What Does a Product Manager Do at Wish?
My name is Justin and I’m a Senior Product Manager based in Toronto, working under the Merchant and Logistics org at Wish. A fun (or rather interesting) fact about me is that I’ve worked fully remotely for the last 3 years since pre-COVID, so it feels like a new normal. The Toronto office finally reopened recently, so I’m super excited to meet and work with the team in person (for the first time for some), and I’m hoping to create deeper working relationships with them.
My Product Management Career Path
I started my career as an engineer through internships, but I later changed to an analyst to be closer to the business side of things and users. It organically led to a Product Management (PM) role that I quickly fell in love with. There have been countless failures, firefights, and learnings that have built my core PM competencies over time, and helped me succeed at Wish without prior e-commerce experiences.
How the Product Management Team is Structured at Wish
Wish is an online marketplace, so we have product teams that support the supply (merchant experience) and demand (consumer experience). I’m part of the Merchant and Logistics product org led by the VP of Product. Our focus area consists of 5 main pillars:
- Merchant Onboarding
- Listing Quality
- Merchant Success and Risk
- Fulfillment and Logistics
- Merchant Payment and Pricing Services
Each pillar is managed by a lead PM to support the overall mission of “creating a true partnership with merchants that will help our users discover and engage with quality products that are trustworthy and reliably delivered.”
My Roles and Responsibilities at Wish
I’m a lead PM managing the Merchant Payment and Pricing Services team with the objective of driving merchant economics through accurate and reliable payment, pricing, and tax services. There isn’t really a typical day for me because it varies depending on the stage of the product life cycle. I could be drowning in back to back meetings with stakeholders; spending hours researching user segments and competitors; keeping my head down writing PRDs; thinking about ways to improve the lives of my direct reports; performing user acceptance testing before launching an important feature; or, clarifying requirements and discussing tradeoffs with engineers. The best time of all is celebrating wins with everyone involved!
How Product Managers at Wish Provide a Positive Impact
We’re here to identify problems that need solving and help stakeholders understand why it’s important to solve them for our merchants and users. It requires us to have strong empathy and it’s our job to represent their voices and turn them into tangible solutions that provide value. We sometimes make wrong hypotheses but that’s okay as long as we learn from it and don’t make the same mistake.
Continuing to Learn and Develop Skills as a Product Manager
The best source of learning is the people I work with. My belief is that every person, regardless of experience, role, seniority, and background, possesses skills that I don’t. Wish is a perfect place to learn from others because we have incredibly talented and diverse people that are always willing to help each other grow and succeed.
Why Join Wish as a Product Manager?
We’re at a tipping point of making a significant impact with a very ambitious and clear goal from our new leadership. We have a lot of unique opportunities that will take us to the next level. If you want to be part of this exciting journey, learn more about our open roles. Hope you join us soon!
