ask me anything with linkedin's senior product manager
TRANSCRIPT
/Productschool
@ProductSchool
/ProductmanagementSV
November 30th, 2016
Agenda● Welcome!● AMA w/ LinkedIn Senior PM - Naman
Goel
Who’s here?
Company size (no. of employees)
1-10
10-100
101-499
500-1000
1000+
Who’s here?
Role
Product ManagersSoftware Engineers Project ManagersDesignersConsultantsHardware EngineerMisc.
Upcoming Classes
Santa ClaraWeeknight cohort:
November 29 - February 2Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30pm to 9:00pm (sold out)
Weekend cohort:December 3 - February 11
Saturdays from 9:30am to 3:30pm (1 spot left!)
Apply Atwww.productschool.com
Meet Your Instructors
Mohammad Musa
•Lead Product Manager @ Google
•VR Startup Founder
•3X Product School Instructor
Yotam Soen
•Sr. Product Manager @ eBay
•Director of Product @ Honeybook
•Returning Product School Instructor
Meet A LinkedIn Senior PM
www.productschool.com
Naman Goel- 5+ Product experience
- Led the build out of deep people-centric sharing experiences in Google Photos and the launch of Google Contributor
- Product management experience with LinkedIn, Google, Goldman Sacs.
Question #1
HOW DID YOU BECOME A
PRODUCT MANAGER?
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WHAT DOES A TYPICAL DAY LOOK
LIKE FOR YOU?
Question #2
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WHAT MADE YOU TRANSITION TO A
PM ROLE?
Question #3
ADDITIONAL
Q & A By The
Audience
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What are your biggest challenges?
Question #4
- Being able to take a step back from the day-to-day- Constantly asking, “what is going wrong? What can I do
better?”- Thinking about next steps, approach in product cycle- How involved to get in various aspects of product cycle?
- E.g. working with UX designer closely on wireframes.- How much you go with flow and how much you take a step
back?
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How balance technical v/s
nontechnical teams?
Question #5
- Product Manager needs to understand how much support each team needs- E.g. Engineering team is weak and needs technical
direction. PM invests his or her team in this area to ensure the product is going in the right direction.
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How did you get into Google?
Question #6
- Luck :D - Interviewed for engineering position while in grad school- Recruiter followed up every six months to check in- After getting product experience at Goldman, he decided to
apply for a PM role at Google on the 2nd time around. - Understanding what companies what from each product
manager
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How to transition from finance to PM?
Question #7
- Financial service industry & culture - dealing with huge sums of money so need to be exact and no experimentation
- On other hand, Google is mostly an experimentation lab- Failure is accepted at Google, as long as you learn from it- How much experimentation does this job allow?- Seeking out mentors, experienced folks in that role who
understand company and function deeply
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What was your first 6 months at Google
like?- Similar to challenges- How not to get fired in first 90 days!- Financial > Google, immediately understanding Company’s mission- Meeting as many people as he could to understand Company as best
as possible- ‘I’m facing this issue in my role, how would you do it if you were in
my shoes?’- What does mission mean for the company? Product’s vision?
- What do I need to do?- Google - Engineering-driven culture
- How much involvement do engineers have in the process?- Design is important to pick up as a PM
- usually you have less designers than developers on the team- user empathy, helps with product decisions, how design works &
design decisions should be
Question #8
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If you were to design a crash course, what
resources would you include?
Question #9
- What skills do you already have? What’s the skill gap? - Top skill - user empathy
- understanding who is going to be your user group- understanding which user groups exist
- E.g. designing a Macbook for global users vs US users- What are the other things you want to do with users?
- Technical skills - going deeper into how technology works, domain space, trends in that space
- Design - philosophy, wireframing, mockups & design principles- PM influencers - Andrew Chen (Uber/Growth), Ken Norton (Google
Ventures), Josh Elman (Greylock Ventures), Open PM (online aggregate of PM resources)
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What is the career trajectory of PM?
Question #10
- Responsibilities of PM from beginning vs later in career- Product strategy for a lagging product line- Associate PM given a product feature, not the whole product
- E.g. Youtube suite of products vs. sole feature or product line
- Sr. PM’s handle entire product of company or major product lines, e.g. Sr. PM at PayPal managing entire PayPal international payments product vs Associate PM reporting on feature of int’l product
- Group PM’s manage product managers- setting quarterly/yearly objectives (ROI, user growth%,
etc)
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What do you look for in job applicants?
Question #11
- Linkedin’s philosophy of ideal candidates- varies on the role
- Professional experience- has launched stuff before
- Entrepreneurial - pursued ideas to concept- learn from failings
- Did you work on anything outside of your current role? - ‘What have you built?’
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How would I prioritize
experienced candidate vs recent
grad?
Question #12
- Resume reflects personality- entirety of what this person has done
- What has this person done outside of their normal duties? - Above and beyond the line of duty, how did you
impact a milestone?
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How do you bring Google culture of
experimentation & innovation into finance?
Question #13
- experimentation and innovation in finance is hard, because of the fact they are dealing with money
- innovation can happen in the processes- E.g. HFT lag time to process orders, level out
playing field- Personal finance - opportunities for innovation- Banking, set & heavily regulated not as likely to
innovate
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How to make feature decisions @ LinkedIn?
Question #14
- Incremental improvements for larger set vs big improvements for smaller set- Metrics defined at LinkedIn, Google- Define strategy - where company will be in
1,3,5 years?- Success metrics - KPI’s
- E.g. incremental improvement for 5MM users or feature that increases ROI- looking back at strategy and defined
success metrics- Metrics
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What are examples of KPI’s?
Question #15
- LInkedIn’s metric, e.g. - # of users on LinkedIn
- DAU, MAU, etc- Revenue metric
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How do you prioritize outside-of-
the-box ideas for company?
Question #16
- 70-20-10 ideas prioritization
- 70% - things that align with LinkedIn’s vision- 20% - 10x, moonshot ideas for long-term vision- 10% - crazy/viral, e.g. LinkedIn Antarctica, limited or
no internet access
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How do you pitch your ideas at
LinkedIn?
Question #17
- Writing the story of your idea- Frameworks
- e.g. Press release for your product BEFORE iteration/release - headlines, fill in the details- forces you to explore the idea further
- e.g. VP Product @ LinkedIn- pitch in person, then follow up via email
- Wide acceptability of idea, get people aligned with your vision/excited to start working on the product
- Core of being a great PM - sell a very good story- Yahoo! hackathons
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Where do you find solutions to big
challenges facing LinkedIn?
Question # 18
- If this product didn’t exist, and I build it from scratch, what would the MVP have today?
- User empathy- meeting with teams to test hypothesis- testing with user groups
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How important is business acumen for
PM?
Question #19
- understanding unique value you bring to the table- Product vision & strategy
- user story- coordinating with cross-functional teams to see where they need
help to ship the product - How does revenue, P&L impact your product? More important than
knowing specific business terms
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How important is technical
background?
Question # 20
- Naman hasn’t written any code in his PM career, even at Google!
- Depends on the product- E.g. VMware vs. Cisco- Youtube, understanding how video streaming
works- API PM’s need to be technical, but consumer-
facing PM’s not so much
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How did you prepare for your Google
interview?
Question #21
- Understanding product manager role is all about- user empathy- storyteller- your superpower
- What questions would be expected of me?- e.g. What should Samsung do next after Note 7?
- More structured responses so interviewer understands your story, thought process
- Cracking the PM interview by Gayle Laakman McDowell & Jackie Bavarro
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Does it make sense to incorporate the
story for all aspects of PM?
Question #22
- Business - impact, ROI, strategy- Technical - impact on product architecture
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What is the toolbox for PM’s?
Question #23
- You as being the user - testing product once it’s built
- Design - Balsamiq, InVision, Proto.io, Sketch or Post-it notes >> mockups/wireframes
- Data - Optimizely, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Tableau (visualization)
- PM - usertesting, uservoice
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How to deal with opposing points of
view?
Question #24
- Do you have strong opinions? - Conviction of your beliefs, and flexibility in
compromise- Understand other person’s perspective
- try to ask questions until they run out of answers or you become convinced by their answer
- Ken Norton - Weekly Hell of PM - the other people on your team disagreeing with you! - arriving at common ground to keep the team
moving- e.g. engineering team not buying into your idea
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How do you find established user
base to test?
Question #25
- Users who would be early adopters- enthusiastic to use your product
- E.g. going to middle schools and asking students to test out app- creating a test group
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How has Microsoft’s acquisition of
LinkedIn affected the product vision?
Question #26
- Wait and see - Currently running independently
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Roadmap hijacking, what are first 3 or 4 questions to keep
your roadmap intact?
Question #26
- User empathy, true north metrics to come to conclusion
- How is this helping our company’s strategy? - Which hypothesis will have greatest effect on
metrics? - Strong opinions, weakly held
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What methods allow you to stay intune with user needs?
Question #27
- App reviews- How to find users at the right time
Upcoming Classes
Santa ClaraWeeknight cohort:
November 29 - February 2Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30pm to 9:00pm (sold out)
Weekend cohort:December 3 - February 11
Saturdays from 9:30am to 3:30pm (1 spot left!)
Apply Atwww.productschool.com
Upcoming Workshops
Santa Clara
Dec 7: How to Solve a Communication Breakdown in Product Management
Dec 14: "Ask Me Anything" with Product School CEO: How to Become a Product Manager