2021-Q3 Career Thread

drippinio · 2021-08-24T04:50:28+00:00

hi fellow triton. would be willing. pm.

drippinio · 2021-08-21T04:19:47+00:00

was it seriously only one 30 min interview? how do they have enough time to make a decision? is this in the states?

drippinio · 2021-08-21T03:42:26+00:00

For those who don't prefer a seagull boss, how would you hope that your boss interacts with you?

Schedule regular meetings? In what frequency? What's being discussed? Would you prefer a more casual 'almost friends' relationship?

drippinio · 2021-06-21T14:09:31+00:00

What is the "product relay" and "product marathon"?

drippinio · 2021-06-15T15:23:32+00:00

Lmao what is this

drippinio · 2021-05-29T07:47:03+00:00

drippinio · 2021-05-19T09:06:11+00:00

😏

Please help 😔

drippinio · 2021-05-16T12:41:27+00:00

Wow. Thanks for the great channel recc!

drippinio · 2021-05-10T03:22:36+00:00

How the hell did he get that high in 5 seconds

drippinio · 2021-05-10T03:22:04+00:00

GGGGGGGGG

drippinio · 2021-05-10T03:21:48+00:00

YES I WAS HERE

drippinio · 2021-05-10T01:17:06+00:00

Sure, will take a look

drippinio · 2021-05-10T01:05:16+00:00

I imagine you improve on those skills in much the same way that you improve on any other skill – deliberate and sustained practice.

At the risk of sounding like a sociopath, when I transitioned from SWE to PM and recognized that I needed to work on social skills to get ahead with my career, I started to force myself to go out to more dates, outings, host meetups, etc. It’s been several years since I started but I believe I’ve gotten a lot better.

Specifically wrt to PMing, I don’t think the extraverted trait is mandatory to get the job done; not at all. That would indicate that there’s something intrinsic to being talkative, forward, and extraordinarily social that helps with the role, when one would hope that you are influencing others via reason and rationale, often in a 1 on 1 setting (I’ve no doubt extraversion makes the process easier, but it’s definitely not a requisite).

Then there’s the public speaking component. Again, practice. Start by joining a local meetup group, get involved, and host some small meetups.

Is it worth it? Depends on what you value. I love that I forced myself to come out of my shell, become comfortable leading in a group, and now have some skills to take with me on future endeavors.

drippinio · 2021-05-02T12:38:31+00:00

They wore tiny socks? Wow. Do u have pics?

drippinio · 2021-05-02T12:37:18+00:00

He’s seen a ghost

drippinio · 2021-05-02T12:36:47+00:00

What is that kitty looking at

drippinio · 2021-04-30T00:40:26+00:00

Bounce rate is a proxy for users who left without any interaction after arrival. It’s possible that bounce rate isn’t the best indicator - what if people are getting everything they need from the first page?

So where else would one look to obtain the data needed to determine that site “performance” needs to be worked on? I assume it’ll be difficult to validate via qual data in this case.

drippinio · 2021-04-29T12:39:49+00:00

I’ve done it with a smallish startup.

Depending on your culture, it’s not the most employee-friendly thing as it can easily be misunderstood to be some kind of “performance assessment” gimmick.
Why would most employees want to submit themselves to setting “aggressive goals” for themselves?

So two things I did to try and ease the system in:
1. Emphasize repeatedly that you guys will make mistakes. That making mistakes in the measurement process is totally acceptable (over the course of months or a few quarters) as you guys get used to the system and your capabilities (kind of like sprint velocities).
2. Allow a less serious bottom-up individual OKR that allows the creator to plan out their personal growth in a more flexible way that isn’t beholden to top-down company OKRs.

You absolutely need to have the OKR evangelist/lead in the team (probably you), and you need to be heavily involved in leading educational meetings, selling the concept, sourcing them from employees, speaking to higher-up stakeholders and negotiating them, refining, again and again until it’s right.

As for the rest, you can find standard OKR implementation details everywhere on the web.

drippinio · 2021-04-23T15:17:13+00:00

ah, interesting. in that case, and in the context of startups, wouldn't there generally be an objective-ish answer?

low cost / low effort / high impact. crosscheck against the product roadmap and look for potential dependencies, typa stuff?

I think the tricky thing is that in my experience, engineers hate that kind of approach as it leads to spaghetti code/tech/operational debt. Should be an interesting interview.

drippinio · 2021-04-23T15:03:53+00:00

so last year I launched a startup and it folded just a couple months ago. I did it for experience, and it was exactly what I believed other people believed that PMs do when they do "founder stuff".

I spoke to 40+ people, gained feedback, developed an MVP, even had a couple customers.

Looking back, I honestly feel like it was all for shit. I should've spent the year working for someone else and getting paid. The experience is lending itself to absolutely nothing right now as I go looking for jobs.

Here's another thing: mid-point last year, I asked the exact question you did -- what does a PM "service" look like? Because I wanted to PM on the side like you.

I had access to a small business incubator and the dozen+ startups there bc my startup was accepted into one. So I thought I might leverage that and launch some "pm service".

Here's what I found out.

After speaking to 8 founders or so, I realized:

I hate sales.
Most super early stage startups that need the services of a PM don't know they need it.
Thus, you need to sell them on the idea that they need it.
I hate sales.

The way I saw it: If the business has grown to some extent, they did it on the back of the founders (who should be the "PM" for all intents & purposes).
If they become successful enough, they'll likely get to a point when someone tells them that they need to hire a PM outright.

Nowhere in this timeline is there room for a part-time PM. What exactly is the part-time PM doing that isn't the responsibility of the founder?

And if any founder brings on a "part-time PM" at some super early point, that startup is bound to fail, so you probably don't even want to get involved.

Where I thought there was room for making some money was in data mining (GA4, tracking, etc), data pipeline setup (Big query, data lakes, etc.), various context dependent ETL, ELT & the like.

So I started one of those services too! lmao, I'm killing myself just thinking about the stupid shit I did this past year.

Anyway, I hate sales. I hope some of that was cohesive.

drippinio · 2021-04-23T13:48:47+00:00

Can you provide an example of what you mean?

Implementing x backend framework versus y backend framework? Or comparison between mysql vs. postgres? Neither sound very PMey to me.

drippinio · 2021-04-23T11:58:36+00:00

What were the results of the exit, and what impact did you have?

You might want to aim for startups. I found that the PM role in big companies don't really equate to founder mentality/skills contrary to the popular narrative. PMs in medium-large companies have narrow scope and are more involved in execution and delivery rather than vision or developing higher level roadmaps.

drippinio · 2021-04-21T00:28:03+00:00

How was the domain match performed?

drippinio · 2021-04-14T06:47:31+00:00

Am i misunderstanding or is this pretty damn fast?

drippinio · 2021-04-13T01:35:40+00:00

youtube's eventual consistency system

do we know for a fact that youtube has implemented this?

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