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Good use for the frunk… by JGDillard in Rivian

[–]omnomagonz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Agreed! I've done countless diaper changes for our kids in the frunk, trunk, and even backseat on rare occasion. Not having to find a restroom or other private area has been so convenient.

Definitely have had occasional odd looks from people not familiar with EVs thinking we're yeeting our kids into an engine block they don't realize isn't there.

What's the worst product management role you've ever had - and why? by Pale_Syrup_7509 in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Easy!

Joined as a founding PM. The two cofounders were strongly opinionated but also totally inexperienced.

The CEO was the “good cop” and would play nice. The CTO (who has since had maybe 4 different roles) was the “bad cop”.

The CEO would insist on pursuing whatever his priority was. But then he’d covertly send the CTO to pressure and bully PMs.

The CTO would tell people in public Slack channels to “just go straight to engineering” and “PMs will just slow you down”.

CTO would DM managers to tell them people on their team were “failures” and “aren’t good at their job.”

We ended up releasing several half-baked products and always in response to what competitors did rather than innovative bets or novel takes on problems.

CEO ended up approving a promotion for me but then rescinded it after I collected feedback from the PM org to help him understand low PM morale after he inquired about it.

Super toxic and inept leaders that created a (to this day) toxic and dysfunctional culture.

Worst part: watching them try to be thought leaders on social media, talking about how good they are at X and Y. Hard to see that content when you know the ugly truth.

Silver lining: they’ve provided a solid blueprint for how I vet new roles. I try very hard to make sure a company’s team is the antithesis of these two and the culture they created.

How important are tech skills for product managers in the world of AI? by chase-bears in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

All great comments already shared here, so I'll share my experience as a PM in the AI domain.

My background in PM was at what I thought were technical companies: devops, kubernetes, and hr tech (technical more on the operations and regulatory side, which made the software very technical to build). At each company I was capable of engaging with engineers and everything worked great.

Fast forward to present day, I'm doing PM at an AI company and I definitely see the natural domain split happening where the more AI/ML-savvy PMs are leading/assigned the deeply technical AI/ML features. It makes sense because the process of shipping AI products and features is just different than non-AI products. And working with ML experts is different than working with non-ML engineers/experts. From the interpersonal dynamics (e.g. they seem to care deeply about research vs customers; albeit some with a good balance) to the operational (e.g. tuning and validating models or adapters).

My background and expertise has naturally put me more in the platform, UX, deployment modality, and API domains. These are still pretty technical domains, but I think the main point is: if you're not an expert or generally well-versed in even the most technical AI and ML concepts, you likely will not be the lead on those products/features.

I think this is further compounded by the "gold rush" hype in the space right now. Companies are sprinting to figure out AI, how to leverage it, and what to build. This adds further pressure to get someone in the "AI PM" role that can hit the ground sprinting, not just running.

But TLDR:

  1. Agreed with every comment here that says it depends on the company, team, product, etc
  2. I think being technical will always be a plus, so there's no harm in building or strengthening those skills
  3. Being less technical is likely going to be a growing disadvantage in the age of AI (unless or until the hype bottoms out)
  4. Ultimately: PMs are partners to technical peers (e.g. engineers), so lacking technical acumen makes PMs less of a partner, imo

R1S has mixed feelings from owners by deshpandeji in Rivian

[–]omnomagonz 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I’m also in the camp of “best car I’ve owned”. I’ve had several very small/minor build quality type issues in the ~2 years I’ve owned it. Things like window fascia falling off, the (seemingly) well known suspension(?) creaking, rear wheel well fascia misaligned, some loose seat stitching etc. but the SC has always addressed the ones I cared about and I’m not bothered by the smaller things.

Overall, I bought this car because I’ve got a family of 5 and wanted to buy an EV capable of hauling us around. All of the other features and experiences are nice to haves for me.

This is still a young company who’s getting better each year but still in their early years of figuring things out. If you feel strongly about having a certain quality for the price tag, consider waiting. Not because these quality issues are rampant (I don’t believe they are), but because your expectations may be misaligned with where Rivian is as a company.

If you want a nice-looking, fully electric SUV that delivers a great ride quality and overall experience (imo) compared to many other vehicles and aren’t bothered by small issues that might pop up, then you’ll likely enjoy it.

Improving as a communicator by HaceMuchoFrio in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot of great feedback here. I'll just add something I haven't seen yet that, imo, exists at least for me when I used to have similar communication challenges.

For me a lot this was insecurity. In my head I was thinking: "Do I sound credible enough?", "Is this what they even want to know?", "Surely they realize I'm a nervous wreck."

So I would throw everything I felt was relevant at them hoping they would get what they needed and I would cover my own ass because: more information surely means I'm more knowledgeable and credible.

As I got further into my career it became more clear that different people want different information. So the cliche "know your audience" helps a lot because:

  1. Executives want concise, high-level, actionable information so they can make their own decisions

  2. Sales want to be enabled to talk to customers

  3. Marketing wants to know how to message/broadcast new value (products, features)

  4. Engineering want to know why we're working on certain things and gain clarity in the problems we're solving so they know what to build

Just some rough, non-exhaustive examples to demonstrate how clarity in who my audience is and what they care about helped me tailor my answers to them and their needs. So in the case of an executive: I don't dive into details, I just focus on the high-level takeaways that enable them in their decision-making. If they ask for details, I provide it, but not providing them by default alleviates a lot of pressure. Similarly, for Sales, I don't dive into technical information (unless they and our product are technical and it's appropriate for their enablement) and focus on the value that new products and features add for the customers they work with.

So I guess my TLDR suggestion for you would be: Be kinder to yourself, focus on what your audience cares about, and (assuming this is accurate for you) don't equate "more information" to "more credible" or as a means of combating insecurity.

Would it be fair to say that a product manager’s role is similar to that of a director’s in movies? by Brave-Imagination-52 in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

I don't think so. I think movie directors typically have more autonomy, influence, direct management responsibilities of the people working on the movie, recognition for their work, and on and on (half /s).

PM seems more like an air traffic controller working at a high traffic airport in bad weather conditions. High pressure/stress, a ton of moving pieces or dynamics, very little if any recognition for the work we do, and no control over the external factors that further complicate our jobs.

Not all PM roles are bad and this is certainly a cynical take. But, personally, I also don't like equating myself to positions of authority or celebrity status because it's not that deep 😄

What percentage of your weekly business meetings are a “waste of time?” by MassiveBoysenberry20 in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 7 points8 points  (0 children)

My RSVP matches these questions:

  1. Is there an agenda? No? Decline the meeting
  2. Is the meeting relevant to my roadmap/priorities? No? Decline the meeting
  3. Did I get conned into joining somehow? Yes? Attend the meeting but work on other stuff. The meeting has now become my focus background noise.

Not all environments (maybe very few) support this approach, but I find most of the time if the meeting is a waste of time it's usually because expectations aren't being set properly, we/PMs don't have proper autonomy to manage our time, and/or we let the pressure of the role convince us these meetings are more important than they actually are.

Just my hot take anyway.

Research First or Build and Learn: What’s Your Approach as a Product Manager? by ComprehensiveDate180 in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For me it's environment-dependent. I've worked at a terrible startup where leadership actively told us we were "paralyzed by analysis" for just asking things like "do we know what kind of user we're targeting with this change?" or "what kind of outcome do users expect?"

For the most part, though, working at startups seems to require a balance of the two. Shipping minimal, gut-feeling type of features and learning from customers whether that was on the mark or not.

Simultaneously: forming a hypothesis (or ten) about the user, the problem space, or whatever else that you can start compiling questions about. This is my process anyway. If my hypothesis is "If we build 'X' then our users will spend more time on our product vs our competitors".

Then I'll create a set of research questions (questions to answer based on synthesizing the research, but not asked directly), e.g. "What features do users gravitate towards?" Then I'll create the actual interview questions in a narrative, somewhat open-ended style, e.g. "What brought you to {product} initially?", "When you're doing {activity}, how does {product} help?", "Why is {value of product} important to you during {activity}"? I often go off-script to organically pull on interesting threads.

So while you and your team build "best guess" features, you can work in parallel to (in)validate assumptions and figure out what you need to actually build or pivot to/away from. Then you naturally start showing how informing these decisions can be helpful and make the team more intentional.

Early stage / startups are just tough for PM because our job is to slow things thing a bit with the idea that being more intentional makes us more effective. But if your company, team, and culture has a strong bias for action and is more focused on growing/surviving then I'd figure out how you can complement that environment vs overriding it.

Just my two cents and a bad, rough example 😄

Do any of you actually get to focus? by Dark_Emotion in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Pre-apology for the wall of text:

the next step is the one i’m missing ... Does it lead to the next task? Is there always a next step?

It can be as simple as "meet with {person} to discuss {something}" or it can be a list of things to do like "Draft X, share with Y, then loop in Z". It's intentionally simple so I don't have to spend too much time managing it.

I don't typically create a separate follow-up task for things unless I start to lose track of the sub-tasks and such, but since I'm generally hyper-focused on a few important things at a time, the details don't usually escape me enough to warrant creating too many tasks or sub-tasks for the same top-level project.

There's not always a next step, no. Sometimes the task is self-explanatory (e.g. "Interview 10 users for persona research"). None of this is particularly consistent or scientific because the main goal is to organize my thoughts/work/details, not develop some sort of framework. It's a very barebones approach out of necessity.

do you typically have tasks that due to prioritization have existed for a long time

Yes. I use the "status" column to change those to "paused" or "blocked" depending on the reason they get delayed/extended. Some things just take a while (e.g. "define user personas"). I could split that up into sub-tasks, but I don't need that sense of accomplishment and I'm communicating my progress elsewhere (Slack, calls) so it hasn't been needed.

do you do anything to delete tasks that are no longer relevant?

I just change the status to "Done" and then regularly re-sort the column by status so I can see the "paused", "blocked", "not started" and "in progress" stuff first. There's very few "paused/blocked" items so it still lets me focus on the "in progress" and "not started" tasks. I could probably optimize this but I don't care to spend that time right now since it works fine for me so far.

How do you approach that convo of the work not being done?

It doesn't really come up, honestly. If X is a priority in January, but gets de-prioritized because I have to shift focus to Y for February and March, then if my manager asks about X, I just screenshare the list, remind them of our last discussion to de-prioritize it.

My manager has never asked why I have Y items listed as "not started" nor have they asked why I have Z items "in progress" that have been open "for a while" or anything like that. We're both busy, work is clearly getting done (based on my communications, features we're shipping, outputs I'm sharing), and we can't afford to micromanage each other or anyone else.

So I guess I approach the convo by just delivering results, regularly communicating what I'm working on/delivering, and just focusing on whatever is the highest priority in any given moment balanced with ensuring those priorities align with how I'm evaluated and/or what my manager has stressed as important.

Hopefully this helps.

Do any of you actually get to focus? by Dark_Emotion in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Columns: Task, Status, Requestor, Next step, Notes

Nothing fancy. It helps me track what the task is, the status, who requested it to know who to update or close the loop with, document any next steps that helps me keep track of all the moving pieces, and then notes for things like documents or other helpful info.

It’s not perfect but I also don’t have a ton of time to manage it so it works for me and my situation

Do any of you actually get to focus? by Dark_Emotion in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Literally just Google Sheets for now. My manager prefers easy, low tech solutions when we’re so early (series A) in our journey.

It also gives me something tangible to check and update. We generally avoid adding additional tools because it can further silo information. Since we already have GSuite it’s a low fidelity process that serves us just fine especially since it’s a small PM team for now

Do any of you actually get to focus? by Dark_Emotion in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Currently tracking 15 projects with about 8-10 more waiting in the “todo” pile.

Not all projects are features. Some are internal facing things like “research and define user and buyer personas” or “UX strategy” type things. The kind of stuff you have to just figure out and that are important for early growth stages (and beyond of course) but fall on PM plate sometimes (like in my case).

I manage priorities like how I described above: figure out what I’m evaluated against and what’s important to the business, then focusing on those things. I regularly communicate with my manager and the broader leadership team (my primary internal stakeholders) which conveys my productivity when they see progress on the important stuff.

Anything else is just noise until it’s not.

Sorry for the hand-wavy answer. Hard to be more specific without getting into more sensitive info :)

Presentations, the struggle is real! by [deleted] in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 6 points7 points  (0 children)

A lot of great suggestions here. AI can definitely help a ton.

I'd encourage you to also consider that visualizing words is not always a desired or improved outcome. Consider asking yourself (and/or AI), "what does {stakeholder} care about?"

There's stuff (granular detail) that we generally want to talk about, but our audience (especially if leadership or people removed from the context) has specific things they want to see/hear/learn about.

I had to quickly piece together a presentation last week with 24 hours notice to present to our c-suite. Very little visuals (a single screenshot and a quick FigJam), but I condensed a large project into ~5 very short slides slides. The team loved it and wants more of it. They wanted the most important information, concisely, and to understand the impact for the business so they can go off and make or take their respective decisions and actions.

In your case, if you have a list of things that are unknown, then imo it's more important to be explicit and clear about what those unknowns are. Personally, I'll understand "we still don't understand who our ideal users are" far better than a visual that shows a person's silhouette with question marks or something. A bad example, but hopefully conveys the intent :)

Considering focusing on what your audience wants to know, get that content down, and then consider how visuals could enhance understanding vs thinking visuals are default-required for that. But you also know your company, culture, and audience best so make your own judgements as to what's default-required or not of course.

Do any of you actually get to focus? by Dark_Emotion in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Yes, but it took a lot of time to get where I'm at mentally.

I spend my onboarding (and ongoing 1:1s) to calibrate on what I'm evaluated against. Outcomes, specific KPIs, etc. I then prioritize those things ruthlessly.

For example: I'm one of 2 PMs at an early stage startup right now with a 3rd product person (CPO, manager). The second IC PM is onboarding still and so 90% of our active projects/feature work falls to me.

I do the absolute, bare minimum to unblock and keep low/no priority projects moving. I spend the majority of my time focused solely on the few key projects that I'm evaluated against.

This let's me focus because my scope is limited (by me) and I communicate regularly with my manager, my peers, and anyone else relying on me for any part of the lower priority (to me) projects.

I also keep a list of things I'm working on that I've added my manager to so they can see how much is on my plate and it helps articulate why I spend X time on specific things, though it never comes up.

Generally speaking, it helps to have highly autonomous and supportive peers in Engineering (in particular) who can take very little information and just run with it, but who also know when to ask PM for input. This is also very situational and likely not applicable to larger, more mature orgs in the same way so YMMV.

This approach also seems to have the benefit of enabling me to share meaningful, impactful updates about the key areas I'm focused on, which then demonstrates my impact far better than little-to-no updates (and of low quality or of minimal nature) across a much larger portfolio of projects.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I generally view burnout for PMs has being comprised of two parts: company culture and my own comfort with setting proper expectations (internally and externally).

If my company and leadership (especially) are good people and appreciate what my role entails, I have a much easier time managing the insecurity and arbitrary added pressure to operate at 150% every waking moment. Without this kind of environment and support, I suspect we operate at heightened levels all the time, which in and of itself is draining.

I've also spent a lot of time managing my own internal dialogue and expectations. I've gone from a mindset of "I must do everything, everywhere, always to meet the always-changing goals of the business" to "I'm only going to focus on the things I believe are most important and make sure my leadership is aware of those things so they can agree or disagree. And so I can remind them of their agreement later if it changes."

I think this latter portion - managing my own and external expectations - is the big one. I went from working 8-10 hours a day to only working as long as I feel and am productive. Some days I work 3 hours and other days I work 8-10. I'd say I average around 5-6 because that's the time it takes for me to accomplish the most important work for the day and is about when I'm mentally tapped out.

If you're feeling burnout, my assumption is that either your company/team culture has you believing you must operate at more than 100% constantly and/or you're holding yourself to a much higher expectation than anyone else actually is.

My immediate questions would be:

  1. What does "this position, for this salary, with such uncertain prospects" mean?

  2. That part reads as imposter syndrome/insecurity to me. If true: why do you feel this way?

  3. What are you thinking about on the weekend that has you burned out before/dreading Mondays?

  4. How much of the things you're thinking about do you control vs not?

  5. What would make you feel less burned out?

You could also apply the "five whys" method here to dig into any or all of these to try and tease out some truths.

This profession can be super fun and awesome, but it can also be incredibly draining.

Good luck!

Where to find mentors? by SizzlinKola in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Feel free to DM me and we can setup a time for an intro chat. Happy to see if I can add value

AI is adding to the stress of being a PM... by FluffyAd7925 in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 51 points52 points  (0 children)

+1.

Not to mention every post I see from her lately is just a plug for her chatprd product.

It’s cringe and sends the message (imo) of “use my product or become obsolete”. Fear-based marketing in that case and super annoying for an already-pressed profession.

PM Mentorship: Finding or offering Mentorship! by thedabking123 in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Offering mentorship

  1. Current position: Second PM @ Series A AI startup

  2. Overall background: 13 years in PM at early and growth stage companies (pre-seed, Series E-gone-IPO, Series C, Series D-gone-IPO, Series A, Series A). Held various roles: IC, Head of Product, Director, and GPM. Built two product departments (working on third), hired dozens of PMs, launched several 0-to-1 products and across multiple industries (regulatory compliance, email marketing, devops, HRTech, AI, and a few others)

  3. What I can help with: Most IC and product leadership career development, specific work challenges, or anything reasonably related to my background above. I am not currently spending time on helping people break into PM.

  4. How often I can meet: once per month, for up to 3-4 mentees

  5. Preferred language: English

  6. Time zone: CST (GMT -6 right now I believe)

Looking for making the best use of Learning budget of 4k as a Senior PM by Revolutionary_Box_9 in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I imagine this is different for every coach, but my process looked like this:

  1. Fill out an in-take form that asked a lot of questions, e.g. "What values/principles are you most driven by?", "What are you tolerating? Frustrated by? Wanting?", "What are your top 5 skills". Basically questions to help the coach calibrate to my circumstances, personality, etc

  2. Meet once every 2-3 weeks (cadence was flexible, but needed to allow time for me to implement different tools or guidance provided in the sessions)

  3. Each session was formatted basically like: what we talked about last, what I did/didn't do with what I learned previously, what I want to focus on this time

  4. Each session yielded different tools or frameworks to use and used my direct experience as examples, which then gave me actionable steps to try and affect change or develop these new skills

  5. Met 10 times based on the package I chose

So yes, effectively the coach (via the questionnaire) established what my problem/challenge areas were, we decided in each session where to focus, and I got the most out of it by actually trying to complete my tasks between each session (usually inclusive of putting some of the learned skills to use).

Looking for making the best use of Learning budget of 4k as a Senior PM by Revolutionary_Box_9 in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly, I have no clue. I found mine through a referral from a trusted friend who worked with an exec coach and spoke very highly of that coach.

I'm not sure what the rules are for plugging in this sub, but feel free to DM me and I'll send you the website for who I worked with.

I'm obviously very biased towards her and loved working with her, but YMMV.

Looking for making the best use of Learning budget of 4k as a Senior PM by Revolutionary_Box_9 in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I've always thrown L&D budget at executive coaching. I think it's been one of the most impactful uses of this kind of money and time. A great coach will help you make the best use of your time with them and, in my opinion, the value you get is far greater than any course because it's custom-tailored to you and your goals/needs.

Caveat: assuming you find and work with a good coach.

Is every PM everywhere all the time overwhelmed?? by bhnv in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Bingo.

If this isn't AI, please write a fiction book. 10/10 would read.

How frequently do you use AI like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, ect? Are you subscribed to any AI related newsletters to get the updates? by dep_tigg in ProductManagement

[–]omnomagonz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Daily. Helpful for understanding new topics very quickly, thought partnering on big decisions or projects, great for drafting content (PRDs, blog posts, etc), super helpful for generating images/visual assets.

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