to what I explain about the role. * Communicate clearly about their skills and have an elevator pitch for past experiences to create a cohesive story. * Reflects a true passion for joining the team. Do you already see yourself in this role? For general PM hiring: Some mix of: "What is a problem you deeply care about, why do you think it is interesting/important? How will you go about solving it?" It allows me to press on whatever skillset I am looking for. I can't give a specific best response but I look for strategic thinking in articulating a problem (vs. talking about a UX/UI pain-point), metrics-driven thinking, and end-to-end thinking in the solution (discovery, implementation, roll-out, all GTM considerations).

It is important to understand the product culture of a company. PM work is very often confused with project management (as you are experiencing). Your manager is the biggest lever in this scenario - define your goals clearly with your manager (typically companies follow an OKR based process for this). Goals should be business objectives and then actual tasks to accomplish the goals should be defined by you vs. someone assigning tasks to you. There will always be some part of project management in our roles (particularly if your company doesn't have a function for that). It is OK to have a few templates/processes for project management - like what do you use for managing timelines, getting and providing progress updates - but try to make this a 'self-service' process. For e.g. give your team the templates and define the process at the start of a project for everyone to enter their updates by xx every week and then you just share those widely. This is a good level of project management to do but your main focus should be centered around accomplishing your business goals / problem solving. I'd be surprised if you are able to accomplish the business goals via just project management tasks.

Generally, a good way to transition is when you change one dimension at a time. So, either change your company, role or industry. Trying to move across several things is hard (not impossible). In that context, the best shot is at trying for a product role within your existing company. Build relationships, try to stick around product work (e.g. exploratory analysis to help product teams prioritize, understand usage, measure impact, etc.), and ask mentors to let you drive some work (usually, there is SO MUCH work everywhere that people are happy to get support! There are Data related product roles too (e.g. building data platforms). Skills that are transferable from a variety of different roles include prioritization, analytics, strategic work (i.e. starting with an ambiguous problem, defining a plan to solve it and executing along with timeline management), business acumen (understanding how revenue streams flow, how to think about your buyer, market opportunities), communication, project management.

This varies so much from company to company but my general lens while moving from PM to SPM: * SPMs have had at least one meaningful product launch in their career. * SPMs are able to cut across product lines, reach out to multiple PMs to identify dependencies, get buy-ins, and manage timelines for complex launches that touch various parts of a product ecosystem (vs. focusing on one siloed area). * SPMs establish a relationship with various stakeholders (including non-R&D folks). * SPMs can outline a broader business strategy and define a long-term vision for their areas (vs. PMs focus more on execution or on what's next in the near term). It is hard for me to define the stages of different SPM levels. Generally speaking, you can either start going deep into one specific product area (to get set up for an IC/Principle PM path) or continue working across various PMs to solve problems (to get set up for a manager/GPM path). In my opinion, as closely as companies can tie this to impact and the craft of execution, the more objective this becomes for promotions.

Innovation is best achieved by diversity of ideas. Diversity can be achieved by many ways - one of which is including views from multiple industries and domains. While hiring for a generalist role, it is important to leverage interview questions that are going after the skill vs. domain knowledge - I try to use questions that are not from my current industry. There are always a few specialist roles that require a deep understanding of the domain - but we're clear on those job requirements from the beginning vs. inviting generalists applications.

* Understand how commercial teams are setup, how products are priced, what's a typical sales cycle and even more top of the funnel - how is marketing run, target customers and the value props. * Build a basic empathy for a B2B buyers journey - which platforms are potential buyers already on, what influences purchase decisions, what are the funding sources and budget constraints. * Expand your product sense to be product+service sense. What are the workflows your are enabling or making more efficient? What's the product behind those workflows, who are the people interacting with the product to enable a service? * Research metrics that can be specific for the company - product/user/business growth, engagement, retention, efficiency. This ecosystem could be very unique depending on the sector you are targeting. * If you haven't had the exposure to work on API requirements - build a basic know-how of how to think about API layers, end-points, partner services and integrations. Specific to a sector, partner integrations can be critical for a product's success.

The most important thing to prioritizing a product roadmap is to deeply understand your company's strategy. How does your leadership think about 1) Goals for the year (revenue, profitability, user retention/satisfaction, ...) and 2) Balancing goals that might contradict each other (revenue growth that might reduce profitability)? You can ask your manager, read up any material that talks about strategy and join all-hands or other forums to bring such questions to the table. Another important element is to understand what are the key metrics that are being used to define each goal and use those extensively in your prioritization. Once you understand the strategy, you can reframe any of the known frameworks to make it work for your team. To manage top management expectations, first ensure that you are proactively setting up some expectations. Share learnings as you gather stakeholder inputs for reviewing pain-points, be open to the unknowns, do roadshows or email share-outs of the roadmap and establish communication pathways (e.g. a bi-weekly newsletter) to share progress. Most gaps arise when either expectation is not aligned upfront or updates (e.g.a shift in priorities) are shared too late which surprises stakeholders.