ask me anything with linkedin's senior product manager

/Productschool

@ProductSchool

/ProductmanagementSV

November 30th, 2016

Agenda● Welcome!● AMA w/ LinkedIn Senior PM - Naman

Goel

Who’s here?

Company size (no. of employees)

1-10

10-100

101-499

500-1000

1000+

Who’s here?

Role

Product ManagersSoftware Engineers Project ManagersDesignersConsultantsHardware EngineerMisc.

Upcoming Classes

Santa ClaraWeeknight cohort:

November 29 - February 2Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30pm to 9:00pm (sold out)

Weekend cohort:December 3 - February 11

Saturdays from 9:30am to 3:30pm (1 spot left!)

Apply Atwww.productschool.com

Meet Your Instructors

Mohammad Musa

•Lead Product Manager @ Google

•VR Startup Founder

•3X Product School Instructor

Yotam Soen

•Sr. Product Manager @ eBay

•Director of Product @ Honeybook

•Returning Product School Instructor

Meet A LinkedIn Senior PM

www.productschool.com

Naman Goel- 5+ Product experience

- Led the build out of deep people-centric sharing experiences in Google Photos and the launch of Google Contributor

- Product management experience with LinkedIn, Google, Goldman Sacs.

http://contributor.google.com/

Question #1

HOW DID YOU BECOME A

PRODUCT MANAGER?



WHAT DOES A TYPICAL DAY LOOK

LIKE FOR YOU?

Question #2


WHAT MADE YOU TRANSITION TO A

PM ROLE?

Question #3

ADDITIONAL

Q & A By The

Audience



What are your biggest challenges?

Question #4

- Being able to take a step back from the day-to-day- Constantly asking, “what is going wrong? What can I do

better?”- Thinking about next steps, approach in product cycle- How involved to get in various aspects of product cycle?

- E.g. working with UX designer closely on wireframes.- How much you go with flow and how much you take a step

back?


How balance technical v/s

nontechnical teams?

Question #5

- Product Manager needs to understand how much support each team needs- E.g. Engineering team is weak and needs technical

direction. PM invests his or her team in this area to ensure the product is going in the right direction.


How did you get into Google?

Question #6

- Luck :D - Interviewed for engineering position while in grad school- Recruiter followed up every six months to check in- After getting product experience at Goldman, he decided to

apply for a PM role at Google on the 2nd time around. - Understanding what companies what from each product

manager


How to transition from finance to PM?

Question #7

- Financial service industry & culture - dealing with huge sums of money so need to be exact and no experimentation

- On other hand, Google is mostly an experimentation lab- Failure is accepted at Google, as long as you learn from it- How much experimentation does this job allow?- Seeking out mentors, experienced folks in that role who

understand company and function deeply


What was your first 6 months at Google

like?- Similar to challenges- How not to get fired in first 90 days!- Financial > Google, immediately understanding Company’s mission- Meeting as many people as he could to understand Company as best

as possible- ‘I’m facing this issue in my role, how would you do it if you were in

my shoes?’- What does mission mean for the company? Product’s vision?

- What do I need to do?- Google - Engineering-driven culture

- How much involvement do engineers have in the process?- Design is important to pick up as a PM

- usually you have less designers than developers on the team- user empathy, helps with product decisions, how design works &

design decisions should be

Question #8


If you were to design a crash course, what

resources would you include?

Question #9

- What skills do you already have? What’s the skill gap? - Top skill - user empathy

- understanding who is going to be your user group- understanding which user groups exist

- E.g. designing a Macbook for global users vs US users- What are the other things you want to do with users?

- Technical skills - going deeper into how technology works, domain space, trends in that space

- Design - philosophy, wireframing, mockups & design principles- PM influencers - Andrew Chen (Uber/Growth), Ken Norton (Google

Ventures), Josh Elman (Greylock Ventures), Open PM (online aggregate of PM resources)


What is the career trajectory of PM?

Question #10

- Responsibilities of PM from beginning vs later in career- Product strategy for a lagging product line- Associate PM given a product feature, not the whole product

- E.g. Youtube suite of products vs. sole feature or product line

- Sr. PM’s handle entire product of company or major product lines, e.g. Sr. PM at PayPal managing entire PayPal international payments product vs Associate PM reporting on feature of int’l product

- Group PM’s manage product managers- setting quarterly/yearly objectives (ROI, user growth%,

etc)


What do you look for in job applicants?

Question #11

- Linkedin’s philosophy of ideal candidates- varies on the role

- Professional experience- has launched stuff before

- Entrepreneurial - pursued ideas to concept- learn from failings

- Did you work on anything outside of your current role? - ‘What have you built?’


How would I prioritize

experienced candidate vs recent

grad?

Question #12

- Resume reflects personality- entirety of what this person has done

- What has this person done outside of their normal duties? - Above and beyond the line of duty, how did you

impact a milestone?


How do you bring Google culture of

experimentation & innovation into finance?

Question #13

- experimentation and innovation in finance is hard, because of the fact they are dealing with money

- innovation can happen in the processes- E.g. HFT lag time to process orders, level out

playing field- Personal finance - opportunities for innovation- Banking, set & heavily regulated not as likely to

innovate


How to make feature decisions @ LinkedIn?

Question #14

- Incremental improvements for larger set vs big improvements for smaller set- Metrics defined at LinkedIn, Google- Define strategy - where company will be in

1,3,5 years?- Success metrics - KPI’s

- E.g. incremental improvement for 5MM users or feature that increases ROI- looking back at strategy and defined

success metrics- Metrics


What are examples of KPI’s?

Question #15

- LInkedIn’s metric, e.g. - # of users on LinkedIn

- DAU, MAU, etc- Revenue metric


How do you prioritize outside-of-

the-box ideas for company?

Question #16

- 70-20-10 ideas prioritization

- 70% - things that align with LinkedIn’s vision- 20% - 10x, moonshot ideas for long-term vision- 10% - crazy/viral, e.g. LinkedIn Antarctica, limited or

no internet access


How do you pitch your ideas at

LinkedIn?

Question #17

- Writing the story of your idea- Frameworks

- e.g. Press release for your product BEFORE iteration/release - headlines, fill in the details- forces you to explore the idea further

- e.g. VP Product @ LinkedIn- pitch in person, then follow up via email

- Wide acceptability of idea, get people aligned with your vision/excited to start working on the product

- Core of being a great PM - sell a very good story- Yahoo! hackathons


Where do you find solutions to big

challenges facing LinkedIn?

Question # 18

- If this product didn’t exist, and I build it from scratch, what would the MVP have today?

- User empathy- meeting with teams to test hypothesis- testing with user groups


How important is business acumen for

PM?

Question #19

- understanding unique value you bring to the table- Product vision & strategy

- user story- coordinating with cross-functional teams to see where they need

help to ship the product - How does revenue, P&L impact your product? More important than

knowing specific business terms


How important is technical

background?

Question # 20

- Naman hasn’t written any code in his PM career, even at Google!

- Depends on the product- E.g. VMware vs. Cisco- Youtube, understanding how video streaming

works- API PM’s need to be technical, but consumer-

facing PM’s not so much


How did you prepare for your Google

interview?

Question #21

- Understanding product manager role is all about- user empathy- storyteller- your superpower

- What questions would be expected of me?- e.g. What should Samsung do next after Note 7?

- More structured responses so interviewer understands your story, thought process

- Cracking the PM interview by Gayle Laakman McDowell & Jackie Bavarro


Does it make sense to incorporate the

story for all aspects of PM?

Question #22

- Business - impact, ROI, strategy- Technical - impact on product architecture


What is the toolbox for PM’s?

Question #23

- You as being the user - testing product once it’s built

- Design - Balsamiq, InVision, Proto.io, Sketch or Post-it notes >> mockups/wireframes

- Data - Optimizely, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Tableau (visualization)

- PM - usertesting, uservoice


How to deal with opposing points of

view?

Question #24

- Do you have strong opinions? - Conviction of your beliefs, and flexibility in

compromise- Understand other person’s perspective

- try to ask questions until they run out of answers or you become convinced by their answer

- Ken Norton - Weekly Hell of PM - the other people on your team disagreeing with you! - arriving at common ground to keep the team

moving- e.g. engineering team not buying into your idea


How do you find established user

base to test?

Question #25

- Users who would be early adopters- enthusiastic to use your product

- E.g. going to middle schools and asking students to test out app- creating a test group


How has Microsoft’s acquisition of

LinkedIn affected the product vision?

Question #26

- Wait and see - Currently running independently


Roadmap hijacking, what are first 3 or 4 questions to keep

your roadmap intact?

Question #26

- User empathy, true north metrics to come to conclusion

- How is this helping our company’s strategy? - Which hypothesis will have greatest effect on

metrics? - Strong opinions, weakly held


What methods allow you to stay intune with user needs?

Question #27

- App reviews- How to find users at the right time

Upcoming Classes

Santa ClaraWeeknight cohort:

November 29 - February 2Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30pm to 9:00pm (sold out)

Weekend cohort:December 3 - February 11

Saturdays from 9:30am to 3:30pm (1 spot left!)

Apply Atwww.productschool.com

Upcoming Workshops

Santa Clara

Dec 7: How to Solve a Communication Breakdown in Product Management

Dec 14: "Ask Me Anything" with Product School CEO: How to Become a Product Manager

https://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=28773465209




APPLY AT

productschool.comOR

Let’s talk :)

Email: [email protected]

http://www.productschool.com/calendar

ask me anything with linkedin's senior product manager

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