Dog Whistles and the Myth of R&D Slack
There’s a dog whistle problem with critical phrases that Engineering VPs (and product managers) repeatedly speak but which often…
Management
37 posts
Notes from the Unicorn Hiring Front
I spent part of last week interviewing product management candidates on behalf
of a client far from Silicon Valley. This…
Managing the Unmanageable
I’ve had the great pleasure of reading an early copy of “Managing the
Unmanageable: Rules, Tools and Insights for…
Asking for input: PM Directors and VPs
I’ve been thinking for a long time about challenges in running a product
management group – that is, managing product…
Painters, Portraits, Software Architects
I’ve been tuning an analogy about painters for the last few months, which has
become my litmus test for…
Moving Up To Director
In the second of three posts about the product management hierarchy, we’ll focus
on technology product managers (PMs) who’…
Getting Your First Product Management Job
Looking over dozens of discussions, presentations and Quora threads from the
last few months, a frequent question has been “How…
Leadership, Trust and Pronouns
I’m struck by the words people choose, and by how their pronouns reflect their management style. In particular, I’…
A great SVPMA talk: "How To Get That Next PM Job"
On March 5th, Shreyas Doshi had the SVPMA [http://svpma.org/] podium for a talk
on “How To Get That…
Defensive Processes
New ventures begin with an entirely empty slate: no products, no customers, no desks, no organization charts, no established procedures…
Product Management is Inherently Political
Recently, I had lunch with a bright young product manager trying to perfect the process for deciding which features to…
Growing Back into Management
There’s a funny paradox about joining a tiny company and helping it grow. If
part of its attractiveness is…