I was raised in a wildly financially unstable family. My parents were both self-employed and managed their own businesses and budgets entirely on their own. Especially during and after 2008, as my mom was an independent realtor, we didn’t always know when or if we’d have money in the bank again. My brother and I grew up in the age of re-used ziplock bags and fried bologna delicacies.
There seem to be two types of financial personalities that come out of poverty, especially crisis-driven poverty: big spenders and money hoarders.
Growing up in unstable financial situations can set people up…
What is a product manager, anyway?
The field of product management, in the grand scheme of things, is incredibly new. The first appearance of the “product manager” title came in 1931 from Proctor and Gamble and was just a way to justify hiring more people. Once the two original product managers found something to do, their position focused more on marketing and brand management than it did on what we define as PM today — that version of tech- and development-driven PM didn’t come around until closer to 2001 when the Agile Manifesto was written.
This newness makes it incredibly difficult to gauge success. What really…
About 1 in 4 adults have a diagnosable mental disorder or “neurodivergence.” While the exact definition of neurodivergence can vary depending on who you ask, generally, it can be defined as any variation from “normal” mental functioning. To some, it can represent those with sensory processing issues, like Autism and ADHD, to others, it encompasses all mental health diagnoses from Depression to Schizophrenia to BPD.
Diversity in hiring
Regardless of your exact definition of the word, one thing is indisputable: with up to 1 in 4 adults falling into the neurodivergent umbrella term, people who fall outside the social norm exist, and you’re…
Recently, one of the hottest buzzwords in product management is “empathy.” Everyone wants an empathetic product manager. It sounds great on the surface — who doesn’t want to work with an empathetic manager? When a product team sits down to work on a product, though, empathy can take many forms, some of which are often overlooked.
Empathy in Design
As I undergo a career search as a product manager, I’ve been asked by multiple teams — “as a product manager, what’s your superpower?” This question can come in all shapes and sizes. “As a PM, what makes you unique?” “What makes you successful?” “Why should we hire you?”
This isn’t an easy question to answer. Rather, this shouldn’t be an easy question to answer. There’s nothing wrong with a common answer like having attention to detail, or knowing how to use Jira, or having excellent written communication skills. …
And it’s not just the designer’s fault.
Thinking that the content doesn’t matter if the design is good, or vise versa.
Alright designers. You’re just as guilty here as your boss and project managers. Designers, we love to pour our heart and soul into our work, to design the most beautiful thing possible, then throw it at the content team (or even worse, be the ones ourselves to add content) and forget about it. I hate to tell you this, but the second somebody puts bad content onto a great design, it’s no longer a great design. The content matters just as much as the design. And management — listen to me here. Please…
