Career Growth

“I do think there's real value in being able to do product in a bunch of different contexts. You're just so much better at pattern recognition, learning how to solve a diversity of problems, learning to work through things.”

“When I think about folks who are looking to get into product management, I think there's really two paths. One is more formal in nature. There are associate product manager programs out there at many scaled companies. I think you can actually find APM programs even at smaller, earlier stage companies than big tech.”

“To have the highest trajectory and what certainly was a tailwind for my career was you guys have to lean into those founder skills. Things like being a great storyteller, how to get the most out of people around you, foster creative and motivated teams and know how to make really, really hard high conviction decisions that actually can't be solved.”

“One piece of advice I give everybody is don't stop being a hands-on technical until you feel like it's in your bones. You feel like you've got mastery that you could... if you know a second language fluently or if you played an instrument really, really seriously for a long time, you'll be familiar with the—I haven't done that in a long time, but if I was to pick it up, it would be rusty, but I would get there pretty quickly.”

“If you want to start managing groups of PMs, I as a chief product officer, I'm going to expect you to be able to write that strategy doc without me. That's the great filter. You'll get stuck at the senior PM level because you can't show that you can drive decision making on your own.”

“Finding people who are willing to invest in you is what really matters. When I interviewed with Fareed, I think I bombed it. I imagine there was something where the decision maker said, 'I think I can make something out of this.' Finding mentors is important, but finding sponsors and advocates is what really matters.”

“When it comes to career growth, it boils down to something really simple, which is know what you want out of your career, be clear and ask for it, and then make it easy for your boss or whoever can support or champion you to get you from here to there.”

“He made a year's worth of progress in two months because every time I sat down with him and told him, 'Okay, here's how you tell a story, here's how you think about a headline,' he recorded all of it, put it into a prompt, and he never made the same mistake twice.”