"Ask Me Anything" with Product School's Lead Instructor & Facebook’s Product Manager

Jake Strich

Campus Director @ Product School

jake@productschool.com

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` Who’s all here??

● Product Managers

● Software Engineer

● Hardware

● Business

● Design

● Misc.

` Who’s all here??

● Startup: 1-50 people

● Small: 50-300

● Medium: 300-500

● Large: 500-1,000

● Enterprise - 1,000+

Upcoming Courses in Silicon ValleyTuesdays and ThursdaysApril *SOLD OUT*

SaturdaysMarch 4 - April 22*SOLD OUT*

Meet Tonight’s Speaker

Inbal Cohen

Product Manager @ Facebook

Previously PM @ Amazon

Israeli Army veteran

University of Virginia MBA

Q & A

What is Inbal’s definition of Product Management?

- Liaison between Business & Engineer- CEO or Owner of Product- Gathering requirements from

customers, business side- Product Strategy - what should be

developed, execution of strategy- Prioritization- ‘Influence without authority’

What makes a Good vs. Great PM?

- Best Product Managers: ambiguous problems into tangible plans

How did you become a product manager?

- Inbal’s story- Israeli Army, worked as software

engineer- Managed team of product managers

- Inbal: Diverse backgrounds, multiple paths to PM

- Taking on more responsibilities, getting recognized for their work by managers

- Inbal: Think broadly about what you’re doing

- Ask your PM for projects

What are the differences between Project and Product Mgmt?

- Project Manager - the ‘How’, coordination, execution, shipping deliverables, technicalities of getting work done

- Product Manager - the ‘What’, responsible for results, providing direction for team, shipping products

How does Marketing work with Product Management?

- Role of PM is to utilize knowledge on team to build right product

- Marketing team: opportunity to grab market share

- PM: this is where we’re best position based on talent, technology, etc.

- The one making the decision on where to go with product

What did you have to unlearn to become a Product Manager?

- Doing all of it on your own- Learn to delegate- Don’t micromanage

Facebook vs. Amazon, how do they compare?

- Amazon: hires business people for PM roles

- Bay Area market prefers technical backgrounds for PM, varies by role and company

- Facebook: prefer technical background for PM roles

- Caveat of people with varied backgrounds- Daily work: Product team is on same side

- KPI’s defined by success of team

What happens when product or feature fails?

- Assessment of PM - PM’s get credit for product success, take

responsibility for product failure- Amazon: new product, 9 months later

shuts down- VP got fired- Too long before showing results- Team realigned within org, moved onto next

project- Viability: is this product going to work?

How do you know when you’re on the cusp of critical mass?

- ‘That’s why PM’s make the big bucks!’- MVP: finding market fit quickly- Fail quickly: asking really hard

questions..if this works then what? - ‘Where do we go from here?’ - Leverage your team to maximize results

of product

For PM: how do you persuade your bosses?

- Company vision and goals- Org

- ‘How does this product get us there?’- Audience

- Type - Logical, Data, Emotions, Intuition

How do you manage working on a product that you know is going to fail?

- @ Amazon, Inbal worked with Principal PM, wanting to work with him on Strategy

- Show your way of thinking before, during, and after the project

How to transition from QA to Product?

- Facebook: all about initiative- Engineer take part in product

discussions- Research session with customers

What are tools you use for data and metrics?

- Facebook uses internal tools- Ask the right questions, and how to

answer them- Tools are similar across every company

What’s the Facebook PM hiring process?

- Three tracks:- RPM- General Product Manager

- Two phone interviews- Product sense: Design, Decisions, Prioritization- Execution: Metrics, Questions to ask (Data),

Goalsetting- Three onsite interviews

- Product Sense- Execution- Leadership and drive: hardships, motivation,

behavioral- Specific-role PM

- Interview with team, e.g. Facebook’s Games

How do you choose between different priorities?

- Depends- Tradeoffs: e.g. investing time and

technical debt into one feature vs. another… is it worth it?

- No right answer- ‘There’s no way Marketing will let this ship’

What does your typical day look like?

- Varies by team- PM’s can work on customer-facing or

internal products- Can work on their own or with a huge

team- Checking dashboards

How does idea start?

- Top-down: strategic initiatives- E.g. Presenting to Mark

- Autonomy: self-started by PM- Amazon vs. Facebook = similar in how

to build/recruit team- More often teams are already

established

Do you have any examples of roadmaps?

- Facebook: 6 month roadmaps- No organized template- Press release

How much data are you leveraging at Facebook?

A LOT!!!!!!!!!!@Facebook:

- Upside: easy to track, find metrics- Downside: paralysis by analysis, ‘data

will tell us what to do’, forgetting about intuition

Interpreting data is just as important as the data sets themselves

You’ve done everything you can to be a PM, what makes the cut?

- Do people around you trust you? Is someone rooting for you?

- Internal transfer @ Facebook goes through same process as external, except they are much more familiarized with product, team, etc

- Interviews are objective as possible - knowledge, ways of thinking

Do you need a diverse (international) team to build good products?

- @Facebook: diverse mindsets- Gender, country, background, etc

How to collaborate with other PM’s on different product lines?

- Relationship building- Understanding each team’s needs- What’s more important for Org? - @Facebook: bootcamp, meeting PM’s in

free time before she needed anything

What are internal products at Facebook?

- Data - Project- Test- HR- Jobs- Infrastructure/Technical, e.g. FB Ads

Upcoming Workshops

March 1: Growth, explained by Zynga’s Director of Product