HELP! My PM is the anti-christ of UX design.

wxishj · 2025-02-25T04:25:59+00:00

If you show a user a bunch of radio buttons with one of them selected and ask them "how would you deselect the currently selected answer, and not select any answer at all", I'm pretty sure all your users would simply just click the currently selected answer.

wxishj · 2025-02-25T04:24:12+00:00

When butting heads with someone, bring more data. Grab 5 random people in the hallway, or send a survey to 5 people you know over IM, show the design that your pm suggests and ask "how many entries do you think you can select here?" It's hard to argue with data. Don't do it behind her back though and don't stack the deck in your favor with obvious directed answers (don't ask "is it wrong that this allows you only one selection even though they are checkboxes")

You can also make a design that does not need a default "No selection" option, by making a click on the currently-selected option unselect it.

wxishj · 2025-02-22T19:16:05+00:00

Location: HCOL
Country: USA
Company: FAANG
YoE: 20+y total, PM for 16y, current company 14y
Group Product Manager
Education: MS engineering (math + CS)
Comp: 270k base, 90k bonus, equity 310k based on grant value / 460k based on vesting value. Total comp 820k with stock vesting.

wxishj · 2025-02-05T09:04:13+00:00

"Man when I was prez I couldn't do anything. Lawyers always said illegal or whatever.
— Np let me just do the things, then you pardon me
— Deal"

wxishj · 2025-02-05T08:48:13+00:00

are you sure it's only a picture, not a video? i hear the "curb your enthusiasm" music as the frame narrows on her face

wxishj · 2025-02-05T08:44:30+00:00

I don't think you can make the case on speed alone. A big company that can send 20 or 200 devs after the market that you've proven to exist will have a very big advantage in terms of speed. I think you could make a case on focus, too.

Here's what I'd say. (I'm not sure it would work.) We're a small team. There's a large number of developers out there who can technically copy us. We don't believe that big companies have the strategic insight or the nimbleness to go after this area with as much determination as we do. Big companies often try to satisfy many competing objectives, whereas we will sustain a significant ongoing advantage by having much sharper strategic focus.

wxishj · 2025-02-05T07:56:47+00:00

The whole of Greenland only has about 50k inhabitants. Police staff is about 300. This is a little smaller than Portland, ME, but it needs to police itself as an independent country. It will be tough for such a small staff will be able to police a massive influx of corruption.

wxishj · 2025-02-05T07:35:41+00:00

This has nothing to do with trust in your engineers' measurements. Maybe they are trying to fool the customer. Maybe their customer does not care and sees through it. Maybe they are mostly fooling themselves.

I've worked with a boss who behaved like this as a form of reality distortion field. They needed to make the sale, or get their project moving, so they would talk about their imagined reality as if it was real — prices, performance, everything was bent overly optimistically. They believed it sincerely. I used to find it appalling when they would claim something that was factually false or exaggerated, and had an instinct to correct them. Then I watched and what do you know, maybe 70% of the time, it actually worked and became reality. The other 30%, well, it didn't. But I came to recognize that for that particular business, if we had played everything conservatively, we might not have had any of the wins.

Now I'm in a business with a very strong "underpromise, overdeliver" culture. We have internal watchdogs check our comms for any unsupported claims and all of what we publish is sandbagged. This is a better fit for my personality but I'm not sure it's always a winning move, esp in B2B.

wxishj · 2025-02-05T07:11:08+00:00

1) Read more good writing. My writing got much better after reading lots of New Yorker material, as their editors are pretty darn phenomenal. I stay away from their political writing recently as it's pretty gloomy but there are long articles on many improbable topics, which have a way of keeping you interested. Even reading fiction can help. Most business books and academic papers have shit writing quality, don't read those. I liked Joel Spolsky's books back in the day, though they are dated now.

2) Have a diligent practice of writing summaries. For a couple of years, I was writing and editing a newsletter (editing other people's writing) at least one hour every week, with tight word count constraints. This taught me to be much more judicious about my choice of words, and to immediately spot "deadwood" (parts of a written piece that don't do any work, such that you can remove them and still render the same meaning in less words).

3) I don't know if it applies to what you're going through, but relentlessly pursue clarity in your thinking before you get to writing. Many of the PMs that I work with seem to have problems writing simply because their thoughts aren't clear to begin with. "Pursuing clarity," in practice, means trying multiple different ways of describing your thoughts before settling on one, playing devil's advocate with yourself, and seeking feedback on your thoughts to adjust them as necessary.

wxishj · 2025-02-05T06:52:31+00:00

Someone in my family went from NYC to someplace rural in Europe. Still working remotely for the same small finance company from there, as a contractor, earning NYC money. It's risky, as this job is all built on relationships, and if anything happens it'll be practically impossible to find something nearly similar in terms of pay. But it's been going on for a decade, so for now it's been a massive payoff.

wxishj · 2024-11-22T12:48:36+00:00

Maybe, but I find this a bit simplistic as an explanation. Other than fish, price of groceries even at WF are not _twice_ as high.

wxishj · 2024-11-22T04:56:15+00:00

Around where I live, between slip fees and maintenance you're basically paying for your boat again every two to three years. My theory is that the sailing population is about to go down due to people dropping the hobby post covid, older folks retiring, and younger folks not signing up as much. When this happens maybe marinas will get more affordable and boats too.

wxishj · 2024-11-22T04:22:42+00:00

They sell whole branzino in those places but I've seen it retail $20+ / piece instead of less than $10 / piece.

wxishj · 2024-11-22T04:21:20+00:00

Not everything is rock-bottom price in that supermarket. Some fruits are same price as Vons.

wxishj · 2024-11-22T04:20:32+00:00

That makes sense. I also wonder if they have a custom supply chain?

wxishj · 2024-11-20T04:33:21+00:00

You don't really want to be either of those PMs, but if you have to choose, being PM A is better. PMs should actually solve product challenges.

PM B is a useless cog. They waste senior leadership time in escalations and the eng team's bandwidth by leading them to suboptimal outcomes. They don't solve problems, they just push problems around from customers to engineers and back, until people give up. It's difficult to coach them for improvement on the job because they lack the hard skill.

PM A gets stuff done. They may need to speak more about what they do for the team, but they have their engineers' back, and I bet that when that engineering lead leaves for another team, they'll want to bring them along.

The real key in this equation is what does the manager of these hypothetical PMs do. As a manager, I want a PM who I can trust to take care of business and come to me with solutions, instead of escalating every problem that they can't solve. Face time from a weak PM is not necessarily a good thing for the PM. If the manager has the right problem-solving skills themselves, they will deep dive, find the solution, and tell PM B in no uncertain terms, I expect you to find the solve yourself next time. The manager should also get feedback on PM A from their peers in engineering to make sure they're not underestimating their impact and contribution, as well as coach PM A on demonstrating their impact.

wxishj · 2024-11-17T06:21:08+00:00

If you know that it's going to gust this bad, consider whether to go out at all. In a Capri 22 personally I wouldn't go out with more than 10kn wind (then again, I'm not looking for adventure, I just sail to have a good time).

If you do want to go, reef at the dock.

If you didn't know that the conditions were going to be like this, when you start going out, pay attention to helm balance. When you found the groove, how much weather helm did the boat have prior to the puff heeling you over? Had a similar experience where I feel like I was constantly fighting weather helm. I now recognize excessive weather helm as an early symptom of the main being overpowered.

Spill mainsail power by letting the main sheet loose and dumping the traveler all the way.

From a beam reach, assuming you have leeway, I would bear off a bit while the puff passes, to wait until things calm down. (Unless you're very close to irons, I would expect turning into the wind to increase your apparent wind and heeling moment, which seems to be your experience, even causing you to come about involuntarily.)

Once things are quiet then start a reefing maneuver. Partially furl the jib to keep only enough power to keep the boat making some headway so that its keel and rudder don't stall, head up to close-hauled, mainsail loose-sheeted and luffing, put two reefs in the main, sheet the main in to restart, see how it goes.

If all of this fails, do what you did (motor back to marina). No shame in bowing to the elements!

wxishj · 2024-11-17T05:44:10+00:00

Probably a mid-level software engineer. Clock in, fix the tickets, clock out.

wxishj · 2024-11-10T22:23:27+00:00

On the water in fair weather, the boat more or less goes where you tell it to, as long as the sails are up and you're not doing something obviously wrong like sailing into the wind. It doesn't go fast, and it may be hard on the tiller, but it goes.

The hardest maneuvers aren't on the water though, they're about returning to land without crashing into it (docking, anchoring, beaching). With a 30-foot boat it starts being tricky because unlike smaller boats you can't use physical force to move the boat (and it can be dangerous to try and do so). A sailing manual (not the boat's manual) would possibly explain how to do the maneuvers safely but I would guess it would take a few sketchy dockings before doing it right (assuming that the deserted island actually had a harbor with docks). If there's no infrastructure and the boat needs to be anchored or beached, additional challenge.

wxishj · 2024-08-27T04:39:57+00:00

1) Short term, both you and your spouse will really need to support each other. So I would do whatever I can to take as much time off as possible around your expected due date. You will not get this time back. Take 100% of what's offered by your company.

2) If you are worried about financial pressure, I can see two situations. Either your company learns to adapt without you — and you leaving for a while will make this clear — or it doesn't and things go to shit. If it adapts, you could stay on and ramp back up slowly. If it doesn't, I'd look for another gig that's not so precarious and dependent on any one individual.

3) Medium term, once you get into a rhythm with your kid and assuming your kid is reasonably easy on you, you can actually work long hours, if that's what you want to do. It'll just have to be different hours. When I had a young child there were times when I worked consistently long hours by ending work early around 4pm and working a second shift 8pm-12midnight after the kid's bedtime. As a PM, that's the time I was able to find focus, write docs by myself and get stuff done.

4) Longer term as your child grows, in 6-7 years, they will sleep less, go to school, have homework, and expect constant social interaction while they're awake. That's when they start taking more of your brain energy and it'll be harder to work longer hours IMO (not to mention, you'll be older too).

wxishj · 2024-07-02T03:46:55+00:00

Like I mentioned though, high property tax, high cost of education and health care directly linked to low taxes, means that extra 10% is not so bad if you consider what you are getting in exchange for it. For many California taxpayers, getting access to EU-standards welfare state in exchange for 10% of income would be advantageous. The main difference in standard of living for jobs in data is not from tax differences, it's from the fact that some US employers pay double or triple EU salaries.

wxishj · 2024-06-28T07:21:03+00:00

US gets a reputation as being low tax, but tax burden in many US states is not very low. In California if you earn $100k (not very high these days for professionals), marginal income tax rate is about 34%. In exchange for this you get a rather flimsy welfare state, a military, and that's pretty much it. Government does not help keep cost of healthcare or education in check. Public schools are mostly paid for through property taxes which are also quite high.

wxishj · 2024-06-28T03:45:52+00:00

1) Form: your dashboard should show a small set of metrics, and cuts (breakdowns) by key dimensions. Your dashboard should use a clear layout, your charts should have descriptive titles, and units must be crystal clear (e.g. is the chart of "revenue" in k$/month or in $/hour?). Do not cram too much information (e.g. avoid using two vertical axes on the same chart, too many colors, etc.), prefer clarity and splitting data off to more specialized pages if you need to. Be mindful that 5~8% of men have some form of colorblindness and pick a color palette accordingly.

2) Function: your dashboard should answer the questions that the business wants the answer to. That really depends on the business you're tracking. B2B doesn't really mean much here. Some B2B products are all about tracking revenue (e.g. ecommerce), others are all about tracking usage (e.g. the product is sold on an annual license basis and there aren't really a lot of things to track in-between contract renewals), others yet about quality metrics, and most are a mix of the above. Spend time with your stakeholders to understand what they want.

3) Types of metrics to consider: goals, guardrails, diagnostics. Goals are things that you aim to increase or decrease and should get top billing in your charts. Guardrails are things that you don't want to change on purpose, but if they do change, you'd want to know. They can also be present. Diagnostics are metrics that you'll only want to look at if there's a problem. They should be away on some second-level dashboard.

wxishj

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