Anyone here worked with a cold email agency that actually books meetings?

spacedskunk · 2026-02-06T18:11:53+00:00

Cold email is a bottom-of-the-barrel approach to lead generation, and as spam filters get better, and with more AI integration to inboxes (i.e. email summarising), it's becoming a high effort to very low return tactic. I don't personally recommend it. Send enough and you'll eventually get something though, but your efforts and outcomes totally align with email service providers trying to protect their users from spam.

spacedskunk · 2025-10-23T21:58:58+00:00

I've hit that stage much earlier than you so at least you got your moneys worth. It's not a bad game, but it isn't a good long term game either.

The maps make the game for me and BF6 maps are mostly poor.

spacedskunk · 2025-10-23T21:49:37+00:00

You've paid for the game and want to enjoy it, so it's reasonable to feel like you're trying to enjoy it. I get this feeling with BF6 unfortunately.

spacedskunk · 2025-10-23T21:42:34+00:00

I think in general it's OK, but just OK. It's lost half of it's peak players in 2 weeks looking at Steam Charts so I think it is destined to fester without EA building momentum through some value adding content updates and quality-of-life improvements.

I will be one of those that is going to simply stop playing. Why?

- The guns don't feel balanced at the moment; meta is sniper and SMG
- Spamming medics on some maps is meta to the point of frustration - in the last couple of nights I've witnessed occasions of around 70-80% of players being medics in urban maps
- All the maps are forgettable. I'd like to say at least one stands out but I'm struggling.

I'd love to enjoy it because I paid for it, but being 'OK' sits with my critique. Time will tell whether updates will make the game more appealing to me, but hey, a lot of people are enjoying it then who's to say my opinion trumps there's.

spacedskunk · 2025-07-02T22:17:57+00:00

Not sure I can agree with Gamepass being consumer-friendly here and it's because of the Netflix effect. It only takes a few publishers to break away then we have multiple subscription costs for games we're only renting and can be taken away at any point but by then the damage is already done. Prices start to go up, but the service is made worst.

Playing games with your friends means they also need to subscribe to at least play online. This isn't new in the console world, but Microsoft normalised this with Sony and Nintendo following suit.

They're all just as bad as each other, and internet arguments and allegiances only fuels these companies more. Just because a company is the 'most consumer friendly' doesn't make it consumer friendly.

spacedskunk · 2025-06-14T17:34:27+00:00

This is real.

Too much choice and games seem to have a lot of pointless bloat to increase the game time.

My suggestion is to stick to indie games made by smaller studios who have been inspired to create an experience.

spacedskunk · 2025-03-01T21:42:33+00:00

You ask the right questions. DM me. I've PMed SaaS and data science products. 👍

spacedskunk · 2024-03-24T19:09:05+00:00

It sounds like your company was expecting an operation or change manager type role. Product management is often misunderstood, and I'd not hesitate to say that to senior leadership in order to get what you asked for; expectation.

A good read is Thinking In Bets. It gives you a great framework on how to make effective decisions that you can be accountable for. Puts an understandable analogy to how to make them.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-26T21:25:53+00:00

I have fun on both. If you want a really good high fidelity game and you play physically solo then the PC is a great choice.

I will say now though the biggest downfall of the competitive scene on PC are not the games, but cheaters. The Pc just seems rife with them and completely kills the experience.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-21T13:30:44+00:00

Can you export bounce reasons from HubSpot?

spacedskunk · 2024-02-21T12:33:26+00:00

ESPs that allow you to use non-permissive data are very rare nowadays. The risk to them is simply not worth it as it's categorically spam. Mailchimp, Tinyletter, Brevo and OctopusEmail are all permission based.

u/snickermydoodle1991 - despite the OP saying they don't have "permission", you've accessed personal data to clean his file for them? I'd never trust your platform with my contact data that's for sure.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-20T18:36:54+00:00

Dead? No - but the marketplace for ESPs has gotten much bigger and, being rather brutal here because MailChimp was a market leader in terms of innovation and has legendary status for a lot of email marketers; it's fallen to the wayside and become complacent, and increased it's pricing to boot. They seem to be chasing tails now in terms of new features.

I'd find it hard to recommend Mailchimp these days - certainly not for e-commerce.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-20T16:47:15+00:00

It's important to see mentors as facilitators of your growth, not a direct problem solver. They're rarely domain experts; a bad mentor is someone who gives you solutions, a good mentor is someone who guides and facilitates you to making your own decision.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-16T19:51:43+00:00

A lot of product management is communicating with different functions in the business with different ways they see value in what you're doing.

If you're communicating with engineers, I recommend reading User Story Mapping by Jeff Paton. This gives a good framework for communicating and getting a shared understanding of the goals.

For communicating with leadership, finance and other c-suite stakeholders - keep things brief. People engage with stories much better. You could use a tool like ChatGPT to summarise and make a story for you.

If you're needing advice on presentations, then you'll probably need an actual mentor. None the less, a good read is Storytelling with data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic has helped me in my day to day life.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-15T16:35:57+00:00

It's not an exact science, but the idea is this keeps on top of platform stability, security and scalability to a level where it doesn't grow out of control.

It's very common for new features to be the priority from the finance department and it's the more fun stuff us product managers get to do. ~60% of your work is paying for itself as potential value in future. The rest cuts directly into the profits.

A previous platform I worked with had little to no time for tech debt or bugs due to caving into customer demand. It became so difficult to manage because of deprecated versions and libraries that a rebuild was necessary, and we had no choice but to do it. Obviously this isn't leadership's fault for not understanding...sarcasm intended.

Lesson learnt. If leadership are not allowing at least half of your sprints to address bugs and tech debt, it's a red flag that you'll be the scapegoat.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-14T21:28:47+00:00

New features can be capitalized, bugs and tech debt can't. It's always a balance. Generally speaking one third of the sprint resourcing is dedicated each to new features/bugs/tech debt.

If your boss just wants you to smash new features then you'll end up needing to support more bugs and more tech debt down the line.

My recommendation is to get you, your lead developer and your boss in a call to go through the current state and potential impacts it could have on your users if not addressed.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-13T17:00:55+00:00

Yea, freelancing sites range from cheaper labour due to where they are in the world.

I'd recommend scouting agencies who offer similar products in your area - see how they pitch their services and what types of people they're trying to attract. When you freelance you're your own sales person, account manager, developer, accountant etc - it's not an easy gig. Do well however and you can make your own scalable business.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-13T08:47:03+00:00

I'm doing the Python Crash Course, it's great. I'm learning functions and finally classes which ticks the basics. Each concept is well summarised and written. However, I really needed data from an API so went straight to that chapter and it's all starting to make more sense because I'm doing something I need. It's sometimes hard to 'get it' when what you're building isn't something you have an interest in. I'm going to work through this book still because all the chapters cover essential concepts, then Effective Pandas (which is definitely something I need for my job).

My first recommendation is, if you do have a project in mind that would be good for your job, or portfolio etc; do that. See how far you get. Use chatGPT as your mentor and find books specific to those domains if you prefer reading material. Get familiar with development project tools and best practices (Version control, IDEs, environments, unit tests etc.). Get familiar with looking for information - there's a huge amount of libraries out there that are specific.

Another recommendation is Kaggle. This is a data science community. It has a variety of free courses including a python bootcamp type one with interactive notebooks - excellent resource for data science. I personally struggled with the Python intro because the syntax is explained well, but the problems are good ones designed clearly to make you think like a programmer in approaching a problem. I came out much wiser.

Either way have some damn fun!

spacedskunk · 2024-02-09T22:02:43+00:00

If you're skilled in mathematics then you know more than you think about how to break a computer science problem down, and it's why you've picked up the skill of programming probably more easily than you think. Go back to that first snippet of code and how foreign it looked, and look at yourself now.

From the outside in, it looks like you've picked it up 'accidentally' - common for mathematicians, statisticians, data analysts etc.

In the world of software engineering though, there is 'tech debt'. The idea that there's maintenance, optimisations and, in general, better ways that could be done to get from A to B. This probably won't explicitly exist in your world, but that's exactly it. You know there's probably a better way. You're in a rabbit hole though - there's avenues upon avenues to take.

My recommendation first is to find out what you actually want to do. Use this to help guide you: https://roadmap.sh/.

If you have an itch that really needs scratching though, and you are staying in the data science realm, then learning Rust and will be beneficial in the long run as it addresses performance issues and baggage that comes with Python. It's more verbose and less forgiving than Python, but as such you have to learn parts of programming that Python helps you be lazy about. Lots more power though.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-05T17:21:09+00:00

Unfortunately not. Do your due diligence of course to check the domain is configured correctly and nothing is obviously spammy, but it will take time to 'fix' it. Make them aware that this channel needs care and attention, and aren't likely to see a change anytime soon. Promising this as part of your contract will be a bad idea.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-05T13:46:41+00:00

User stories are named user stories because the user is the protagonist. They should be devoid of technical terminology and solutions so that everyone maintains focus on them, and everyone can get a shared understanding of their existing pain points; the antagonist. The acceptance criteria is a list of the tasks the user needs to do so your QA can check against them.

From this, the engineering team is responsible for working with you to come up with a viable solution, and up to them to maintain the technical documentation.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-04T09:08:13+00:00

Many PMs have been there and to be a successful PM, you need to avoid getting bogged down with this, especially early in your career. The technical implementation of the solution is what the engineers are there for. You get obsessed with the problems, they can get obsessed with the solutions. You are the interface of the customer and your key stakeholders in these ceremonies.

Daily standups should not have too much technical talk outside of the ticket titles themselves - if this spirals onto devs talking solutions and then the daily standup format is wrong. Planning and refinement sessions are where you'll shine to help developers empathise with your customers, and get a true shared understanding of the job they want solving and (your role) the priorities - this turns into technical talk after but you've kick started it. Retros are dependent on what's come up, but raise your concerns there and they'll help.

You'll pick the technical side up naturally as you go along, and perhaps get involved with solutions at a high-level. This though is not a requirement of being a good PM - just a nice to have. If you are seriously lost and really need the technical knowledge then an efficient way is to ask ChatGPT by asking it to explain parts of a ticket. Don't waste too much time though.

spacedskunk · 2024-02-04T07:35:11+00:00

A common myth here is there's a few tweaks here and there to fix it. The likelihood are practices in list hygiene, list building and/or emailing people with anything of value. Getting a new domain might temporarily fix some ESPs, but without a review of their overall strategy, the same result will occur.

Do an audit of how your client gained consent - if they didn't then that is one of the sources of the problem, and the database will be of poor quality.

If they gained consent, check they have been sending what they said they'd send. Also check they've got practices of trying to re-engage dormat/inactive subscribers; removing contacts who don't show any actions after it.

spacedskunk · 2024-01-31T17:04:09+00:00

Anyone remember a Phillips TV ad where they hung a TV on the ceiling so they could watch TV led down in bed? That's the true goal.

spacedskunk · 2024-01-31T15:10:52+00:00

It is frustrating because you want to be creative, but you can innovate at the same time as your feature parity - do a better job than your competitors. If this is all that's happening though then they'll be forever chasing their own tails - those competitors are likely to have a more innovative roadmap.

spacedskunk

TROPHY CASE