5 Questions with Nancy Wang, Lead PM @ Rubrik
This interview is part of AWIP’s “5 Questions With…” Series, where we ask Product Managers to reflect on their careers thus far. If there’s someone you’d like to see on this series, please shoot a note to annie@advancingwomeninproduct.org. Thanks for reading!
How did you break into Product Management? While I officially became a Product Manager at Google, I had been performing in the product manager capacity before I joined Google while a management consultant at Deloitte. There, I helped clients create product roadmaps, gather technical requirements, and put together Product Requirements Documents (or PRDs). That experience combined with my engineering undergrad made the transition into software product management fairly seamless for me.
What helps you deliver successful releases? One of my favorite things to do as a PM is to advocate for my product. I’ll give a recent example: at my current company, I’m leading product efforts to build our first SaaS product. It’s a well-orchestrated effort across several engineering teams to ensure that the backend and frontend of this complex Product will get delivered successfully. I put together a detailed proposal for our MVP, listed out all the pros and cons and ultimately achieved a leadership commitment (from our co-founders) to both accelerate the timeline and grow the size of the team.
What helps PMs rise to leadership positions? If I had to say one thing, it would be empathy. I believe this trait not only applies to product managers, but any leader in general. A great PM (and one that will rise to leadership roles) is one that is empathetic to users, to engineers, and to business stakeholders. Empathy helps you understand why certain decisions are made the way they are. For example, empathetic PMs will take the time to understand the trade-offs that will occur if they decide on different courses of action.
Do you have any favorite mistakes of yours that you reflect on often? What takeaways do you have from the experience? When I first started my product career, I was very scared to ask the tough questions, e.g., why would a release take so long? Is this absolutely necessary in the MVP? I think my hesitation stemmed from the fact that I wanted to be the “nice guy”. But as I learned from my product mentors, the way to be a good PM is to ask the tough questions on behalf on your customers. Every internal group will have its own agenda/objective, and it’s the PM’s job to drive decisions and get to the root cause of product issues.
What’s a commonly given piece of advice you strongly agree/disagree with? A lot of folks call the PM the “CEO of the product”. While I don’t disagree with that statement, I disagree with the common interpretation, which is that the buck stops with the PM. To the contrary, a product decision often requires the input of many different stakeholders, and most importantly, the customer — for whom the product is built. Therefore, I’m quick to caution when that statement is made. PMs are caretakers of the product, but we shouldn’t make unilateral calls about the product without ample buy-in and research.
