I am not a Product Manager…but I talk to them. Episode 4: Emilio Sixto (Wallapop)
Passionate Product Manager with +7 years experience focused on eCommerce and B2C products. Building digital products since 2011 with the same level of experience in both big corporations and startups. Master in Agile Methodologies I enjoy getting to know how things work under the hood. At the moment working along the Transactional team at Wallapop.
1) If you were a product, what product would you be? Why?
As a good millennial I’d certainly be a digital product, possibly an App.
2) In your own words, what is a Product Owner? And a Product Manager? Which one do you prefer to define your job?
A PM is a role that is capable of setting a path forward working with many colleagues and stakeholders and is able to transform difficult problems into simple solutions. You need to be clear-headed and be comfortable making decisions on how to achieve results by doing as few as possible.
3) Why do companies need Product Managers?
Regardless of the difficulty of the role and the soft skills it requires that not everyone has I think a PM role is a great idea to make sure you are doing the right thing at the right time and for Managers to delegate on someone they consider has good judgement.
4) What is the difference between a good Product Manager and a bad Product Manager?
For me the PM that is able to articulate a strategy that gets the buy-in from everyone and from himself is a good PM. Confidence in communication is key, you need to be able to answer and defend your strategy for the short and the long term in front of different types of roles from the tech team to stakeholders.
5) What do you enjoy the most as a Product Manager?
For me the best feeling is when we are able to see in the data that something works as we believed. I enjoy playing around with metrics and seeing the impact we generate on our customers and the business.
6) What is the worst part of being a Product Manager? What frustrates you?
Personally I’m a data oriented type of PM and I don’t enjoy when I know I’m generating an impact that for whatever reason I am not being able to measure. Intangible or difficult to measure impacts is something that frustrates me sometimes (mostly when I expect it to be big and positive :P)
7) If you could ask any question to any Product Manager on Earth, who would you choose and what would you ask him/her?
I’m a huge fan of Google Maps, for me it’s one of those magical products out there I have many questions about. If I had to ask something it’d be for them to make me a general onboarding as if I was new to their team (tricky way of asking many things in just one question/request :P)
Note: this post is the fourth of an ephemeral set of articles based on my conversations with eight Product Managers. I will publishing a new article in the next four days. You can read Episode 3 — interview with Candice Seenyen from Hubtype- through this link.