Reflecting on my Kargo PM Internship
Over six months, I had the incredible opportunity of being a Product Management intern at Kargo Technologies (Kargo). I was exposed to a variety of user and business problems, worked with teams of talented engineers, designers and program managers, and was mentored by world-class PMs.
Before Kargo, my only exposure to logistics was through my family’s business, which ships oil, gas, and cement. I wanted to know how technology could transform this seemingly static and tedious business. Kargo opened my eyes to massive opportunities for innovation in Indonesia’s logistics industry.
At Kargo, I was surprised by how complex logistics problems actually were. I assumed that the complexity would demotivate me, but I became more intrigued as problems complicated due to the sheer number of stakeholders involved in logistics. My curiosity turned into action by working with dynamic tech and ops teams across Kargo.
Work
I had the opportunity to intern on two squads. The first product serves Transporters and the second is built for our internal fulfillment team.
Alongside designers and researchers, we piloted our early-stage product to several Transporters. We collected qualitative and quantitative insights to identify user problems and gaps in our product. Afterwards, we ideated solutions and prioritised them based on impact and effort using Miro boards. My first exposure to Product was through this early-stage product, allowing me to understand a fundamental insight —
There are many problems to solve and solutions to explore, only frequent validation and prioritisation can help us make decisions.
I also worked on discovery and delivery. I helped scope features for our Fulfillment users by clarifying requirements and user stories in Requests For Comments (RFCs). RFCs are docs used to gather feedback from engineering, design, or business teams on the problem and the proposed implementation. During scoping, I was exposed to a variety of UX practices, including card sorting and redesigning flows using information architecture logic. The team is particularly good at divergent thinking, which is important in the logistics industry, where users tend to be resistant to change. I helped with delivery by writing tickets and acceptance criteria. Although it seems like tedious work, being clear with requirements is critical to helping engineers ship high-quality features.
During my last few months at Kargo, I helped with product strategy. Working at Kargo allows you to continuously build your skills and apply them to higher impact projects. I assisted in defining the long term vision for a module and broke it down into product roll-out phases.
Your contributions and growth as an intern can be unlimited if you:
Understand what a good Product Manager does
- Learn about best PM practices by observing your manager
- Learn about PM by reading introductory Product books (I recommend Inspired by Marty Cagan)
Take the time and effort to understand your product (i.e., what is the problem? who are the users? who are the key business/ops stakeholders?)
- Read documents for context (Kargo is a document-driven organization and has several resources to learn about the situation at hand)
Proactively use your knowledge and perspective to assist with strategy
Culture
Kargo’s Product team organises workshops and activities to ensure you can constantly grow and have fun doing so!
Through bar-raisers and knowledge-sharing sessions, we challenge each other to learn new skills and improve upon our existing ones. During bar-raisers, the team actively challenges the document’s substance by posing questions to the presenter and giving feedback. At bar-raiser, I received feedback from seasoned PMs and Product Designers (PDs), leaving with concrete action items for revision. Bar-raisers are an example of what the Kargo Product team does best — they constantly reflect on their own work, taking up action items for measurable improvement.
In addition to cultivating an environment of constant growth, squads organise fun bonding sessions! In my squad, my PM and PD energised our working environment by hosting hangout sessions where we played games over Discord. Our Program Manager also insisted that we share our weekend highlights during Monday standups to brighten up the start of a week. Although these sound like small initiatives, I appreciated the team’s deliberate effort in creating a motivating and fun environment.
My Takeaways
Here are some key learnings from my PM mentors and own experience:
1. Perfect the art of writing
Learning how to communicate and having an opinion on the product’s long-term vision is one of the most challenging aspects of PM. Interns can start working on these skills by writing product strategy documents.
2. Build iteratively and constantly collect learnings
Build through small releases while still maintaining long-term vision for the product. Each iteration results in a better understanding of the requirements and a more robust product.
3. Product strategy needs to be aligned with sales and go-to-market strategy
We hosted frequent workshops with Product Operations and Operations teams to align on the long term vision for the user’s journey.
Why you should intern at Kargo
I highly recommend applying to Kargo’s internship program. The culture perfectly balances big bets and constant learning. Interns can take thoughtful and confident risks, and be okay with the possibility of failure, because the team welcomes learning opportunities created by failure.
Finally, you’ll get to be mentored by truly passionate and intelligent people. My Product Managers — Divya and Kay — have taught me so much about what it means to be stellar Product Managers. Kargo’s PMs are highly thoughtful and genuinely want the best outcome for the intern’s growth. Good PMs are rare to come across, and Kargo happens to have a whole team of them
