Q&A: Amy Sokolow, Product management fellow @ The Atlantic
Each year, Atlantic Media hires around 40 recent graduates for its fellowship program. Fellows are placed in editorial or business positions across Atlantic Media’s four brands: The Atlantic, National Journal, Government Executive, and Quartz.
This week, The Idea sat down for a quick chat with Atlantic product fellow Amy Sokolow.
Can you tell us about your role and what you do?
I am a product management fellow at The Atlantic, and my role is to work between a lot of different teams, but especially the developers and the designers to make sure that projects run smoothly from start to finish, check in with them along the way, and make sure nothing breaks.
When you were applying to the fellowship, was this the kind of thing you wanted to do? How did you get into product?
I didn’t take a lot of journalistic writing classes in college and I didn’t write for a student newspaper or anything, so I thought business might be a better fit for me. I come from a marketing, advertising, and public relations background, but I’ve always been interested in journalism as a concept and as a business model.
Product was definitely a surprise for me, because I’d never worked in product before and I was a little bit intimidated coming in; it’s a very technical role and it involves working with developers and speaking their language, which is something that I’m learning slowly, but everyone’s been super helpful in getting me acclimated.
What is something that you learned earlier in life in a non-media job that is applicable to your current role?
I worked at a frozen yogurt shop for about two years, both in the location in my hometown and the location by my school. I learned a lot about how to interact with different personalities — behind the counter, in the kitchen, with the customers — and I think product is a lot like that. You’re talking to a lot of different teams, and everybody on those teams has a different perspective, a different priority, and a very different personality. If you’re talking to a developer and an editorial person, for example, you have to talk to them differently, so I’ve learned a lot from the frozen yogurt business.
What’s one thing that you wish colleagues outside of your department understood about what you do?
I think it’s difficult to know the background of each product manager and whether they came from a technical background or a marketing background or a journalism background. We all come from different viewpoints and knowledge levels, so sometimes the way that people can give us instructions is different depending on what they assume that we already know. So I think at least for me, coming in as a product fellow, it would be helpful if people gave me the full picture, or the “liberal arts version,” as one of my colleagues calls it, so that I understand the context that it’s in and how it will be used and why it’s helpful.
What is your dream job?
When I was fourteen I definitely wanted to be a multi-hyphenate Hollywood actress-singer-model-dancer.
What’s the best career advice that someone’s ever given you?
I got this from my previous boss, Becca, who is a year older than me, so she definitely gave it to me straight. She told me to jump at every opportunity that seemed interesting and exciting to me, regardless of other life factors. I’ve never lived in any other city except Boston before, and she was so encouraging for me to go here; it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to do a year-long fellowship at a place like The Atlantic in a new city, and I’m very thankful for her advice, because I think she was the one who made me take the leap and do it.
Do you have any advice for people looking for entry level jobs in media?
I would say talk to a lot of people — people who do similar things to you, people who do different things than you, people who are at the same career level as you, and people who are five levels above you, because I think media is a very nebulous career path and there are so many ways to get involved in it. Any advice you could possibly get from someone who actually does it on a day-to-day basis is incredibly helpful to see if that’s something that would interest you.
Another thing I would say is to not necessarily think about the hard skills that you have, but the things that you enjoy doing, in a very broad sense. I enjoy solving problems, I enjoy telling stories, and I enjoy working with creative people, and I think that was sort of what guided me to figuring out what I wanted to do.
