Being a PM at Yammer

Yammer PMs at a team event

Product Management is a nascent discipline, and being a PM is different at different products and companies. At Yammer, we have been experimenting with the PM recipe for 8 years and have come to realize that there is no simple formula for being an effective PM. But there are some core principles we all believe strongly in, despite our individual styles.

1. Focus on learning, not shipping

2. Be data informed

3. Care deeply about the User Experience

Focus on learning, not shipping

Every month, I look forward to the not-so-subtly named Product Brain meeting. This is where we share what we learnt from experiments we ran, approaches we attempted. The most interesting learnings are usually from efforts that we didn’t ship! In the Yammer PM team, we value product curiosity immensely — we just don’t play Pokemon Go, but tear it down and learn. We spend a lot of time defining and refining the hypothesis for our feature ideas. Our features typically go through several iterations — and we don’t let the adrenaline rush of shipping a feature affect our judgement.

“Being a Product Manager means forming hypotheses about these types of questions, experimenting, and sometimes (or often!) failing along the way. Our hypotheses are often inspired from own experiences using the product, and critically thinking through the behavior we want to continue to promote”— article by PM Stephanie Hsu

Be data informed

Cognitive behavior is complex, and our user base keeps evolving. It is tempting to listen to our most vocal customers, but that may not work for the silent majority. At Yammer, we use a mix of A/B tests and qualitative user research as a way to keep ourselves honest. As PMs, we work closely with user researchers and analysts, right from early feature explorations — so that they are a core part of the team, rather than supplemental resources.

“How could reducing the number of signup flow steps to reduce friction be bad? From this experiment, we learned that the signup flow is a really good place to ask users to do things that invest them in the product, even though they haven’t even seen the product yet. It’s counter-intuitive, but the behavior of users often is” — article by PM Neil McCarthy

Care deeply about the User Experience

This shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is easier said than done right. Designing a product for millions of users is a challenge. More so when it enables them to get their work done. Even more so when we keep iterating on the design, and encounter change aversion. Yammer PMs quickly realize that we need to be close friends with our designers. Our design team has a good mix of interaction design and UI design skills— and strong opinions. Designers (like analysts and user-researchers) get involved early in the product cycle, and good PMs learn to strike the right balance between getting inspired by the designer’s creativity, and ensuring the product goals are met.

“So while it was extremely tempting to jump right into the design and start moving things around, taking the time to measure results and validate our design assumptions turned out to be hugely important. In the end we didn’t just get a pretty face, we got a better design” — article by PM Ron Blandford

In short, the Yammer Product Management team is the driving force behind building an opinionated consumer-inspired product that helps people — whether at a desk or on their feet — change their workdays, their companies, and their lives for the better. At Yammer, we face some of the hardest and most exciting challenges of our careers, with our mission to end siloed, disconnected work environments forever.

Interested in joining the Yammer PM team? — here is how:

• Apply to one of our open positions
• If there is a fit, we will send send you a product challenge. This is an opportunity for you to demonstrate your product skills at your own pace, and we will review it blind to remove bias. We also review it on a round-robin basis so everyone in the PM team gets a say in deciding who joins the team. If needed, we will be glad to talk to you over phone to answer any questions.
• If your product challenge meets the bar, we will invite you to a phone interview
• If you pass the phone interview, we will organize an in-person interview loop

While these may sound like a lot of steps, we just want to make sure there is a good mutual fit. If what you read above resonates with you, we would love to hear from you!