Tag Archives: risk-taking

A great SVPMA talk: "How To Get That Next PM Job"

Posted on by
Reply

Last Weds (March 5th), Shreyas Doshi had the SVPMA podium for a talk on “How To Get That Next PM Job”

SVPMAThis was an astonishingly wonderful talk: crisp, funny, and relentlessly on-point.  When I wasn’t applauding and smacking my forehead, I was jealous.

Shreyas is in product management at Google, and recapped what we’ve all forgotten about whether you want to be in product management (talk to 8 PMs first); the process of getting jobs (think it through from the hiring side, practice, do your research, have an interesting resume, start a blog) as well as PM jobs that suck (at companies that don’t care about engineering).  Even this grizzled PM veteran learned something.

Shreyas went with a light-hearted ‘back of the napkin’ style.  See his SlideShare below.  FYI, he blogs at No Batteries Included.

Shreyas Doshi How To Get That Next Pm Job Svpma March 2010

View more presentations from guestfbb385.

Defensive Processes

Posted on by
Reply

New ventures begin with an entirely empty slate: no products, no customers, no desks, no organization charts, no established procedures for creating value.  Only blank pages and empty office space.  This is part of the exhilaration, the chance to do things better and more simply than the last time. Of course, your founding team has lots of experience: ideas about how things get done.  As the product champion, you’ll almost immediately be defining what your startup makes and how it gets delivered. Generically, “processes”. Continue reading →

Growing Back into Management

Posted on by
Reply

There’s a funny paradox about joining a tiny company and helping it grow.  If part of its attractiveness is an intimacy and lack of management overhead, success creates its own challenges.

Very small companies can operate on informal communications: all ten employees know what each other are doing.  The entire staff can grab lunch together, and all-hands meetings easily fit into the conference room.  News is shared over the cube wall.  Job descriptions and titles are afterthoughts.  Decisions are made in the aisle. Continue reading →