Journey to Product Management: Deepika Yerragunta, Senior PM @ Amazon Alexa
Deepika currently leads product management for the Amazon Alexa product. Previously, she was head of product management at Marketron and co-founder of a fashion startup, Hautely. She led product for Intel’s IoT and enterprise platforms for many years prior to that. As someone who is passionate about solving the diversity issue in tech, she is proud to have co-founded Advancing Women in Product. She has an MBA from the Wharton school, a Master’s degree in Computer Science from UC Davis and a Bachelors of Engineering in Computer Science from Osmania University.
You were an engineer at Intel when you first learned about Product Management (PM). How did that transition play out?
Once I knew I wanted to transition into PM, I set up meetings with product leaders across the company in order to learn more about what they looked for in PMs. They told me they were looking for great communicators who had product vision and could write requirements. I was also told that if I could demonstrate those skills in my previous experiences, there’s no reason why I couldn’t get a role as a product manager. It also definitely helped that I had a computer science background. So, I rewrote my resume to highlight those skills.
Intel had this great program where any employee could apply to cover a role of someone on sabbatical. I took advantage of this program and applied for a PM role for a product I had domain expertise in (security technologies), and focused on really killing it in the role. By the time my three months was up, the team made a permanent role for me, which I gratefully accepted.
You were able to transition internally into Product. How did you prepare yourself for that first PM role?
I had a lot of domain expertise in the field, and had always been that engineer who thought about product improvements. So, I’d already spent a lot of time thinking about how the product was being used, and had spent time with our users, which made writing requirements and prioritization of features easier for me. Some other things that were helpful was being detail-oriented, taking copious notes in meetings, and making sure to back up everything I said with data (this was really key). Every time I made an assertion, I was asked, “Where did this information come from?” And it wasn’t enough to just say, “Oh I got this insight from this particular customer”. Once, in order to back up an idea I had, I actually went and got a budget from my manager to collect feedback from our top ten customers. That ended up being really valuable, and showed me how important it was to back up your hypotheses with lots of data.
Intel is also very detail-oriented company, which shaped me as a product manager. In my early days as a PM, I had great mentors who would ask great questions. I was also fortunate to work with people who were all extremely skilled at what they did, which makes the job of a young product manager much easier.
One of the key elements of your transition — what allowed you to get the role as well as succeed in it — was your domain expertise. Would you recommend that others looking to break in to PM specialize?
In product management, I’ve seen two types of people become successful. The first is someone who is very good at problem-solving and asking the right questions, someone who is really customer-oriented, almost customer-obsessed. The second is someone with domain expertise, someone who understands the space so well today that they can think about the future in a way others can’t. It doesn’t matter what you did in that field — sales, engineering, etc. — but if you can communicate your ideas for the future in a logical, structured way, that will help you build great products.
If you want to make your career go in another direction, be like a dancer and pivot. But make sure you have one foot already on the ground, i.e., know an area of your new direction inside and out. If the other foot’s wobbly, or off the ground entirely, that’s ok, because people will help you stabilize along the way.
What’s the most challenging thing about being a new PM?
Having 0 credibility. If you haven’t delivered a product previously, how do you go about proving yourself? How do you gain trust of of other people? I’ve found this to be true for a first-time PM and a ten-time PM. You combat this by outperforming in your role from day one. It’s a lot of hard work, even before you start the job. With my first role, I knew I was going to be thrown into a sea of problems. People would ask me, why are you building this thing? How do you know this is a higher priority? I had to quickly learn to separate out my emotions and focus on solving the problem. I knew that speaking in their language and establishing trust through my work was the key to creating relationships, which is crucial in product management.
Developing relationships quickly is crucial. Any other advice on how to do that?
This is as critical as any technical knowledge you have. You don’t have direct power. During your first week (or as early as possible), set up one-on-ones for thirty minutes with people you expect to interface with. Tell them where you’re coming from, what your thoughts are, and ask your their perspective. With engineering, if you want them to work on something, I suggest being future-thinking, data-driven, and telling them why you want to build something. They really want to understand your motives. More informally, ask them for coffee meetings, as this helps build trust. Sales teams care about selling products, so try to understand their customer perspective, keep them involved and get feedback from them. This helps them feel like a valuable resource whose voice is being heard. Last, designers — they are generally very forward-thinking as well. Ask them what they have seen from a user perspective, and try to understand what has and hasn’t worked well in the past.
How should you prepare for a new role?
You should walk in knowing what the company’s mission/vision is, as well as major competitive concerns. Where is this product in the competitive landscape? What do competitor products do well? What do they not do well? Evaluate your own product similarly.
I also suggest creating a plan of what you hope to accomplish in the first three months. It may change once you get started, but having a sense of the vision for the future and where the company is lacking — that’s a place where you can add value immediately.
Additionally, it’s important to understand where revenue is coming from. At Marketron, I sat down with a finance manager and found out that more than 70% of our revenue was coming from 30% of our customers. Clearly, I could build better products by focusing on that 30% instead of trying to build for everyone.
After working at Intel and Marketron, you’re now a PM at Amazon. How did you approach that interview process?
I learned pretty quickly that sending resumes in just doesn’t work. I sent about 100 resumes and I think all of them were rejected! Networking was a better strategy, especially since I was in business school. There were a lot of people I could chat with to gain perspective into what a company was about, what a role was about, whether I would like the culture of the company or not, why people leave/stay at the company, and how that company views interviews. I also spent a lot of time understanding my chosen domain, Voice AI. I spoke to people in the field and read blogs, which helped me develop a thesis about the future of the field. Last, I asked a lot of PM friends for 30–40 minutes to mock interview me, to the point of where I was probably annoying them.
When an interview wouldn’t translate to a role, it was hard, but each rejection helped me become a better interviewee. I made sure to take copious notes on every type of common question, such as “Tell me about yourself.” Interviewing is an art: you have to be in the best frame of mind that day, have eaten and slept well, and try not be nervous. Eventually, interviewing came easier to me, and when Amazon happened, it happened very quickly.
How did you prepare for tough interview questions?
With Amazon, I did a lot of essay writing. The interview questions around their Leadership Principles involve really digging into your past and thinking deeply about your career decisions. When you ruminate on your experiences in an essay, it helps you remember what exactly you did, which makes it easier to find relevant stories.
A common question is, “Tell me about a challenge you faced.” In writing your answer to this, try to answer the following: What was the problem? What were the steps you took along the way? How did you solve it? What was the end result of your actions?
Last, tell me a piece of career advice that has been meaningful to you.
Careers are not linear. You can go from a to b to c, but you can also go from a to b and b to x. Coming from such a structured background like engineering, that was really interesting insight for me to internalize. You can really end up in such a different place than where you started.
