Director of Product at Glassdoor Talks: How to Transition to Product

Management

Tonight’s Speaker

Phillip Nelson● linkedin.com/in/jphillipnelson

● jpnelson.com

Technical PMPhillip Nelson

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Engineer to PM Journey

Technical

ProductRoles

WhatVs

HowExperienc

eSkills

About Me

Engineering Background

Product Background

Software Engineer

Founder

Product Leader

CS @ Cornell

Early stage venture-backed start-ups

Shoptap, Kite

Quixey, Glassdoor

Technology in a Product

Enabler

Unique

Constraints

Interface

Wouldn’t be able to ship without the tech.

Key Enabler

Tech is constraining product goals.

Constraints

Tech is uniquely developed or deployed.

Unique

Tech is required to use the product.

Interface

Tech start-up Restaurant

AI start-up’s model isn’t good enough.

Commerce company is developing custom web app.

AI start-up is creating new pipelines.

Off the shelf e-commercesoftware

API service Robot hamburger maker

Technical Products Require Expertise

Enabler

Unique

Constraints

Interface

Wouldn’t be able to ship without the tech.

Key Enabler

Tech is constraining product goals.

Constraints

Tech is uniquely developed or deployed.

Unique

Tech is required to use the product.

Interface

Deep understanding of key technologies to support the process of understanding customer problems.

Technical PM

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2

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Understanding of technical considerations to better define and communicate requirements.

Manage and support execution with development teams. Help to communicate progress, issues and problems with non-technical stakeholders.

A PM for a technical product who is a domain expert in relevant key technologies

A TPM is Primarily a PM

Product drives priority

Voice of the user

Unwavering focus on what, not

how

Owner of customer success

A PM is not an Engineer

What How

VS

Search ServiceA music search engine for mobile phone manufacturers

1. A mobile phone user looking for music to listen to can search by musician or album to find a song to play because users want to easily listen to music.

Customer Model

1. Tag musician and album entity types from user queries.

2. ….

Technical Architecture

Search coverage

1. Mobile phone manufacturer customer requires coverage of all songs on iTunes because they are contractually obliged..

2. End-users require coverage of all top songs on YouTube because that is where they listen to the most music.

1. Crawl XML feed A; merge with B; expire C from index.

2. ...

Acquisition

What How

Search ServiceA music search engine for mobile phone manufacturers

? Customer B requires a RESTful HTTP interface with JSON responses structured as follows.

Customer Interface

Fuzzy

Technical PM Interview

Product design

User Focus

Build and ship

Execution

Understand key technologies

Expertise

Translate complex subjects

Communication

Culture and team fit

Personality

Technical PM Interview

Product design

User Focus

“You’ve been tasked to build a drone for Snapchat. How would you design it?”

Do you think user first?

Technical PM Interview

Product intuition

User Focus “How do you prioritize new features?”

How do you get stuff done?

Build and ship

Execution

Product intuition

User Focus

“What are all of the steps that occur between a URL entered into a browser and the web page rendered to the user?”

Are you a domain expert?

Build and ship

Execution

Understand key technologies

Expertise

Technical PM Interview

Product intuition

User Focus “Explain how the web works to a 10 year old.”

Can you communicate to all stakeholders? To any audience?

Build and ship

Execution

Understand key technologies

Expertise

Translate complex subjects

Communication

Technical PM Interview

Product intuition

User Focus “What is your proudest personal achievement in the

last year?”

Team Fit

Build and ship

Execution

Understand key technologies

Expertise

Translate complex subjects

Communication

Culture and team fit

Personality

Technical PM Interview

Technical PMs are often engineers - we can prototype!

Experience: Build something!

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List out customers and their problems. Brainstorm and evaluate solutions. Think user first! Technology last!

Ship the side project and learn from at least several customers. What did you learn?

A PM is running a small start-up inside of a larger company.

Engineer to PM Journey

Technical

ProductRoles

WhatVs

HowExperienc

eSkills

Questions?

Contact Information -

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jphillipnelson/

Q&A

What does a PO do?

- Product Owner breaks down technical requirements with Eng team

- TPM works with customer to ensure customer success

- Product Manager is Product Owner in most companies

R+D team creates product with traction, where do they go from here? How to build a product from that?

- What makes this product viable suddenly? - Introduce product development process, asking

“Who are the people using my product?’- Starting process as early as possible, finding

product-specific technical owner to see if insights from these learnings would impact future product development

- Building a roadmap from new discoveries that is user-centric

If you were hired by CEO of Garmin, what would you do?

- Strategy interview questions- Understanding of business marketplace- Market Opportunities- Strengths and Weaknesses- Competitive Analysis- Business modeling

- Frameworks: 5 forces- Model for assessing corporate strategy- Case In Point (book)

How would you say ‘No’ to other business units?

- Complex organizational stuff- Prioritization exercise- Selling ROI or Strategic aspects of argument

From engineer to entrepreneur, how much does technical and product background balance out?

- First startup: raised seed funding, Head of Product able to hire engineers- Customers of Pivotal Labs- Learning how to initiate projects

- Breaking down stories into tasks- Becoming a founder put pressure on Phillip to

focus on user and customer

Are there minimum requirements for PM role? Specific items on a resume Phillip is looking for?

- Not a big resume person- Big fan of referrals, networking- Academic backgrounds - Google, FB, LinkedIn- Credentials pretty low - schools, companies- Extra points for Product School ;) - Side projects are really good

- Getting noticed on HackerNews, GitHub, etc- Turns into introductions

You’re technical enough to know your engineering team isn’t doing a great job, what do you do?

- Respect the role- ‘Are there other managers or leaders in the

company I can explain this to, and can help me effectively turn it around?’

- E.g. Phillip meeting with VP, Product and Engineering Manager to resolve conflict

- If you’re in a company where the truth doesn’t prevail, then that’s wrong

Interview question: “Solve design question using Circles Method”“If you were to design a drone for Snapchat, how would you do it?”

Phillip’s answer- Context: Snap overview & bus model -

- Goal: continue to get great content, so users continue to engage with platform

- Design team is phenomenal - high standards- Identify Personas - who will use the drone?

- User 1: 20-something guy from Santa Monica who surfs*- User 2: Manhattanite 20-something women who goes out to the bars- User 3: 18-year old woman who uses Snap with her friends

- Focus on User 1- Prioritizing problems

- Which problem has most value? - Camera not getting wet- Hands free- High quality videos/photos- Best 15 sec videos while I’m surfing

- Population of surfers in US: 6 million

Phillip’s answer- Focus on User 1

- Prioritizing problems- Content is vertically aligned - how to get users to product

content/use all devices with drone?

Solution: Snap Drone can automatically take video of me while broadcasting to my friends live.

...But why not introduce Snapchat to other drone manufacturers? - Works specifically on their platform, control vertical alignment and integration of

devices and content- Probably won’t want 3rd party drones to create content on their platform based on

company mission and vision

Interview question: “Solve design question using Circles Method”“If you were to design a drone for Snapchat, how would you do it?”