Product Management AMA

I hosted an Ask Me Anything in the Product Manager HQ community last week. Here is a summary of what we discussed.

Who was the person who helped you most in your career and how?
Amy Klement was the VP of Product at PayPal who hired me. When my manager left, she gave me — a super untested and junior PM — the role leading the eBay team at PayPal. I had two or three years of PM experience at that point, and this was our biggest business. She took a chance on me. Later at Facebook, I met Doug Purdy who was the head of Platform Product. He encouraged me to build a new monetization product which ended up being Mobile App Install Ads, a product which was a breakout success.

What has been the most key aspect of communication you found helpful to hold your own as a woman in tech?
Finding your voice. I wrote an article about this recently since it was something I struggled with on how to balance what others expect and who I am.

What advice do you give to someone who’s looking to transition into product?
Look for ways to learn the skills even if you are not in the role. Join hackathons. Do a side project. Push yourself to learn the ins and outs of being a PM. That way you will be ready when the opportunity arises.

What are the most valuable skills for c-level positions?
Listening and having a learning mindset are critical to succeed in all positions, but they’re particularly critical for senior leaders.

What made you switch to Facebook ? I also wanted to know how Products at FB are different from eBay ? Any reads or training you recommend for aspiring PM?
I really loved working at eBay and learned a lot there. So when the opportunity came to come to Facebook, I was really torn. But I loved the green space to build something new from scratch. I really love the culture of moving fast, testing and iterating, and creating new things. I recommend reading everything you can and to always be learning. We in tech are creating new ideas and innovations, and the ability to think beyond what is known today is critical.

When hiring new PMs, what advice would you give them or what do you expect during their first 90 days on the job?
There are two ways to fail at a new job. One is to not be able to adapt to the culture and the second is to lack the skills to do the job. Most people fail at the first, not the second. Have a learning mindset. Be adaptable and open to feedback.

How do you learn as a PM when you are the only one at the org? What would you advise to grow career wise in such a position?
Find teachers outside of your org. Attend events where you can meet and learn from other PM. For example, we have PM mentoring circles in Women in Product. Having a sounding board is important. Consider them your person advisory council.

How do you suggest younger PMs balance technical expertise (CS, ML, etc.), domain specific knowledge, and user experience research?
PMs are not there to make decisions. They are there to make sure great decisions are made. You don’t have to be the person to know or understand everything, but you do have to be the person who is able to lead teams to good outcomes. Leverage your team and XFN peers. They will be your greatest assets.

How do you balance data and intuition when making product decisions? What role does data play in making and justifying your decisions?
I like to have a clear hypothesis going in, whether from data or research, but I am always ready to be proven wrong. Shipping is data. By shipping you are testing your intuition. That is important. But there is no way to know the right answer upfront, so hold opinions lightly.

When building out a product team, what are your top considerations when evaluating individual candidates and how do you establish team goals?
The most important thing I look for in product leaders is adaptability and openness to feedback. I would rather have someone who is willing and open to growing than someone who is more experienced and skilled, but has a fixed mindset or way of doing things. The former will almost always exceed the latter in long term trajectory and performance.

For goaling, know what you are aiming for. What is your true mission? What does success look like in 2 years? Then work on parsing the work into short term roadmaps. Too often PMs create 2 year roadmaps three months at a time. And then they are unhappy with where they land.

Did you face any difficulty being a female leader in a male dominated industry? If so, how did you deal with it?
It is an asset being different in some ways, not a liability. I started Marketplace at Facebook because I saw how moms sold things to one another in groups. When I started advocating for investing in Marketplace, it was clear a lot of other leaders didn’t see what I saw and the opportunity there. Marketplace is now used by 800M people a month, but it started with seeing the world with a different perspective.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not always easy because there are gender stereotypes built into our culture. For example, women are expected to be competent and warm to be leaders, whereas men are only expected to be competent.

I was repeatedly asked at each job where I had a child if I planned to come back to work. These things are subtle, but in totality they are a challenge. I decided long ago to accept and adapt.

What’s your decision making framework, while categorizing product features as “must-have” and “nice-to-have”?
In building products, we often lose sight of what the core is and focus too much on the bells and whistles. I like the “job to be done” framework. What is the core job your product needs to do? Your “must haves” should address those things and everything else can wait. I find that a useful way to prioritize.

Another way to get at that is to do a “pre-mortem” and write out why your product failed. You will find that it focuses the mind on the most important things.

When did you think that you were ready to move on to the next step in your career. I have been a product manager for years now and thinking of moving ahead but not sure how to proceed.
When you feel like you are no longer learning, it is time to explore something new. Before you make a change, decide where you want to be in 5 years, and then work backwards. If you imagine starting a company, look for a role that gives you ownership over something broad. If you imagine being the VP of Product, look to deepen your PM skills. Knowing what success looks like for you is important before making a change.

How do you replenish yourself?
I have three precocious kids. Every weekend, we do projects together. They love to cook, so we make meals together as a family. It is a good time to switch off and do something simple with them. We also love making things together like art and craft projects. We also work on our family comic strip together.

How much weightage would you give to intuition when you need to decide whether to expand to a new country/invest in a new product and you don’t have clear and specific data to help you decide?
Get what data you can, and ship an MVP. You will get more data from that than anything else. Then decide whether your intuition was right or wrong, and go from there.

What was the biggest success of your team (and yours) at Facebook so far, and what was the biggest failure that you’ve learned from?
I have built many thing at Facebook from Games and Credits to App Ads, Platform and Audience Network. But I am most proud of the impact we have made from Marketplace. We are enabling people all over the world to build businesses and have access to economic opportunities. My biggest failure was the start of Marketplace when we were first experimenting with what to build. We didn’t get it right the first time, and it was hard to continue to believe in something that wasn’t quite working and resonating with people. Today, I’m proud to see the impact Marketplace is having for the 800M people who use it each month.

The most important lesson is that as a PM knowing when to invest and when to give up is a skill that is critical. Success is hitting product market fit fast or failing fast. A slow, long grind is the failure.

As a VP of Marketplace, what is your vision? What are you trying to achieve? Not necessarily only about FB Marketplace, but maybe the general industry.
When people have access to markets to buy and sell, they can create economic opportunities. I want to make that available to everyone no matter where they live. We can remove structural barriers (such as having large amounts of capital to start a business) that exist which keep people from being able to grow businesses and make livelihoods.

Do you have any advice or tips on how to better “manage up”, especially with respect to managers that never venture below 30k ft?
Communication is key. It is critical that you align on what success looks like, and that you document that alignment. Then track your progress against it. Imagine you are in your manager’s shoes and have a bunch of teams and priorities. You have maybe 2% of their mindshare, so make it count.

Given that the tech landscape is always changing and there are new “hot” flavors in every era (eg AI/ML now), what do you do as a PM to successfully navigate them? How do you prepare for the future? What skills should PMs learn?
I don’t try to be an expert on everything, but I try to understand enough to be able to make good product decisions. I once met a VP of Product who told me she felt pressure to learn how to code. I asked her why and she said she felt like she needed to check that box. I asked her if it was ever an impediment that she didn’t know how to code, and she said no.

Understanding and expertise are different. You should understand, but you don’t need to be an expert. A CEO will never be better at finance than their CFO, nor do they need a law degree to speak to their General Counsel.

You mentioned flexibility and adaptability as most important in Product Leaders. How do you balance being “flexible” and “adaptable” with not changing decisions the team is working towards? Also with gender/race stereotypes of being too accommodating?
Someone once told me that I was “assimilating” when I talked about adapting. “Assimilation” is a loaded word for people of Asian descent. Being adaptable is important, but know who you are and what you stand for. Choose what you are flexible on and what is sacrosanct to you.

I wrote this article about how I dealt with this: https://www.fastcompany.com/40537289/3-times-this-simple-brain-hack-has-helped-me-succeed-at-facebook

Do you have any strategies for determining team size at large organizations?
Especially for new initiatives, smaller, tighter teams are better. It enables faster decision making and closer alignment. It is important to have active decoupling so that each team is not completely dependent on multiple teams to succeed. Or else it is really hard to get things done.

I haven’t coded in years but I pride myself to be a great leader on my team and driving them to success. I have tried to search opportunities on companies like Google/Amazon/Facebook but they have coding interviews for PMs so I haven’t even tried it because I don’t have time to refresh my knowledge. What is your advice on this situation?
Facebook does not have coding interviews for PMs and does not require a CS degree. Our PMs come from a variety of backgrounds and we also have an RPM program.

Much emphasis as a PM is given to the consumer facing PM. When developing the FB Marketplace /App ads platform, how did you balance the role of being a consumer vs. platform PM.
Building platforms means more long-term leverage but less control over the specific experience. Consumer PMs have more decision making over the final pixels and approach, but less leverage to enable many other teams. I love doing a mix of both, but it does take different thinking. A consumer PM who can turn their product into a platform for others will see much more long term success.

Thanks to the Product Management HQ community for the invitation!