# How to work better with Product, as an Engineer with Ebi Atawodi

An episode of [The Pragmatic Engineer](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1769051199), 30 Apr 2025, 1 h 15 min.

Audio: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/162379789/b05ca5e204e02fdf535ee1ee829fcbc2.mp3

Supported by Our Partners • WorkOS — The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. • The Software Engineer’s Guidebook: Written by me (Gergely) – now out in audio form as well. — How do you get product and engineering to truly operate as one team? Today, I’m joined by Ebi Atawodi, Director of Product Management at YouTube Studio, and a former product leader at Netflix and Uber. Ebi was the first PM I partnered with after stepping into engineering management at Uber, and we both learned a lot together. We share lessons from our time at Uber and discuss how strong product-engineering partnerships drive better outcomes, grow teams, foster cultures of ownership, and unlock agency, innovation, and trust. In this episode, we cover: • Why you need to earn a new team's trust before trying to drive change • How practices like the "business scorecard" and “State of the Union” updates helped communicate business goals and impact to teams at Uber • How understanding business impact leads to more ideas and collaboration • A case for getting to know your team as people, not just employees • Why junior employees should have a conversation with a recruiter every six months • Ebi’s approach to solving small problems with the bet that they’ll unlock larger, more impactful solutions • Why investing time in trust and connection isn't at odds with efficiency • The qualities of the best engineers—and why they’re the same traits that make people successful in any role • The three-pronged definition of product: business impact, feasibility, and customer experience • Why you should treat your career as a project • And more! — Timestamps (00:00) Intro (02:19) The product review where Gergely first met Ebi (05:45) Ebi’s learning about earning trust before being direct (08:01) The value of tying everything to business impact (11:53) What meetings looked like at Uber before Ebi joined (12:35) How Ebi’s influence created more of a start-up environment (15:12) An overview of “State of the Union” (18:06) How Ebi helped the cash team secure headcount (24:10) How a dinner out helped Ebi and Gergely work better together (28:11) Why good leaders help their employees reach their full potential (30:24) Product-minded engineers and the value of trust (33:04) Ebi’s approach to passion in work: loving the problem, the work, and the people (36:00) How Gergely and Ebi secretly bootstrapped a project then asked for headcount (36:55) How a real problem led to a novel solution that also led to a policy change (40:30) Ebi’s approach to solving problems and tying them to a bigger value unlock (43:58) How Ebi developed her playbooks for vision setting, fundraising, and more (45:59) Why Gergely prioritized meeting people on his trips to San Francisco (46:50) A case for making in-person interactions more about connection (50:44) The genius-jerk archetype vs. brilliant people who struggle with social skills (52:48) The traits of the best engineers—and why they apply to other roles, too (1:03:27) Why product leaders need to love the product and the business (1:06:54) The value of a good PM (1:08:05) Sponsorship vs. mentorship and treating your career like a project (1:11:50) A case for playing the long game — The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode: • The product-minded software engineer • Working with Product Managers as an Engineering Manager or Engineer • Working with Product Managers: advice from PMs • What is Growth Engineering? — See the transcript and other references from the episode at https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/podcast — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@pragmaticengineer.com. Get full access to The Pragmatic Engineer at newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/subscribe

## Transcript

[0:00] SPEAKER_00: So you worked at Uber for a long time.
[0:01] SPEAKER_00: You worked at Netflix.
[0:02] SPEAKER_00: You're now working at Google.
[0:04] What are patterns you've seen truly standout software engineers
[0:08] be like across these companies?
[0:10] SPEAKER_03: So they are, one, students, they always be learning.
[0:13] SPEAKER_03: Two, they're willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands in it.
[0:16] And then this final piece,
[0:17] which is that the conviction,
[0:18] like they have a strong opinion.
[0:20] SPEAKER_03: They have convictions where they say like, this is the way.
[0:22] SPEAKER_03: They're not like wobbly, like, maybe whatever.
[0:24] SPEAKER_03: They're willing to have skin in the game,
[0:26] SPEAKER_03: but they're also willing to be wrong and be like,
[0:27] SPEAKER_03: you know what?
[0:28] actually i take it back actually i didn't realize and then of
[0:31] course there's some
[0:32] other tactical things like they're actually able to communicate
[0:34] i don't mean you
[0:35] need to be able to go on stage and present or whatever but you
[0:37] can just talk human
[0:38] to human you can have a conversation and because it's so
[0:41] important even if you're
[0:42] like shy or test turn you're able to kind of distill what
[0:45] you're saying into simple
[0:46] terms and the ones i love the most are the engineers that don't
[0:49] make you feel
[0:50] SPEAKER_00: Like an idiot.
[0:50] Do not be afraid to get your hands dirty and code because there
[0:53] are things that
[0:53] SPEAKER_00: apply to everyone.
[0:54] But the people who I've seen fail at teams who look good as
[0:56] they just talk the talk,
[0:57] SPEAKER_00: but they don't get involved for whatever reason.
[1:00] How do you get product and engineering to work really well
[1:02] together as one team?
[1:04] Ebi Attawodi is the director of product at YouTube and
[1:06] previously worked at Netflix and at Uber.
[1:09] SPEAKER_00: As it happened at Uber,
[1:10] SPEAKER_00: when I became an engineering manager,
[1:11] SPEAKER_00: Ebi was the first product manager I worked with.
[1:14] And we learned a lot from each other as our team went through
[1:16] the stages of forming,
[1:17] SPEAKER_00: storming and performing.
[1:19] SPEAKER_00: In today's episode,
[1:20] we cover how introducing things like a business scorecard and
[1:23] doing a state of the
[1:24] SPEAKER_00: union helped the engineering team take more ownership of the product,
[1:26] how it was surprisingly helpful for us to get to know each
[1:29] other outside of work,
[1:30] SPEAKER_00: and how this personal connection helped us work better together,
[1:33] SPEAKER_00: especially as team leads.
[1:35] SPEAKER_00: getting funding for engineering projects by secretly bootstrapping these,
[1:39] SPEAKER_00: then showing to the business how much value they were already generating,
[1:42] SPEAKER_00: patterns and anti-patterns of standout software engineers,
[1:45] SPEAKER_00: and many more.
[1:47] This episode is different from most podcast episodes in how
[1:49] you'll hear both Aby
[1:50] and myself talk a lot about our experiences and observations as
[1:53] we got better
[1:54] SPEAKER_00: working together.
[1:55] SPEAKER_00: And this episode is really about the learnings that both of us had.
[1:59] If you're an engineering leader or a product leader and want to
[2:01] hear about tactics
[2:02] SPEAKER_00: on how to better work with your other counterpart,
[2:04] SPEAKER_00: this episode is for you.
[2:06] SPEAKER_00: If you enjoy the show,
[2:07] please do subscribe to the podcast on any podcast platform and
[2:10] on YouTube.
[2:11] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the podcast.
[2:12] SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
[2:13] SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
[2:14] SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
[2:14] SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
[2:15] SPEAKER_03: Welcome too.
[2:17] SPEAKER_00: We did end up working really, really well together.
[2:19] I think it was the most productive working relationship that I
[2:24] had in my professional career.
[2:27] SPEAKER_00: And also, it's just very rare to see.
[2:29] SPEAKER_00: So we turned this small site in Amsterdam
[2:32] SPEAKER_00: We kept growing,
[2:33] SPEAKER_00: we kept getting more headcount,
[2:34] SPEAKER_00: and we did that because we kept delivering results.
[2:37] We had just outstanding business results in terms of how much
[2:40] additional money we
[2:41] SPEAKER_00: generated for the business.
[2:42] SPEAKER_00: Two years before, you just came to Amsterdam.
[2:47] SPEAKER_00: You joined as a new PM.
[2:49] SPEAKER_00: We didn't really know you.
[2:51] SPEAKER_00: Or trust me.
[2:52] SPEAKER_00: I was a new EM and my team was a bit burned from this massive project.
[2:58] SPEAKER_00: And we had a large backlog in front of us and it was just all messy.
[3:02] SPEAKER_00: We just had to build.
[3:02] SPEAKER_00: So our team, during Helix, the rewrite, we had a clear vision.
[3:07] But before that,
[3:08] most of my team,
[3:09] it was a new team,
[3:10] we called it Writer Payments.
[3:11] SPEAKER_00: But before it was called APAC Growth.
[3:14] SPEAKER_00: And actually,
[3:14] SPEAKER_00: in the news that I now have a growth article,
[3:18] SPEAKER_00: which we'll link in the notes below,
[3:19] SPEAKER_00: but the thing about the growth team is it's not long-lived.
[3:22] SPEAKER_00: It was just shipping individual projects.
[3:24] And so I had a team that kind of built a bunch of payment
[3:26] methods here and there.
[3:28] SPEAKER_00: Our roadmap was built, like 20 more.
[3:31] SPEAKER_00: There was no coherence.
[3:33] SPEAKER_00: And then you showed up.
[3:34] And then I'll be honest,
[3:35] I was a little upset because the first thing you started to do...
[3:38] SPEAKER_00: is you came to a meeting,
[3:40] SPEAKER_00: and this is just strange because I'm just saying how it was,
[3:43] SPEAKER_00: you shared how the product review meeting went really badly.
[3:47] SPEAKER_00: And I was like, what are you doing?
[3:49] SPEAKER_00: You're demotivating all of the engineers.
[3:52] SPEAKER_00: And the engineers were blinking.
[3:53] SPEAKER_00: They were like, what's going on?
[3:55] SPEAKER_00: You were saying, look, if we don't focus, we might not get headcount.
[3:58] SPEAKER_00: They were like, are we going to get fired?
[4:01] SPEAKER_00: And I was just sitting in that meeting.
[4:02] SPEAKER_00: I was the engineering manager of this team.
[4:04] SPEAKER_00: Again, a new engineering manager.
[4:05] SPEAKER_00: I was like, what is she doing?
[4:06] SPEAKER_00: What are you trying to do?
[4:09] SPEAKER_00: Are you trying to?
[4:12] SPEAKER_00: And that was that.
[4:13] SPEAKER_00: That's how it started.
[4:16] SPEAKER_03: What product review is this?
[4:17] SPEAKER_03: Do you remember?
[4:18] SPEAKER_00: I think it was a pretty early one.
[4:20] SPEAKER_03: Was it the weekly review meeting that we had?
[4:23] SPEAKER_00: So it was the weekly meeting.
[4:25] SPEAKER_00: So we had a weekly team meeting and you attended.
[4:27] SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know until then,
[4:28] SPEAKER_00: by the way,
[4:29] that a product review existed because the previous product
[4:32] managers never told me
[4:33] SPEAKER_00: about this.
[4:33] SPEAKER_00: But you told me like, oh, I've just been at this monthly product review.
[4:37] SPEAKER_00: And here's what I presented and here's what I heard.
[4:39] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[4:40] SPEAKER_00: And you just gave us very wrong to us.
[4:42] SPEAKER_00: And you told us some kind of bad news about like how it's,
[4:46] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[4:46] SPEAKER_00: things are not looking good right now.
[4:48] SPEAKER_03: Which was a blessing.
[4:49] SPEAKER_03: It was always a blessing.
[4:50] SPEAKER_03: The candor is always a blessing and a curse.
[4:53] We both live in the Netherlands and people sort of say the
[4:55] Dutch are very direct.
[4:56] SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, they haven't met Nigerians.
[4:58] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[5:00] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but this is how it started.
[5:01] SPEAKER_00: So I was blinking and I think afterwards I pulled your side.
[5:05] SPEAKER_00: I asked you, are we on the same team?
[5:07] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
[5:09] SPEAKER_03: And I think we kept stepping on each other's toes as well.
[5:13] SPEAKER_03: I remember that earlier on because,
[5:15] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[5:15] SPEAKER_03: I would present something or you would present something and I'm like,
[5:18] SPEAKER_03: and because you would also,
[5:19] SPEAKER_03: there was,
[5:20] SPEAKER_03: as it should be,
[5:21] SPEAKER_03: right?
[5:21] SPEAKER_03: But there was a gap in product.
[5:23] SPEAKER_03: at the time,
[5:24] SPEAKER_03: you were stepping in and doing a bunch of things like,
[5:27] SPEAKER_03: remember the jelly bean cheat we had with the staffing,
[5:31] SPEAKER_03: which at the end we didn't have that,
[5:32] but like at the beginning it was so important to have context
[5:37] and like who is doing what.
[5:38] SPEAKER_03: Like I knew until today,
[5:41] SPEAKER_03: I still make a point of like,
[5:42] SPEAKER_03: who are the key engineers working on every effort?
[5:46] SPEAKER_03: And not just at like the EM, the reports into my director peer,
[5:50] SPEAKER_03: But like, who's the TL?
[5:52] SPEAKER_03: Who's the person like really under, you understand what I mean?
[5:54] SPEAKER_03: I don't feel, I don't hold back like needing to ping.
[5:59] SPEAKER_03: In fact,
[5:59] SPEAKER_03: We encourage,
[6:00] SPEAKER_03: as we used to do,
[6:01] putting everybody in the same chat space so that the
[6:03] conversation just flows.
[6:04] SPEAKER_03: So I'm literally seeing, oh, I'm blocked on the CL.
[6:07] SPEAKER_03: Like I can see it, right?
[6:09] SPEAKER_03: And I think that's just good practice to have this shared understanding.
[6:14] SPEAKER_03: But going back to the directness,
[6:16] SPEAKER_03: maybe knowing what I know now,
[6:17] SPEAKER_03: I've also tried to refine my approach to onboarding,
[6:22] SPEAKER_03: right?
[6:22] So there is an element of like,
[6:23] yeah,
[6:24] okay,
[6:24] you can be direct,
[6:25] but trust is given.
[6:30] SPEAKER_03: And then you earn more of it.
[6:32] SPEAKER_00: This episode was brought to you by WorkOS.
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[7:28] SPEAKER_00: What later happened actually turned out to be an amazing thing,
[7:31] SPEAKER_00: because before that,
[7:33] SPEAKER_00: what happened is none of the engineers,
[7:34] SPEAKER_00: and as an engine manager,
[7:35] SPEAKER_00: neither did I.
[7:36] SPEAKER_00: I didn't know a monthly product review existed,
[7:38] SPEAKER_00: that product managers went there and they presented their teams.
[7:41] SPEAKER_00: Also at Uber, product gave us headcount.
[7:44] SPEAKER_00: which was unusual, I think.
[7:46] SPEAKER_00: Maybe some companies worked like this.
[7:47] SPEAKER_00: So we were always dependent on product.
[7:49] And because of this,
[7:50] in hindsight,
[7:51] it would have been really important to know that it exists.
[7:53] SPEAKER_03: What's the perception?
[7:54] SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
[7:56] SPEAKER_00: What's product happening?
[7:57] SPEAKER_00: And you start to do this every month or so.
[8:00] You share it,
[8:01] and we start to understand,
[8:03] oh,
[8:04] what does product care about?
[8:06] SPEAKER_03: Right.
[8:07] SPEAKER_03: The product team is the combination of all the differences.
[8:13] SPEAKER_03: It's the edge.
[8:14] SPEAKER_03: Like when you say product, product is you too.
[8:18] SPEAKER_03: And that was something we really made a culture in our team.
[8:22] SPEAKER_03: Like product is all of us combined.
[8:24] SPEAKER_03: There's no, I am waiting for the PRD.
[8:27] SPEAKER_03: I'm blocked on product said this.
[8:29] And it's almost like a product said this and we think it's too
[8:32] much scope.
[8:33] SPEAKER_03: And that's not, you know, that is not a cohesive product team actually.
[8:38] Because again,
[8:38] if we were a startup,
[8:39] you would not be using that language.
[8:41] SPEAKER_03: You would not be saying, oh, product said.
[8:42] SPEAKER_03: You'd be going, wait, hold on, why are we doing that?
[8:44] SPEAKER_03: We have, you know, you would have skin in the game.
[8:47] SPEAKER_03: And so I think what it came down,
[8:49] SPEAKER_03: comes down to actually is,
[8:52] SPEAKER_03: one is there's this,
[8:53] SPEAKER_03: I think in big tech over time,
[8:55] SPEAKER_03: this belief that engineers,
[8:57] SPEAKER_03: some engineers want that,
[8:59] SPEAKER_03: but that engineers want to be shielded.
[9:01] SPEAKER_03: from the reality of what's going on.
[9:03] SPEAKER_03: But actually,
[9:04] if those engineers quit and went to a startup tomorrow to build something,
[9:07] they would want to look at the dashboards and see what was
[9:09] going on and how the
[9:10] SPEAKER_03: numbers were going.
[9:11] SPEAKER_03: They would want to know how much runway we have.
[9:13] SPEAKER_03: They would want to know if we're hitting the growth numbers.
[9:17] SPEAKER_03: They would want to know which round.
[9:18] SPEAKER_03: You would be as involved.
[9:21] SPEAKER_03: So why is it any different?
[9:22] SPEAKER_03: And so I think a couple of things happened that we were able to come to.
[9:26] SPEAKER_03: One is a fundamental belief, and it took us a while to get there,
[9:30] SPEAKER_03: but that actually we want the same thing.
[9:32] SPEAKER_03: And it,
[9:33] SPEAKER_03: It sounds obvious we're on the same team,
[9:35] SPEAKER_03: but actually sometimes I've seen product leaders and engineering leaders,
[9:40] SPEAKER_03: like PMs specifically.
[9:41] So I consider everybody in that group a product leader,
[9:43] the UX,
[9:44] UXR,
[9:44] data science.
[9:45] SPEAKER_03: But I see PMs,
[9:46] SPEAKER_03: Eng,
[9:47] SPEAKER_03: UX,
[9:48] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[9:48] SPEAKER_03: you see UX say like,
[9:49] SPEAKER_03: oh,
[9:50] SPEAKER_03: I would love to have more polish,
[9:51] SPEAKER_03: but Eng always cuts my scope.
[9:53] SPEAKER_03: Like the moment you start having those,
[9:55] does the UX person understand that there is literally a mission
[9:59] critical thing that
[10:00] SPEAKER_03: needs to ship?
[10:01] SPEAKER_03: And actually the polish might add two more sweet quarters.
[10:04] And I would actually love for the,
[10:06] like my UX partner now at Google is so good at it.
[10:08] SPEAKER_03: He's like, I'm not happy with the way that looks, but let's do that.
[10:11] SPEAKER_03: And there'll be a fast follow.
[10:13] SPEAKER_03: Because again, if that was a runway and you needed to ship the product,
[10:17] you would be like,
[10:18] is this good enough to get us customer love and viability and usability?
[10:24] SPEAKER_03: And you'd be able to balance that trade-off and you would ship it.
[10:27] You wouldn't hold it back because UX believes in Figma should
[10:30] look pretty and
[10:30] SPEAKER_03: engineering disagrees.
[10:31] SPEAKER_03: That's not how it works.
[10:33] SPEAKER_03: Same goes for Eng, right?
[10:34] SPEAKER_03: You would not say, actually, I want to do...
[10:37] SPEAKER_03: the most elegant way to build this thing.
[10:39] I know there's tech debt that's gonna come in because you would
[10:43] be mindful of the
[10:44] SPEAKER_03: fact that actually there's a real business that has implications.
[10:47] So I think at the core,
[10:49] what we did very well was we also had lots of wins.
[10:52] We also had numbers,
[10:54] how many people were using payments,
[10:55] how many,
[10:56] the conversion rate.
[10:57] SPEAKER_03: but it's actually having a scorecard.
[10:58] We had that scorecard,
[11:00] which is a table with our P0 metrics as we would if we were a startup.
[11:04] SPEAKER_03: And we had the numbers that we cared about,
[11:06] SPEAKER_03: like the gross number,
[11:09] SPEAKER_03: the conversion rate,
[11:10] SPEAKER_03: the failed payments,
[11:10] SPEAKER_03: the cancellations,
[11:12] SPEAKER_03: et cetera,
[11:12] SPEAKER_03: percentage that was cash,
[11:14] SPEAKER_03: et cetera,
[11:14] SPEAKER_03: et cetera.
[11:15] SPEAKER_03: And so by making it feel more like a business,
[11:19] SPEAKER_03: So it's not like, you know, products are showing these bad things.
[11:24] SPEAKER_03: Actually, as a collective, we have a perception.
[11:27] SPEAKER_03: We have not hit our numbers.
[11:30] SPEAKER_03: You create this sort of ownership, going back to skin in the game.
[11:34] SPEAKER_03: And now you have engineers even coming up with ideas like,
[11:37] SPEAKER_03: we actually should create a web platform
[11:40] SPEAKER_03: because it will unlock gross bookings.
[11:42] SPEAKER_03: Because if you look at like DoorDash compared to Uber Eats,
[11:44] SPEAKER_03: I mean,
[11:45] SPEAKER_03: that came purely from two engineers on the team,
[11:47] SPEAKER_00: right?
[11:48] Maybe we can describe it because I'm not sure it'll be clear
[11:51] for everyone who's not been there.
[11:53] SPEAKER_00: Before,
[11:54] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[11:55] like we had engineering and we had product and we would have a
[11:58] shared weekly
[11:59] SPEAKER_00: meeting and,
[12:00] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[12:00] SPEAKER_00: the product manager would be there.
[12:01] SPEAKER_00: We would share...
[12:03] SPEAKER_00: Here's the progress on these projects, those projects.
[12:07] SPEAKER_00: Okay, that would be it.
[12:08] SPEAKER_00: And then we would talk a bunch,
[12:09] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[12:09] SPEAKER_00: the second half of the meeting will be about tech depth because it was,
[12:12] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[12:12] SPEAKER_00: it was a team meeting,
[12:13] SPEAKER_00: but the team was 10 engineers,
[12:14] SPEAKER_00: one product manager,
[12:16] SPEAKER_00: and one operations person who was usually quiet.
[12:18] SPEAKER_00: This was before.
[12:20] SPEAKER_00: This was before you joined.
[12:22] SPEAKER_00: And at the time,
[12:23] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[12:24] SPEAKER_00: most engineers on my team,
[12:25] SPEAKER_00: they were very,
[12:26] very interested and focused on paying down tech debt because we
[12:29] had so much.
[12:29] SPEAKER_00: It was just so painful.
[12:31] SPEAKER_00: Developer experience, improvements, etc.
[12:33] SPEAKER_00: You know, everyone was busy with that.
[12:34] And back then we weren't really cared about promotions because
[12:37] it wasn't the thing just yet.
[12:38] SPEAKER_02: Right.
[12:39] SPEAKER_00: But then you came in and you started to bring and we started to change.
[12:43] SPEAKER_00: So first of all,
[12:43] SPEAKER_00: you and me started as I was the engineering manager,
[12:45] SPEAKER_00: we started to talk a lot more.
[12:46] SPEAKER_00: Mm hmm.
[12:47] Like we actually had one-on-ones,
[12:49] which I never had before with my product manager.
[12:52] Like every week we would spend like 30 minutes of,
[12:54] you know,
[12:54] like what's on your mind?
[12:55] SPEAKER_00: And I would be like,
[12:56] SPEAKER_00: well,
[12:57] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[12:57] SPEAKER_00: there's this person on my team who's having,
[13:00] SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
[13:01] like some trouble and I'm working with them or like this
[13:04] person's doing great.
[13:05] SPEAKER_00: So like you actually learned like a lot about my team.
[13:08] SPEAKER_00: I actually learned a lot about what you were doing.
[13:10] Like,
[13:10] oh,
[13:10] we're having this review about headcount in a month and I don't
[13:14] feel we're ready.
[13:14] SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, can I?
[13:16] SPEAKER_00: help something.
[13:17] SPEAKER_00: So suddenly we started to do that.
[13:19] SPEAKER_00: Then on the team meetings,
[13:22] SPEAKER_00: there would be usually a section on product,
[13:25] SPEAKER_00: which would either be like,
[13:26] SPEAKER_00: all right,
[13:27] SPEAKER_00: here's what we're talking about,
[13:29] SPEAKER_00: the product side of things.
[13:30] SPEAKER_00: And initially it would start pretty soft.
[13:32] SPEAKER_00: So after that first one, it would just be a bit of introduction.
[13:35] SPEAKER_00: But our meetings would usually always start with product.
[13:39] SPEAKER_00: Like here's
[13:40] SPEAKER_00: Here's on the product side of things.
[13:41] SPEAKER_00: Here's the wins that we're seeing.
[13:43] SPEAKER_00: Here's what's working.
[13:44] Here's what we're working on with designers,
[13:47] any engineer who wants to be involved.
[13:48] SPEAKER_03: Results, objectives, challenges.
[13:50] SPEAKER_03: That was the format.
[13:51] SPEAKER_00: Yes.
[13:52] SPEAKER_00: That was a great format.
[13:53] SPEAKER_00: Which is an Uber thing, rock, yeah.
[13:54] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[13:56] SPEAKER_00: And then an interesting thing started to happen,
[13:58] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[13:58] SPEAKER_00: engineers eventually would start to chip in,
[14:01] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[14:01] like usually the schedule would have been like five minutes or
[14:04] 10 minutes of product,
[14:05] SPEAKER_00: five minutes or 10 minutes upgrade.
[14:07] SPEAKER_00: And often it would just stretch out because,
[14:09] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[14:09] SPEAKER_00: engineers on the team would be like,
[14:11] SPEAKER_00: oh,
[14:11] SPEAKER_00: what about that?
[14:12] SPEAKER_00: What if we did that?
[14:13] SPEAKER_00: Because you're like,
[14:14] SPEAKER_00: And then we got to the point where after a few months,
[14:17] SPEAKER_00: when the next half's planning was coming from product side of things,
[14:22] SPEAKER_00: actually some engineers got involved of like,
[14:24] SPEAKER_00: oh,
[14:24] SPEAKER_00: let's help define.
[14:26] SPEAKER_00: Like, how can I get this project prioritized?
[14:29] SPEAKER_00: And it was like,
[14:30] SPEAKER_00: well,
[14:30] SPEAKER_00: if any project that moves this or this and this impact,
[14:34] SPEAKER_00: in our case,
[14:35] SPEAKER_00: it was...
[14:37] SPEAKER_00: incremental growth bookings, so us making more money.
[14:40] SPEAKER_00: At some points,
[14:40] SPEAKER_00: we cared about rider growth in certain areas,
[14:43] SPEAKER_00: so we can lose money on riders,
[14:45] SPEAKER_00: but we just want to grow.
[14:46] SPEAKER_00: First riders, trend percentage, etc.
[14:49] SPEAKER_00: And engineers started to bring some ideas.
[14:51] And suddenly,
[14:52] it felt a lot less of like,
[14:53] oh,
[14:53] here's the list we need to take off,
[14:55] and let's
[14:56] SPEAKER_00: Let's just get through the stuff that we use so we get to the tech dump.
[14:59] SPEAKER_00: It was more about,
[15:00] SPEAKER_00: okay,
[15:00] SPEAKER_00: let's do the important stuff and let's figure out,
[15:02] SPEAKER_00: do we need to do this?
[15:04] SPEAKER_00: And suddenly it just felt a lot more like a startup inside a big company.
[15:08] SPEAKER_00: This was a $60 billion company at that point.
[15:10] SPEAKER_03: A couple of tactical things that,
[15:12] SPEAKER_03: not tactics,
[15:13] SPEAKER_03: I think actually strategic things that we did was,
[15:15] SPEAKER_03: do you remember State of the Union?
[15:18] SPEAKER_00: Yes.
[15:18] SPEAKER_00: Right.
[15:19] SPEAKER_03: I think State of the Union.
[15:21] SPEAKER_00: Can you describe because that's so unique.
[15:22] SPEAKER_03: It's funny because I'm about to do one right now at Google.
[15:25] SPEAKER_03: And I was like, we're going to do a State of the Union.
[15:27] SPEAKER_03: And I think after we had those,
[15:31] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[15:31] SPEAKER_03: those sessions and you and I met up,
[15:34] SPEAKER_03: I came to you and I said,
[15:35] SPEAKER_03: listen,
[15:35] SPEAKER_03: I'm going to take it.
[15:36] SPEAKER_03: I want to take a day off.
[15:37] SPEAKER_03: We're going to go into a room together.
[15:39] SPEAKER_03: We're going to plan a state of the union.
[15:42] SPEAKER_03: And when I had joined the team,
[15:44] SPEAKER_03: I'd had one-on-ones with a different...
[15:46] SPEAKER_03: So it's part of now my onboarding playbook.
[15:48] It was not a playbook then,
[15:49] but I call them conversations,
[15:51] comprehension,
[15:52] conviction.
[15:53] So when I joined,
[15:54] if you remember,
[15:54] I'd met different engineers one-on-one.
[15:57] SPEAKER_03: And I asked one of the questions,
[15:59] SPEAKER_03: my last question is,
[16:01] SPEAKER_03: if you were me just starting in this role,
[16:05] SPEAKER_03: what are three things you would focus on in the next 90 days?
[16:08] SPEAKER_03: And they, a lot of them came back and they talked about on call.
[16:12] SPEAKER_00: Yep.
[16:12] SPEAKER_00: Remember?
[16:13] SPEAKER_00: Do you remember?
[16:13] SPEAKER_03: Yes.
[16:15] SPEAKER_03: They came back and talked and I was like, in my head.
[16:17] SPEAKER_00: I'm so embarrassed about on call.
[16:18] SPEAKER_00: We had terrible on call.
[16:19] SPEAKER_00: I was like, I have nightmares about it.
[16:21] SPEAKER_03: From everything I've read, because I've never been a PM before.
[16:23] I was like,
[16:24] from everything I've read,
[16:25] this did not show up in my how to be a PM manual.
[16:29] SPEAKER_03: Like, how is on call happening?
[16:32] SPEAKER_03: Why do they expect me as a PM to do that?
[16:34] SPEAKER_03: But I recognized, I was like, oh, there's something remiss here.
[16:38] SPEAKER_03: So we then met up.
[16:40] And I can't remember the exact flow,
[16:42] but essentially the State of the Union had one.
[16:45] SPEAKER_03: how much we've accomplished.
[16:46] SPEAKER_03: And we had this graph where we showed how much incremental payments,
[16:50] SPEAKER_03: and it was the equivalent of some country in the Polynesian Islands.
[16:55] SPEAKER_03: Do you remember?
[16:56] SPEAKER_00: It was bigger than a country.
[16:57] SPEAKER_03: It was bigger than a country.
[16:58] SPEAKER_03: And we were like, we've had that much impact.
[17:00] SPEAKER_03: That was like the first slide.
[17:00] SPEAKER_03: I still remember that.
[17:01] SPEAKER_03: It was like green.
[17:03] And then we talked about like all the markets we had launched
[17:05] and all the payments.
[17:06] SPEAKER_03: So there were wins.
[17:07] And then we went into like,
[17:09] we had a team,
[17:11] we went into the dynamics of Uber and the markets.
[17:15] And I remember showing like gross bookings depending on market
[17:18] and first trips by
[17:19] SPEAKER_03: market and like the trends we were seeing that these markets,
[17:22] SPEAKER_03: Brazil,
[17:22] SPEAKER_03: India,
[17:23] SPEAKER_03: Bricks,
[17:23] SPEAKER_03: basically were starting to like take off and push.
[17:26] Like a lot of first trips were no longer happening in the US or UK,
[17:29] et cetera.
[17:30] And there were a lot of questions on that because that then
[17:33] gave them empathy for
[17:34] SPEAKER_03: why all these GMs are like,
[17:37] SPEAKER_03: you are holding me back by not allowing me to take payments.
[17:41] SPEAKER_03: And we ran some numbers on cash as well.
[17:43] SPEAKER_03: It was the first time we actually showed cash as a...
[17:47] SPEAKER_03: How much percentage of cash is leading to...
[17:50] SPEAKER_03: I mean,
[17:52] SPEAKER_03: in that context.
[17:53] Here's a fun fact,
[17:53] because it's been so many years and the numbers are now clearly
[17:57] out of date.
[17:57] SPEAKER_00: But I remember,
[17:58] SPEAKER_00: this is...
[17:59] SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure people talked about this,
[18:00] SPEAKER_00: but when cash hit $1 billion of run rate,
[18:03] SPEAKER_00: meaning on an annual basis,
[18:05] SPEAKER_00: $1 billion were...
[18:06] SPEAKER_00: Flowing.
[18:07] SPEAKER_00: We're flowing.
[18:08] SPEAKER_00: That team,
[18:09] SPEAKER_00: the team building Cash,
[18:10] SPEAKER_00: had one full-time engineer,
[18:12] SPEAKER_00: a half of data scientists,
[18:14] SPEAKER_00: and a half an engineering manager,
[18:16] SPEAKER_00: and a lot of operations people,
[18:17] SPEAKER_00: obviously.
[18:18] SPEAKER_00: But this team was begging to get headcount.
[18:20] And with $1 billion of run rate...
[18:23] They had to actually beat Uber Eats already,
[18:25] yeah.
[18:25] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[18:26] SPEAKER_00: They had such a hard time.
[18:28] SPEAKER_00: Well,
[18:28] SPEAKER_00: we had such a hard time,
[18:29] SPEAKER_00: because this was a team next to me in Amsterdam,
[18:31] SPEAKER_00: getting headcounts.
[18:31] SPEAKER_00: So it just blows my mind that this is possible.
[18:34] SPEAKER_00: These days,
[18:35] SPEAKER_00: I think,
[18:35] SPEAKER_00: if a startup hit,
[18:36] we're talking about startups who are hitting the AI startups
[18:40] $100 million of run rate,
[18:41] SPEAKER_00: et cetera,
[18:42] SPEAKER_00: which is incredible.
[18:42] SPEAKER_00: And they're valued at a billion, right?
[18:44] And obviously,
[18:45] they have 10,
[18:47] 20,
[18:48] something like that is still amazing.
[18:49] 30,
[18:49] But with one full-time engineer,
[18:49] 40,
[18:49] 100 people,
[18:52] we did a billion dollars,
[18:53] and we couldn't get headcount.
[18:54] SPEAKER_00: Yep.
[18:55] SPEAKER_00: And then eventually we got, but this was just, it showed me two things.
[18:59] SPEAKER_00: One, you can do amazing things with a tiny team.
[19:03] And sometimes,
[19:04] and one of the reasons we couldn't get it,
[19:09] we were a distributed site.
[19:11] SPEAKER_00: We just,
[19:11] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[19:11] the engineering manager and the product manager who was there
[19:13] couldn't really tell
[19:14] SPEAKER_00: a story.
[19:15] SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something that you help with later as well.
[19:19] SPEAKER_00: I think it just comes to show that when you're inside a company,
[19:22] especially if you're an entry manager or even a tech lead or a
[19:24] product manager,
[19:26] SPEAKER_00: you really need to tell the story of why your team exists,
[19:29] SPEAKER_00: how you're helping the business.
[19:31] SPEAKER_00: If you get more headcount, how can you help them more?
[19:33] And just as importantly,
[19:34] if they take away your headcount or get rid of a team,
[19:36] that can happen.
[19:36] SPEAKER_00: What will happen?
[19:37] SPEAKER_03: There's something,
[19:38] SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you remember this,
[19:39] SPEAKER_03: and this is one of the things that I think,
[19:41] SPEAKER_03: till date,
[19:42] SPEAKER_03: I will say,
[19:43] SPEAKER_03: is why I have so much respect for you.
[19:46] SPEAKER_03: So we didn't have cash, right?
[19:48] SPEAKER_03: We had provider payments.
[19:50] And,
[19:50] you know,
[19:50] Charles,
[19:51] who,
[19:51] by the way,
[19:52] deserves his own podcast,
[19:53] phenomenal leader.
[19:54] SPEAKER_00: It's going to come on here.
[19:55] SPEAKER_03: But we had, oh, fantastic.
[19:57] I feel like I need to do the,
[19:58] you know,
[19:59] like on Diary of CEO,
[20:00] where you leave a question.
[20:00] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[20:01] SPEAKER_03: I feel like I need to leave a question for him.
[20:03] But anyway,
[20:04] so he had basically that site,
[20:07] right,
[20:07] from an engineering perspective.
[20:09] SPEAKER_03: And I think one of the things we did,
[20:10] SPEAKER_03: so I went in,
[20:11] SPEAKER_03: like at this time,
[20:12] SPEAKER_03: the PM for cash was not reporting into me,
[20:14] SPEAKER_03: but we went in a room.
[20:15] SPEAKER_03: I remember it was the sleeping room,
[20:17] SPEAKER_03: the nap room,
[20:18] SPEAKER_03: because it was the only room you could get for that long.
[20:20] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no nap, we used it for meetings.
[20:22] SPEAKER_03: Right, for meetings.
[20:23] SPEAKER_03: And it was me, him, and the data science lead, also Dutch guy.
[20:28] SPEAKER_03: And we just jammed about...
[20:30] SPEAKER_03: sort of cash and its problems.
[20:33] SPEAKER_03: And we realized, we grouped them into like basically three buckets.
[20:36] One was basically do the right thing,
[20:37] like trust and safety and the issues.
[20:39] SPEAKER_03: The second one was actually,
[20:40] there were a bunch of things on cash that actually were because
[20:43] of the way the
[20:44] SPEAKER_03: system was designed.
[20:45] SPEAKER_03: So Uber systems did not have to think about marketplace systems.
[20:49] Uber's marketplace systems did not have to think about low
[20:52] latency for payments
[20:54] SPEAKER_03: because guess what?
[20:54] SPEAKER_03: You'd walk out the car and you could afford to have
[20:58] SPEAKER_03: two minutes before your payment goes through.
[21:01] SPEAKER_03: But with cash, you're sitting in the car.
[21:04] And actually,
[21:04] the way the business had told the story was,
[21:07] there's a problem with cash.
[21:08] SPEAKER_03: There are all these issues with cash.
[21:09] SPEAKER_03: There are all these whatever.
[21:10] SPEAKER_03: But actually, when you broke it down, it wasn't actually cash.
[21:12] Cash was just showing an underlying issue of a latency issue
[21:16] with the marketplace team.
[21:17] SPEAKER_03: So actually,
[21:17] SPEAKER_03: that gave us a narrative to say,
[21:19] SPEAKER_03: hey,
[21:19] SPEAKER_03: there are some P0s that need to be fixed at the business level.
[21:22] SPEAKER_03: Upfront pricing was another one, right?
[21:25] But then it was the final group of things was actually cash
[21:27] itself and improving
[21:28] SPEAKER_03: the experience.
[21:29] SPEAKER_03: But something you did,
[21:30] SPEAKER_03: and you maybe don't remember this,
[21:31] SPEAKER_03: was we then put,
[21:32] SPEAKER_03: we said,
[21:32] SPEAKER_03: let's put all the headcount back into a pot.
[21:36] SPEAKER_03: And we all collectively agreed that cash was the number one thing.
[21:39] SPEAKER_03: And you actually did.
[21:40] SPEAKER_00: Charles did that.
[21:40] SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah.
[21:42] SPEAKER_00: But I was there.
[21:43] SPEAKER_03: But you didn't fight.
[21:44] SPEAKER_03: You were like, I agree and it's the right thing to do.
[21:46] And I remember we're sitting in that big room and some of your
[21:49] engineers moved over
[21:50] SPEAKER_03: to the cash team to fund that effort because we're like,
[21:53] we're not going to get the wins and quite the noise until we
[21:57] fund this effort
[21:59] SPEAKER_03: looking holistically.
[22:01] SPEAKER_03: But going back to,
[22:02] SPEAKER_03: so yes,
[22:02] SPEAKER_03: so going back to State of the Union,
[22:04] SPEAKER_03: the other thing that we did was,
[22:05] and I still find it hilarious that you agreed to do this at the
[22:09] time because I was,
[22:11] SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I knew what I was doing.
[22:12] SPEAKER_03: I was like, so this issue came up in my conversations about on-call.
[22:15] SPEAKER_03: Can we tell a story about on-call?
[22:17] And do you remember you were like,
[22:19] I'm going to go look up some,
[22:20] what do you want me to tell?
[22:21] SPEAKER_03: And we jammed on the topic and you were like,
[22:23] SPEAKER_03: okay,
[22:23] SPEAKER_03: I can tell the story around what's the source of the on-call.
[22:27] SPEAKER_03: And a big one was like flakiness and regressions, like the two chunks.
[22:32] SPEAKER_03: And that's how we prioritize some of that work.
[22:34] SPEAKER_03: So we had three things in our planning, in our weekly cadence.
[22:38] SPEAKER_03: And I really have become a bit obsessed with rhythms in teams,
[22:43] SPEAKER_03: because I think humans are hearts.
[22:45] SPEAKER_03: Things work in rhythms.
[22:47] And the more you have a rhythm that doesn't break,
[22:49] the more people are in a groove.
[22:50] SPEAKER_03: Right.
[22:51] SPEAKER_03: It's like if I start snapping and you can dance to my snapping,
[22:53] SPEAKER_03: you can now do funky things in the middle of the snapping.
[22:55] SPEAKER_03: But at least you know the steps and we all look like we're.
[22:58] SPEAKER_03: You can speed it up.
[22:58] SPEAKER_00: You can slow down.
[22:59] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
[23:00] SPEAKER_03: But still on the beat.
[23:01] SPEAKER_03: On the beat.
[23:02] And so one of the things we had with our rhythm was we had our
[23:06] one on one.
[23:07] SPEAKER_03: Then we would have.
[23:09] SPEAKER_03: I still have this dynamic, by the way.
[23:10] SPEAKER_03: I call it I call it like it's like zoom in, zoom out, zoom in.
[23:14] SPEAKER_03: And so I would we would meet you and I would talk.
[23:17] SPEAKER_03: We would also talk about personal stuff.
[23:20] SPEAKER_03: I remember telling you about my early dates.
[23:21] SPEAKER_03: I remember you were telling me about your wife starting to learn HTML.
[23:26] SPEAKER_03: We would talk about it before the kids.
[23:27] SPEAKER_03: We would talk about personal stuff.
[23:29] SPEAKER_03: And we had to also allow space for that.
[23:32] SPEAKER_03: Because sometimes it's like, oh, let's... Anyway, moving on to the topic.
[23:35] And it's like,
[23:35] actually,
[23:36] that stuff is important to understand the who behind the role.
[23:39] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there was a point where I felt that we got closer.
[23:43] Because,
[23:44] look,
[23:44] the way I looked at it,
[23:45] I'm just going to be honest,
[23:46] how I felt like...
[23:47] SPEAKER_00: I was there.
[23:48] SPEAKER_00: I was in this new manager role.
[23:49] SPEAKER_00: I had so many things to do.
[23:50] SPEAKER_00: I had stuff to do at work.
[23:52] SPEAKER_00: I was in a new country.
[23:53] SPEAKER_00: I had to take care of that stuff.
[23:55] SPEAKER_00: All the things.
[23:56] SPEAKER_00: I had a lot of... I was trying to keep the people happy on my team.
[23:59] I was trying to keep my leadership team happy because we had
[24:02] engineering managers.
[24:03] SPEAKER_00: Product was very separate.
[24:04] SPEAKER_00: It was a different organization.
[24:05] SPEAKER_00: And you came in.
[24:06] SPEAKER_00: We started to...
[24:08] SPEAKER_00: Initially, I was like, okay, what is this person doing?
[24:11] SPEAKER_00: And then I started to kind of understand,
[24:12] SPEAKER_00: but we kind of kept it at the like,
[24:14] SPEAKER_00: okay,
[24:15] SPEAKER_00: you're helping us.
[24:16] The way I was thinking,
[24:17] you're helping my team do better work,
[24:19] that's great.
[24:20] SPEAKER_00: But one breakthrough was we actually just went and grabbed dinner.
[24:24] SPEAKER_00: And it was supposed to be, I think, two hours.
[24:26] SPEAKER_00: I think we saved for a lot longer.
[24:28] SPEAKER_00: But I just got to know the person behind the product manager.
[24:33] SPEAKER_00: Which is my second principle.
[24:35] So principle number one is the roles are a construct and
[24:40] actually the magic happens.
[24:42] SPEAKER_03: Like Laurie,
[24:43] SPEAKER_03: a design manager that we got at the end,
[24:45] she always used to say the magic happens in the confluence of
[24:47] our differences.
[24:48] SPEAKER_03: And I've totally stolen that line because it's true.
[24:50] SPEAKER_03: Can you repeat that?
[24:51] SPEAKER_03: The magic happens in the confluence of our differences.
[24:54] SPEAKER_03: I think that's beautiful if you think about it, right?
[24:57] SPEAKER_03: Or you think about the Steve Jobs throwing rocks in a washing machine,
[25:00] SPEAKER_03: the more we tumble together,
[25:02] SPEAKER_03: the more you and I came out as like perfectly polished pebbles.
[25:05] SPEAKER_03: And actually,
[25:05] SPEAKER_03: if you think about that friction as something that's good,
[25:07] then actually we're polishing each other and we're getting
[25:09] stronger versus I think
[25:11] SPEAKER_03: a lot of people think of the conflict as adversaries,
[25:14] SPEAKER_03: which actually it's that tension is an opportunity,
[25:17] SPEAKER_03: that friction is an opportunity,
[25:19] SPEAKER_03: that pressure is an opportunity to be better,
[25:21] SPEAKER_03: to create the diamonds.
[25:22] SPEAKER_03: And that's what we did.
[25:23] So we had the one-on-one where we would sink and we would go on
[25:27] a walk and et cetera.
[25:28] And we started making it a thing of having periodic
[25:32] out-of-office dinners or I came
[25:34] SPEAKER_03: to your house.
[25:35] SPEAKER_03: So we made that a conscious thing.
[25:37] And that's my second principle,
[25:38] which is you really need to know the human behind the role.
[25:41] Like I just sent you a message for your birthday because it's
[25:45] in my calendar.
[25:45] SPEAKER_03: And I actually say this all the time.
[25:47] SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, do you know your engineering manager's birthday?
[25:52] SPEAKER_03: And people literally give me a blank stare.
[25:53] And I'm like,
[25:54] that is literally the day this human showed up on this planet.
[25:59] SPEAKER_03: It is probably the most important day to them.
[26:01] SPEAKER_03: And you don't know it?
[26:03] SPEAKER_03: So what are we doing?
[26:04] How are you going to have a joint vision and goal if you don't
[26:07] even know that?
[26:08] SPEAKER_00: It's so simple.
[26:10] We could generalize that as an engineering manager or as a team lead,
[26:12] the people on your team.
[26:14] SPEAKER_03: On your team.
[26:16] SPEAKER_03: I remember when I became the PM lead,
[26:19] SPEAKER_03: I knew when people were thinking of having kids,
[26:22] SPEAKER_03: were trying to change mortgages.
[26:24] SPEAKER_03: Where,
[26:26] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[26:27] one of them had just moved a girlfriend from his home country
[26:30] and was moving in.
[26:32] Because that human is going to bring that into work whether you
[26:34] like it or not.
[26:35] SPEAKER_03: You can say the whole leave the personal stuff.
[26:37] SPEAKER_03: That is not how humans work.
[26:38] SPEAKER_03: We're not, you know, confined boxes.
[26:41] SPEAKER_03: We don't work that way.
[26:42] SPEAKER_03: So that's one of my second principles.
[26:44] SPEAKER_03: And the third is this notion of like the rhythm.
[26:47] SPEAKER_03: And people take that for granted.
[26:49] SPEAKER_03: We never moved our one-on-ones.
[26:50] SPEAKER_03: You never randomly canceled one-on-ones with your teams.
[26:53] SPEAKER_03: Neither did I, right?
[26:55] SPEAKER_03: We had a cadence.
[26:57] SPEAKER_03: And I can't stress that enough because humans are creatures of habit.
[27:02] SPEAKER_03: So we would have that one-on-one.
[27:03] SPEAKER_03: We would talk it out.
[27:05] SPEAKER_03: We would then have the team meeting
[27:08] then we would have the planning meeting,
[27:09] where it would be you,
[27:10] me,
[27:10] and the other PM,
[27:11] remember?
[27:12] SPEAKER_03: And we would come in and talk about who's staffing what,
[27:14] SPEAKER_03: what are the concerns,
[27:15] SPEAKER_03: who's about to roll off a project,
[27:17] SPEAKER_03: and do we have enough?
[27:18] SPEAKER_03: We would talk about things like,
[27:19] SPEAKER_03: oh,
[27:19] SPEAKER_03: this person's just been in a slug doing this,
[27:21] SPEAKER_03: we need to give them something exciting.
[27:23] SPEAKER_03: Remember, we would talk about that as well.
[27:24] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so basically, it felt to me that after a while,
[27:28] SPEAKER_00: I was the engineering manager and,
[27:29] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[27:29] SPEAKER_00: like in the end,
[27:30] SPEAKER_00: it was my responsibility for,
[27:31] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[27:32] SPEAKER_00: someone to be fired for whatever on the team that would need to be me.
[27:35] SPEAKER_00: But it felt to me there was we had like you and then we had another PM.
[27:40] But you and me,
[27:42] we were kind of like being engineering managers together a
[27:44] little bit.
[27:45] SPEAKER_00: And being PM leaders together.
[27:47] SPEAKER_00: And being PM leaders together.
[27:48] SPEAKER_00: And actually, it worked wonderfully.
[27:50] SPEAKER_00: So,
[27:50] SPEAKER_00: for example,
[27:50] I would tell you whenever I saw good things or bad things about
[27:54] people on my team,
[27:55] SPEAKER_00: for example,
[27:56] SPEAKER_00: I knew when people were,
[27:58] SPEAKER_00: for example,
[27:58] SPEAKER_00: looking for a new job outside of work.
[28:00] SPEAKER_00: Or checking out.
[28:02] SPEAKER_00: Kind of both checking out or also looking for something new.
[28:04] SPEAKER_00: And by the way, maybe I shouldn't say this, but I kind of encouraged it.
[28:08] SPEAKER_00: I was like, look.
[28:09] SPEAKER_03: I mean, I encourage it till today and I still work at Google.
[28:11] SPEAKER_03: I'm like...
[28:12] SPEAKER_03: It's so important.
[28:14] SPEAKER_03: I actually say at more junior levels,
[28:16] you should probably have at least a recruiter conversation once
[28:20] every six months.
[28:22] SPEAKER_03: Because here are a couple of things.
[28:23] SPEAKER_03: And let's just cut the BS and get to it, right?
[28:28] SPEAKER_03: I've had to let people go at Uber.
[28:31] We've all had to let people have a performance conversation or
[28:35] we've had to talk to
[28:36] SPEAKER_03: somebody who wanted to go on to something else.
[28:38] SPEAKER_03: And for example,
[28:38] SPEAKER_03: one of the PMs on my team,
[28:39] SPEAKER_03: who you know,
[28:42] SPEAKER_03: he came to me a year before he got the role.
[28:45] SPEAKER_03: We were literally having conversations about the right role and whether,
[28:50] SPEAKER_03: as he's interviewing for those roles,
[28:52] SPEAKER_03: is there something in that role where he's like,
[28:54] SPEAKER_03: Uber doesn't offer that?
[28:55] SPEAKER_03: And after we got that, we're like, OK, I think it's time.
[28:58] SPEAKER_03: Actually, we've exhausted everything and it is the right time.
[29:01] SPEAKER_03: But also because we've been openly talking about it for a year.
[29:04] SPEAKER_03: You genuinely know I care about you.
[29:06] SPEAKER_03: Right.
[29:07] SPEAKER_03: And you you genuinely know that you want to leave this place alone.
[29:13] SPEAKER_03: you want to leave your role in a sustainable place.
[29:19] SPEAKER_03: So we very nicely set up his dotted line,
[29:23] SPEAKER_03: who now stepped up into that role,
[29:24] SPEAKER_03: who's now head of product at Booking.com,
[29:26] but like who stepped into that role nicely because we already
[29:29] knew it was coming.
[29:30] So I have this fundamental thing,
[29:32] which is like the human transcends the job.
[29:36] SPEAKER_03: And so your goal is to help them realize their full potential.
[29:42] SPEAKER_03: It's not to realize their full potential in the job,
[29:44] SPEAKER_03: because their full potential may not be in the job.
[29:47] SPEAKER_03: But actually,
[29:47] SPEAKER_03: if you come at it with this altruistic,
[29:50] SPEAKER_03: I deeply care about you,
[29:51] SPEAKER_03: they will feel that.
[29:53] SPEAKER_03: And that actually works in your benefit over time.
[29:57] SPEAKER_03: They may leave, they may come back.
[29:59] SPEAKER_00: And also, one thing that I feel...
[30:03] SPEAKER_00: It was an accident, but we got to know each other on a personal level.
[30:07] You would often advise me,
[30:08] and I would do the same thing on product,
[30:11] right?
[30:11] SPEAKER_00: I would be like, oh, here's what I think we can do.
[30:13] SPEAKER_00: Let me take some things on your plate.
[30:14] SPEAKER_00: I had some engineers on my team.
[30:16] SPEAKER_00: I wrote an article called The Product Mind of Engineer,
[30:18] SPEAKER_00: which is,
[30:18] SPEAKER_00: I get some good feedback for it,
[30:22] SPEAKER_00: but honestly,
[30:22] SPEAKER_00: I was describing some engineers on my team.
[30:24] Some engineers,
[30:25] as soon as we started to do these,
[30:26] you know,
[30:27] you know their names.
[30:28] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[30:29] SPEAKER_00: You start to tell, here's the metrics, here's the business.
[30:33] SPEAKER_00: Some engineers didn't care that much,
[30:34] SPEAKER_00: and that's fine,
[30:34] SPEAKER_00: but some were really like,
[30:36] SPEAKER_00: oh,
[30:37] SPEAKER_00: okay,
[30:37] SPEAKER_00: how can we have these wins?
[30:39] SPEAKER_00: How can I help the business?
[30:40] SPEAKER_00: They love doing this thing.
[30:41] SPEAKER_01: And they came with ideas.
[30:42] SPEAKER_00: They came with ideas,
[30:43] SPEAKER_00: and sometimes when you tell me,
[30:44] SPEAKER_00: oh,
[30:44] SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of swamped,
[30:45] SPEAKER_00: or we need to do this,
[30:46] SPEAKER_00: but I don't have time,
[30:46] SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
[30:47] SPEAKER_00: oh,
[30:47] SPEAKER_00: this person,
[30:48] SPEAKER_00: this engineer would love to do it.
[30:49] SPEAKER_00: So suddenly,
[30:51] SPEAKER_00: and a lot of it felt that it was about trust,
[30:53] SPEAKER_00: and one thing I see now,
[30:54] SPEAKER_00: I think if anyone takes away
[30:57] SPEAKER_00: Something if you're an engineering manager,
[30:59] SPEAKER_00: a tech lead,
[31:00] SPEAKER_00: a senior engineer,
[31:01] SPEAKER_00: or even just an engineer,
[31:02] SPEAKER_00: try to,
[31:03] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[31:04] SPEAKER_00: build,
[31:04] SPEAKER_00: like,
[31:05] SPEAKER_00: just trust the people around you,
[31:08] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[31:08] SPEAKER_00: build trust,
[31:08] SPEAKER_00: like meet them outside of work,
[31:10] SPEAKER_00: your product manager or people on the team,
[31:12] SPEAKER_00: because here's the interesting thing,
[31:13] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[31:14] SPEAKER_00: the.
[31:15] SPEAKER_00: I feel these roles are kind of made up.
[31:17] SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to say it.
[31:20] SPEAKER_00: What I did as an engineering manager, you would think it's in a box.
[31:22] And there were some things that were expected of me,
[31:23] but especially a startup,
[31:24] it's made up.
[31:25] SPEAKER_00: And AI will change a lot of this thing.
[31:28] But what will not change is if you trust some people,
[31:33] you can figure it out.
[31:33] SPEAKER_00: So one of the reasons our team works so well,
[31:35] SPEAKER_00: and we actually didn't have anyone quit on the team over four years.
[31:39] SPEAKER_00: We had no attrition.
[31:40] SPEAKER_03: That is crazy.
[31:41] SPEAKER_00: We had no attrition.
[31:42] SPEAKER_03: I think we should pause and let the saints flow in the room.
[31:46] SPEAKER_00: Well, in the four and a half years I was there.
[31:48] SPEAKER_00: So we didn't have anyone leave Uber.
[31:50] We did have,
[31:51] I think,
[31:52] there's two people who the team was just not a good fit for them.
[31:56] SPEAKER_00: They weren't meant to do
[31:57] product work and once we got that stable team literally it was
[32:01] that team for four
[32:02] years and it's not like there's some cities where they're like
[32:05] no other options
[32:06] this was around in a climate where you had like stripe coming
[32:09] in you had you know
[32:11] flex port you had you know all these these data breaks data
[32:15] breaks um so you had a
[32:17] number of you had opportunities and i think at a certain point
[32:20] then we now got to a
[32:21] SPEAKER_03: point where it was like the pandemic especially
[32:23] SPEAKER_03: It was like, okay, now it's time.
[32:24] SPEAKER_03: People have kind of maxed out.
[32:26] SPEAKER_03: And also some of the stuff we wanted to do was scaled back.
[32:29] Even I,
[32:29] like a year after I made the decision,
[32:31] I'm like,
[32:32] I have a clear number two.
[32:33] SPEAKER_03: And she was brilliant and stepped into the role.
[32:37] SPEAKER_03: But it goes back to this thing that I think is at the core of it,
[32:42] SPEAKER_03: which is when people love,
[32:45] SPEAKER_03: and I like,
[32:46] SPEAKER_03: not just...
[32:49] So there's a definition of love that I like because I'm about
[32:53] to contradict myself
[32:54] SPEAKER_03: by saying I like,
[32:55] SPEAKER_03: but like,
[32:55] SPEAKER_03: I'm not a fan of liking things,
[32:58] SPEAKER_03: right?
[32:58] SPEAKER_03: Because liking things feels very passive to me.
[33:02] SPEAKER_03: And I like things, you know, I like things, but actually even better,
[33:07] SPEAKER_03: I love things and I dislike and hate things, right?
[33:11] SPEAKER_03: And I think about that.
[33:13] It took me a while as a leader to actually accept that about
[33:18] myself as well,
[33:19] SPEAKER_03: that not everyone's going to love it.
[33:21] SPEAKER_03: Some people are not going to love this way of working.
[33:24] SPEAKER_03: Some people want...
[33:25] SPEAKER_03: to be mentally checked out, just do the bare minimum and work is work.
[33:30] SPEAKER_03: And you know, and some people it consumes them.
[33:32] SPEAKER_03: And we managed to get a team,
[33:34] SPEAKER_03: like most people on that team,
[33:36] SPEAKER_03: even those who thought they had started numbing,
[33:40] SPEAKER_03: became more product centric because it was just infectious.
[33:44] If people around you are like,
[33:46] you know,
[33:46] so infected with this,
[33:47] in love with this problem.
[33:50] SPEAKER_03: And love at its core,
[33:53] SPEAKER_03: I use a definition by Bell Hooks,
[33:56] SPEAKER_03: and she says,
[33:57] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[33:58] love is the extension of oneself for the spiritual growth of
[34:04] another or of oneself.
[34:06] SPEAKER_03: So self-love is I'm extending myself.
[34:09] SPEAKER_03: I'm going out of my comfort zone.
[34:11] I'm reaching and doing more and being compassionate so that I
[34:15] can realize the full
[34:18] SPEAKER_03: growth of myself.
[34:19] SPEAKER_03: That's self-love.
[34:20] SPEAKER_03: Or I care so much about Gergay.
[34:22] SPEAKER_03: I'm extending myself because I feel...
[34:26] SPEAKER_03: Like,
[34:26] I love this person and I want him to reach the attainment of
[34:30] what engineering
[34:30] SPEAKER_03: manager means and vice versa.
[34:32] SPEAKER_03: And I genuinely felt that.
[34:34] SPEAKER_03: And I feel like we had that in the team.
[34:36] To the extent that I did the,
[34:40] I officiated one of our engineers' marriages.
[34:42] SPEAKER_03: You know this.
[34:44] SPEAKER_03: Like, are you kidding me?
[34:46] SPEAKER_03: You know,
[34:46] SPEAKER_03: that's the height of my,
[34:48] SPEAKER_03: like,
[34:48] you're such a friend and the love is so strong that I literally
[34:53] read the vows of
[34:55] SPEAKER_03: you and your,
[34:55] SPEAKER_03: like,
[34:55] SPEAKER_03: that is,
[34:57] SPEAKER_03: you can't,
[34:58] SPEAKER_03: there is no price.
[34:59] There's no,
[35:00] you can't,
[35:00] like,
[35:01] there are no words to describe how you attain that.
[35:03] SPEAKER_03: And that's all from this team, right?
[35:05] SPEAKER_03: So I do think that there's this element of like,
[35:09] SPEAKER_03: You know,
[35:09] SPEAKER_03: when you have the right people,
[35:10] even when it's a small group of people who are willing to put
[35:14] skin in the game
[35:14] SPEAKER_03: because they love a problem and love each other,
[35:18] SPEAKER_03: there's so much magic.
[35:19] SPEAKER_03: And I mean, we have a whole roster of things to show for that.
[35:23] SPEAKER_03: Do you know how many, like when I think back,
[35:26] SPEAKER_03: The amount of vision stuff that we...
[35:28] SPEAKER_03: The API that now processes over a billion dollars,
[35:31] SPEAKER_03: you know this,
[35:31] SPEAKER_03: by the way?
[35:32] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[35:33] SPEAKER_01: UberPay.
[35:33] SPEAKER_03: UberPay, which for multiple years everyone said would never work.
[35:37] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[35:38] The web payment flow,
[35:39] which at the time were like only 2% of traffic was going
[35:43] through web.
[35:44] And these two engineers...
[35:45] That was two engineers coming up with the idea and the business plan.
[35:49] SPEAKER_03: And we kind of ring-fenced them and let them build it up.
[35:53] SPEAKER_00: So what happened is I tried to...
[35:55] I asked for headcount to get web payments because it was really,
[35:58] really good.
[35:59] SPEAKER_00: They brought it.
[35:59] SPEAKER_00: They actually put a business plan together.
[36:01] SPEAKER_00: It was awesome.
[36:01] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they wrote the doc.
[36:02] SPEAKER_00: They had monks.
[36:03] SPEAKER_00: You said it's great.
[36:04] SPEAKER_00: I said it's great.
[36:04] I asked for headcount from my management chain or from product,
[36:09] whichever it was.
[36:10] SPEAKER_00: And they said, that sounds great, but no.
[36:12] SPEAKER_00: And so what...
[36:14] what i did with with your support because you know we just
[36:16] trusted each other and
[36:17] we're like i mean we did so we just did it we we hit the two
[36:21] people we still
[36:22] shipped every one of our product and then we came back in six
[36:24] months saying like oh
[36:25] so we've now built this we have this many customers uh we now
[36:30] like this many extra
[36:30] headcanon and and here's the business that we're driving now
[36:33] and if we you know if
[36:34] we don't get it like we have to just shut it down and they're
[36:36] like well okay i
[36:37] SPEAKER_00: guess that makes sense yeah that's a no-brainer
[36:39] SPEAKER_03: There was another policy thing that came up.
[36:41] SPEAKER_03: It started to become a bigger and bigger company.
[36:44] SPEAKER_03: Especially the EU, a lot of policies.
[36:46] SPEAKER_03: There was a policy that was coming up in France.
[36:57] SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
[36:57] And we were like,
[36:58] holy cow,
[36:59] how the hell are we going to add this to our road?
[37:01] SPEAKER_03: Yes.
[37:02] SPEAKER_03: And nevermind,
[37:03] SPEAKER_03: we won't talk about the comment the PM left,
[37:06] SPEAKER_03: who I will stand by till today for craftsmanship.
[37:12] SPEAKER_03: Like this team came and said, you have to build this thing.
[37:14] SPEAKER_03: It's a directive from Dara.
[37:16] SPEAKER_03: And the PM said, they edited the comment later on.
[37:18] SPEAKER_03: I saw it was edited.
[37:19] SPEAKER_03: I wanted to screenshot it and save it.
[37:21] SPEAKER_03: And he said, I don't care who came up with this.
[37:23] SPEAKER_03: It is a bad user experience.
[37:26] SPEAKER_03: And I don't care if you give me Dara's name signed in blood.
[37:29] SPEAKER_03: I am not approving this.
[37:30] SPEAKER_03: And I was like,
[37:33] Do you know how much skin,
[37:35] how much guts you have to have in your decision to do that?
[37:37] SPEAKER_03: But anyway, so he did that.
[37:39] It just showed you the kind of love we had for shipping the
[37:42] right product.
[37:44] SPEAKER_03: But maybe don't say CEO's name in blood next time.
[37:46] SPEAKER_03: But anyway,
[37:47] SPEAKER_03: these two engineers then came up and suggested building instead of,
[37:51] SPEAKER_03: because Uber Eats had built their own,
[37:52] SPEAKER_03: like a flow,
[37:53] SPEAKER_03: which didn't have the policy stuff that we needed.
[37:56] SPEAKER_03: And they were like, okay, we're actually going to build this and use it
[38:00] as the web platform that everybody can use across the different
[38:04] web products.
[38:05] SPEAKER_03: So they actually used a real problem,
[38:07] which I think is a very important thing that people miss when
[38:10] it comes to vision
[38:11] SPEAKER_03: setting and getting a win,
[38:13] SPEAKER_03: is that it's very hard actually,
[38:15] SPEAKER_03: even at my level,
[38:16] SPEAKER_03: to come up with something that is novel,
[38:20] SPEAKER_03: right,
[38:21] SPEAKER_03: that no one can see,
[38:23] And somehow magically,
[38:24] miraculously get the blessing to just go off and do it.
[38:28] SPEAKER_00: So you're specifically talking about getting headcount for a team,
[38:32] SPEAKER_00: may that be a platform or a product?
[38:34] SPEAKER_03: Even at my level, it is so hard to pull that off.
[38:37] SPEAKER_03: What you do, I'm a director of product.
[38:39] SPEAKER_03: Like my skip level, sorry, my manager is a VP.
[38:44] SPEAKER_03: That's like into big tech.
[38:45] SPEAKER_03: That's the height of it, right?
[38:46] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
[38:47] SPEAKER_03: They're only like five SVPs at Google or something.
[38:50] SPEAKER_03: So that's the height of your career.
[38:51] SPEAKER_03: So even at that,
[38:52] SPEAKER_03: it is so hard to say,
[38:53] I'm going to ring fence five people to go play around with this
[38:56] new thing with no
[38:57] SPEAKER_03: direct core problem.
[39:00] The best ways,
[39:01] you and I always got visions off the ground,
[39:04] was we took a problem.
[39:05] SPEAKER_03: So in the case of UberPay, they needed us to integrate a payment method.
[39:09] SPEAKER_03: And instead of just building that integration,
[39:11] SPEAKER_03: which we would have done,
[39:12] SPEAKER_03: which took,
[39:12] SPEAKER_03: I still remember till today,
[39:13] SPEAKER_03: 14 weeks of engineering.
[39:15] SPEAKER_03: We had the lingo.
[39:17] SPEAKER_03: We said,
[39:17] SPEAKER_03: actually,
[39:18] SPEAKER_03: we're going to use it to bootstrap this API,
[39:21] SPEAKER_03: integrate this partner in Latin America.
[39:24] SPEAKER_03: We'll still give you the thing you want,
[39:26] but use this slightly longer to get you something that actually
[39:30] unlocks many more
[39:31] SPEAKER_03: payment methods.
[39:32] SPEAKER_03: And we did that every single time.
[39:34] SPEAKER_00: Before we jump back into the episode,
[39:35] I want to let you know that the audiobook version of my
[39:37] best-selling book,
[39:38] SPEAKER_00: The Software Engineer's Guidebook,
[39:40] SPEAKER_00: is out now.
[39:40] SPEAKER_00: You can get it on all major audiobook platforms like Spotify,
[39:44] SPEAKER_00: Audible,
[39:44] SPEAKER_00: Liberal.fm,
[39:45] SPEAKER_00: Apple Books,
[39:46] SPEAKER_00: Google Play,
[39:47] SPEAKER_00: and also DRM3 MP3 files.
[39:49] I started writing this book after a decade of working as a
[39:52] software engineer when I
[39:53] SPEAKER_00: was working as an engineering manager for a few years already at Uber.
[39:57] Here's a review from the book from senior principal engineer
[39:59] Tanya Reilly,
[40:00] SPEAKER_00: who is the author of The Staff Engineer's Path.
[40:03] SPEAKER_00: From performance reviews to P95 latency,
[40:06] SPEAKER_00: from team dynamics to testing,
[40:07] SPEAKER_00: Gary Gary diversifies all aspects of a software career.
[40:10] SPEAKER_00: This book is well-named.
[40:11] SPEAKER_00: It really does feel like the missing guidebook for the whole industry.
[40:15] You can get the book at engguidebook.com or search for the
[40:18] Software Engineering
[40:19] SPEAKER_00: Guidebook on your favorite audiobook platform.
[40:21] SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll enjoy it.
[40:23] SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a tactic.
[40:24] SPEAKER_00: I've gotten a lot of questions,
[40:26] SPEAKER_00: especially since I wrote the book,
[40:27] SPEAKER_00: Building Mobile Apps at Scale,
[40:28] SPEAKER_00: about how to fund a platform team.
[40:30] SPEAKER_00: And a lot of engineering managers ask this.
[40:31] SPEAKER_00: I'm now growing.
[40:32] SPEAKER_00: I would like a platform team.
[40:34] SPEAKER_00: How can I fund it?
[40:34] SPEAKER_00: How can I make a business case?
[40:35] SPEAKER_00: And there's a template.
[40:36] But I think the secret to funding any engineering team is build
[40:41] something without
[40:42] SPEAKER_00: funding and then show it.
[40:44] May that be a prototype or something,
[40:46] but show that it's going to make money.
[40:48] If it makes money for the business or it saves money for the business,
[40:51] you should have a case.
[40:52] SPEAKER_00: Or growth or whatever.
[40:54] And if it doesn't do either that they care about,
[40:56] then what's the point,
[40:57] right?
[40:58] SPEAKER_00: Especially these days now that companies are paying about efficiency.
[41:00] SPEAKER_03: There's a clear value add in doing it once.
[41:03] SPEAKER_03: And yes,
[41:04] SPEAKER_03: you always have to trade off like our design,
[41:06] SPEAKER_03: you're always trading off relevance versus consistency.
[41:10] You may not get the 100% optimized version for your specific
[41:14] use case because
[41:15] SPEAKER_03: ultimately what is platform
[41:16] SPEAKER_03: A platform is a stage that allows multiple teams dance on it.
[41:20] SPEAKER_03: So each person isn't building their own podium, right?
[41:23] SPEAKER_03: Like that's really how I like to think about it.
[41:26] If no one is dancing on your platform and you can't,
[41:29] you know,
[41:30] then why do you exist?
[41:31] I might as well go build my own stage or if I don't need one,
[41:34] right,
[41:34] then actually
[41:35] SPEAKER_03: we don't do platform for platform's sake.
[41:37] But in this case,
[41:38] we're like,
[41:38] we're going to give you a stage,
[41:40] this web platform thing.
[41:42] SPEAKER_03: It works.
[41:42] SPEAKER_03: We have a proven case.
[41:44] And it means that you don't have to waste your resources
[41:46] building that platform again.
[41:47] SPEAKER_03: Just dance on it.
[41:49] SPEAKER_03: And it's like, you know what?
[41:50] SPEAKER_03: Maybe I need to share it with other people.
[41:51] SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's not exactly what I wanted,
[41:53] SPEAKER_03: but actually I can go use that extra resource to put more lights on
[41:56] SPEAKER_03: or change the outfit or whatever.
[41:58] SPEAKER_03: I mean, I like using human analogies for these things.
[42:00] But I think that's such a crucial thing because when we go back
[42:03] and look at all
[42:04] SPEAKER_03: these things that we bootstrapped,
[42:05] we always used a very small example of a problem and turned it
[42:10] into something that
[42:11] SPEAKER_03: we actually wanted to realize in our vision.
[42:14] And so in a way,
[42:18] at the worst case,
[42:19] if you think about it,
[42:20] you've solved the problem still.
[42:21] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[42:23] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[42:23] Best case,
[42:24] you've actually built something that creates a billion dollars.
[42:26] SPEAKER_03: It's kind of win-win.
[42:31] SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
[42:31] and I think it's good to remind anyone working in engineering
[42:35] that it's not
[42:35] SPEAKER_00: supposed to be easy.
[42:36] SPEAKER_00: It's not supposed to be easy to get headcount or do a new initiative.
[42:40] SPEAKER_00: It's like getting a startup.
[42:42] SPEAKER_03: You have to show, if I went and said, it's a very different game.
[42:47] SPEAKER_03: So when you're raising pre-seed,
[42:48] SPEAKER_03: so I do a lot of angel investing,
[42:50] SPEAKER_03: and I actually do it,
[42:51] SPEAKER_03: honestly,
[42:51] SPEAKER_03: I've lost way more money than I've gained,
[42:52] SPEAKER_03: which is part of the thing.
[42:54] But actually I do these things because I like to see what parts
[43:00] of something I've
[43:01] SPEAKER_03: learned a skill or,
[43:02] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[43:03] SPEAKER_03: like knowledge.
[43:05] SPEAKER_03: I like to figure out how much of this is a pattern that is reusable.
[43:09] Like I can reuse it versus how much of this is something that's
[43:12] just contained in
[43:14] SPEAKER_03: what I'm doing.
[43:15] SPEAKER_03: Right.
[43:16] SPEAKER_03: And so my onboarding flow, like, you know, conversations,
[43:23] comprehension conviction i have used that to onboard into many
[43:26] roles i've used it
[43:27] my my board position i've used it um at lego that lego i used
[43:31] the same framework
[43:33] i've used you know like i i even i remember sitting with the
[43:35] chairman of the lego
[43:36] board the fourth generation i was like for the first month or
[43:40] so or two it's good
[43:41] i'm gonna look dumb because i'm just gonna be listening and
[43:44] tell me who i need to
[43:44] SPEAKER_03: talk to and i asked all of them similar questions same playbook
[43:48] SPEAKER_03: Then I came back and was like, here's what I understand.
[43:50] And then I came back and said,
[43:51] here's what I fundamentally think we should be doing.
[43:53] SPEAKER_03: Even though,
[43:54] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[43:54] SPEAKER_03: as a board,
[43:54] SPEAKER_03: you can have conviction,
[43:55] SPEAKER_03: but ultimately the exec team is the exec team.
[43:59] SPEAKER_03: But I've used that.
[43:59] SPEAKER_03: I also used it when I took on my ERG chairmanship within Google.
[44:04] SPEAKER_03: Same playbook, different people, nothing to do with tech.
[44:07] SPEAKER_03: So I'm like, oh, this thing is a rinse and repeat.
[44:09] SPEAKER_03: So now I can teach someone.
[44:10] SPEAKER_03: that playbook and stand in it.
[44:12] SPEAKER_03: Same goes for like vision setting.
[44:14] SPEAKER_03: I did vision setting in my GM role.
[44:16] SPEAKER_03: I did it again with our state of the union, right?
[44:19] SPEAKER_03: I did it again when I joined Netflix.
[44:21] SPEAKER_03: I did it again when I joined Google.
[44:23] SPEAKER_03: Now it's worked so many times.
[44:24] SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh, this is a playbook.
[44:26] Like I know I have a playbook here and I know what doesn't work
[44:29] and what knobs I need to twist.
[44:32] Same goes for like fundraising and what I call perception shifting,
[44:36] which we had to do.
[44:37] SPEAKER_03: So I had to do a lot of that within,
[44:39] SPEAKER_03: like when I joined Google,
[44:40] SPEAKER_03: the team I inherited,
[44:41] SPEAKER_03: there was a lot of perception shifting.
[44:44] Some of it was reality,
[44:45] but a lot of it was perception within the organization.
[44:48] SPEAKER_03: They're difficult to work with.
[44:50] SPEAKER_03: We had very similar things at Amsterdam.
[44:52] SPEAKER_03: Like, oh, they're difficult.
[44:53] SPEAKER_03: They're blocking.
[44:55] SPEAKER_03: They're this.
[44:56] SPEAKER_03: And it's the same playbook.
[44:57] SPEAKER_03: I've used it again.
[44:58] SPEAKER_03: I'm like, okay, quick wins.
[45:00] SPEAKER_03: Go and tell a story.
[45:02] SPEAKER_03: Consistent monthly updates.
[45:04] We had that,
[45:04] the Amsterdam newsletter,
[45:06] which had the Amsterdam pictures and fun facts,
[45:09] right?
[45:10] SPEAKER_03: And something that is engaging.
[45:11] SPEAKER_03: And then also like this actively roadsharing.
[45:15] SPEAKER_03: So we would go and meet the GMs.
[45:17] SPEAKER_03: Remember, we would actually have this meeting to share the plan.
[45:20] SPEAKER_03: and have it blessed by the VPs.
[45:23] SPEAKER_03: Same playbook.
[45:24] SPEAKER_03: I have a plan.
[45:25] SPEAKER_03: I do a roadshow with all the partner teams.
[45:28] I remember the first couple of years,
[45:30] my partners were like,
[45:31] oh my God,
[45:32] that's very expensive.
[45:32] SPEAKER_03: I'm like, trust me.
[45:34] SPEAKER_03: It's one day you will spend.
[45:35] SPEAKER_03: You might think you're wasting it.
[45:37] It's multiple meetings of escalations you will save because you
[45:41] have a shared
[45:42] SPEAKER_03: language and they understand what else you're doing.
[45:45] So not everyone thinks they're a snowflake and like,
[45:47] my thing isn't getting prioritized.
[45:48] So I look for these patterns and what you tend to find is
[45:51] actually a lot of them
[45:53] SPEAKER_03: scale beyond even tech.
[45:55] SPEAKER_00: Well,
[45:55] but a lot of them really scale for engineering management
[45:57] because I actually got
[45:58] SPEAKER_00: the inspiration from you.
[45:59] SPEAKER_00: So when I would go to San Francisco,
[46:01] SPEAKER_00: the first few times I went to San Francisco,
[46:03] SPEAKER_00: I would just,
[46:04] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[46:04] SPEAKER_00: like,
[46:06] SPEAKER_00: we worked with a few teams in San Francisco,
[46:07] SPEAKER_00: so I would meet with them.
[46:09] SPEAKER_00: We would like, you know, talk about stuff.
[46:11] SPEAKER_00: But I kind of saw that when you went, you met a lot of people.
[46:13] SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
[46:14] SPEAKER_00: And so what I started to do later,
[46:15] SPEAKER_00: which turned out to be a really good decision,
[46:17] SPEAKER_00: is when I went,
[46:18] SPEAKER_00: I actually prioritized meeting people and understanding them,
[46:21] SPEAKER_00: telling them what we do,
[46:22] SPEAKER_00: understanding what they do,
[46:23] SPEAKER_00: and trying to get to this point where we had to,
[46:25] SPEAKER_00: like,
[46:25] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[46:25] SPEAKER_00: just tell me who are you.
[46:26] SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, what is your background?
[46:28] SPEAKER_00: Like, how did you get into Uber?
[46:30] SPEAKER_00: What do you want to do after Uber?
[46:31] SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, are you...
[46:34] is this temporary and you're trying to be a CTO one day or
[46:37] you're actually really into it.
[46:40] SPEAKER_00: And since I started to do that,
[46:42] SPEAKER_00: it felt cheating because I was not doing work per se,
[46:46] SPEAKER_00: but it made everything so much easier.
[46:49] SPEAKER_03: This is such an important point.
[46:50] SPEAKER_03: This thing that you said, it felt like cheating.
[46:53] We should actually unpack that a little bit because we've been
[46:56] conditioned to
[46:57] SPEAKER_03: Now I'm going to, you know, AB the sort of like a philosophy.
[47:02] SPEAKER_01: I'm here for it.
[47:03] SPEAKER_03: I think we've been conditioned so much to like squeeze out efficiency.
[47:07] SPEAKER_03: Like I go in nine, I clock in, we get in the room 30 minutes.
[47:10] SPEAKER_03: It's like, let's get into it.
[47:12] SPEAKER_03: And actually that's fine.
[47:14] SPEAKER_03: And I'm a big believer.
[47:16] SPEAKER_03: I actually think I'm highly efficient, but I go slow to go fast.
[47:22] SPEAKER_03: So we might be in a one hour meeting and
[47:24] SPEAKER_03: I literally just met a UXR lead on the team.
[47:29] SPEAKER_03: Never met him in person.
[47:31] SPEAKER_03: One of the things I like to do, I'm not saying everyone should do that.
[47:33] SPEAKER_03: And maybe,
[47:33] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[47:34] SPEAKER_03: like I hug everyone,
[47:35] SPEAKER_03: as you know,
[47:35] SPEAKER_03: I hug everyone because I'm always on a screen.
[47:39] SPEAKER_03: Right?
[47:39] SPEAKER_03: I'm always on a screen.
[47:40] SPEAKER_03: 90% of the time I'm going to be talking to people on a screen.
[47:43] SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, over continents, time zones.
[47:46] SPEAKER_00: And podcasts.
[47:48] SPEAKER_03: This is my second in-person podcast.
[47:52] SPEAKER_03: Can we do more of these?
[47:53] SPEAKER_03: But like, you're always on a screen.
[47:55] And it's,
[47:56] if I meet you,
[47:57] and for 30 minutes,
[47:58] I've come all the way,
[47:59] nine hours.
[48:00] And we spend that 30 minutes talking about something we could
[48:03] have hashed out on an email.
[48:05] SPEAKER_03: You failed.
[48:06] SPEAKER_03: For me, we failed.
[48:08] SPEAKER_03: Instead, it's 30 minutes to see your body language.
[48:11] It's 30 minutes to understand this human,
[48:13] to hug them,
[48:15] to bring the 3D,
[48:17] the 4D,
[48:18] right?
[48:19] And we can go back and do the efficient stuff by email,
[48:22] but how much more efficient
[48:23] will I be when I'm pinging that person,
[48:25] a very blunt,
[48:27] you know,
[48:27] I'm horrible.
[48:28] SPEAKER_03: I don't even do like, hi, I just get into it.
[48:30] SPEAKER_03: Like I'm really, you know, I'm like, I just get into a message.
[48:32] SPEAKER_03: That's how efficient I am.
[48:34] SPEAKER_03: But when I meet you and I spend that time,
[48:36] SPEAKER_03: whether it's a dinner or a lunch and it's a human connection,
[48:41] SPEAKER_03: we will do so much more and go so much further.
[48:45] SPEAKER_03: on in the document when I say,
[48:46] SPEAKER_03: I disagree with this,
[48:48] SPEAKER_03: because you've met AB the human,
[48:49] SPEAKER_03: and I've connected with Gergay the human,
[48:52] SPEAKER_03: the I disagree with this is contained into the thing we're talking about,
[48:55] SPEAKER_03: not how dare she once again,
[48:58] SPEAKER_03: and egos and all of that.
[48:59] SPEAKER_03: So people think they're being efficient,
[49:01] SPEAKER_03: they go in a meeting five minutes,
[49:02] SPEAKER_03: how are you,
[49:02] SPEAKER_03: how's your weekend?
[49:03] SPEAKER_03: This sort of nonsense small talk and move on.
[49:06] When I've been in meetings where I'm literally like,
[49:08] how was your weekend?
[49:10] SPEAKER_03: And I have something in my weekly meetings
[49:12] SPEAKER_03: where we say, what's your personal win?
[49:14] SPEAKER_03: And someone was like, I got married last weekend.
[49:16] SPEAKER_03: None of us knew.
[49:17] SPEAKER_03: It would never have come up.
[49:19] SPEAKER_03: Right?
[49:20] SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is not my core team.
[49:22] SPEAKER_03: This was like a team I had just inherited for one of the ERGs at Google.
[49:26] And then we were like,
[49:27] the rest of the meet,
[49:28] like for 15 minutes,
[49:29] how was it?
[49:30] SPEAKER_03: Share us pictures, da-da-da-da.
[49:32] SPEAKER_03: You just had this little spark.
[49:34] SPEAKER_03: And then we can go to the rest of the meeting.
[49:37] SPEAKER_03: But those moments, you just can't trade those.
[49:39] SPEAKER_03: So I want to go back to it's not cheating.
[49:41] SPEAKER_03: It is not cheating to connect at a human level
[49:46] SPEAKER_03: Right?
[49:46] SPEAKER_03: In a way that's comfortable for you.
[49:48] SPEAKER_00: In working hours.
[49:49] SPEAKER_03: In working hours.
[49:49] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because that's what it felt.
[49:50] Because you will do so much more and achieve much more without
[49:55] the squabbling,
[49:56] SPEAKER_03: the bickering,
[49:57] SPEAKER_03: the eat,
[49:58] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[49:58] SPEAKER_03: whatever.
[49:59] SPEAKER_03: Because it's not a zero-sum game.
[50:00] SPEAKER_01: No.
[50:00] It's a reminder that we're two humans at the end of the day who
[50:03] are in this
[50:04] SPEAKER_03: construct of a company because we both believe in a common goal.
[50:07] SPEAKER_03: And if you can just remember that, so much more be effective.
[50:10] SPEAKER_03: So can we demystify,
[50:11] let's normalize connections during working hours that are not
[50:17] about like some
[50:17] SPEAKER_03: efficient whatever.
[50:19] SPEAKER_03: And then your meeting might be five minutes.
[50:21] And so you mentioned patterns that you've seen,
[50:25] but one pattern I'm interested.
[50:26] SPEAKER_00: So you worked at Uber for a long time.
[50:28] SPEAKER_00: You worked at Netflix.
[50:29] SPEAKER_00: You're now working at Google.
[50:32] What are patterns you've seen truly stand out software
[50:36] engineers be like across these companies?
[50:39] SPEAKER_00: At Uber, we had a team and maybe it was special, maybe it was not, but...
[50:44] SPEAKER_00: Are there some kind of behaviors,
[50:47] either skill sets or things that people do that make them just
[50:51] a great engineer?
[50:52] SPEAKER_00: Someone that you as a product manager are like,
[50:55] SPEAKER_00: I can work with this person at either of these large companies.
[51:00] SPEAKER_03: I'll start with the opposite.
[51:01] SPEAKER_03: Let's just contradict for a second.
[51:03] One pattern is everyone in their gut knows intuitively when
[51:09] they have encountered a genius jerk.
[51:13] SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
[51:14] SPEAKER_00: I remember the ones I worked with.
[51:17] SPEAKER_03: And 10 times out of 10.
[51:20] SPEAKER_03: Remember, we used to have a director, Daniel Isson.
[51:22] SPEAKER_03: This is one thing I loved about him.
[51:24] SPEAKER_03: And I still hear his voice in the back of my head.
[51:27] SPEAKER_03: Right.
[51:28] SPEAKER_03: It drags the entire team down.
[51:30] SPEAKER_03: They might have brilliance in code and brilliance in execution.
[51:35] SPEAKER_03: But when it comes down to it, those genius jerks.
[51:39] SPEAKER_03: the net effect is exponentially worse than not having them.
[51:44] SPEAKER_03: So I'll just start with that.
[51:46] SPEAKER_03: And it's consistent across all the businesses.
[51:48] Different businesses have different tolerances,
[51:50] but it's consistent across all the businesses.
[51:54] SPEAKER_03: Now,
[51:54] SPEAKER_03: unpacking that a little bit more,
[51:55] SPEAKER_03: there are some people who may manifest as jerks,
[51:59] SPEAKER_03: but actually they've never been told.
[52:02] SPEAKER_03: And the moment they're confronted with their jerkness, they correct it.
[52:06] SPEAKER_03: So, you know, we've had, you know, like...
[52:08] SPEAKER_03: certain PMs who may come up abrasive, but actually they mean well.
[52:12] And when you actually have a conversation,
[52:13] you're like,
[52:13] oh,
[52:13] the human is a good person.
[52:15] SPEAKER_03: They just, they need to work on their comms.
[52:17] SPEAKER_03: So I want to also want to, like, that's the second thing.
[52:19] So you see these brilliant people who are not very good at,
[52:22] like,
[52:22] the social skills.
[52:23] SPEAKER_03: That is different from a jerk.
[52:25] SPEAKER_03: Right?
[52:26] SPEAKER_03: And you actually intuitively know the difference.
[52:28] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[52:29] SPEAKER_03: So that's the extreme.
[52:30] I want to start with that because that is so important to
[52:33] remember and to state
[52:35] SPEAKER_03: because our time on this world is limited.
[52:37] And I just don't think anyone deserves to be in an environment
[52:39] with anyone who
[52:40] SPEAKER_03: makes them feel less than,
[52:42] SPEAKER_03: period.
[52:44] SPEAKER_03: Now going in terms of the good patterns,
[52:46] SPEAKER_03: I think the ones I have seen,
[52:49] SPEAKER_03: and this is irrespective of,
[52:52] SPEAKER_03: I'm talking from VP,
[52:54] all the way down to like L4 IC,
[52:57] there's a pattern that you see,
[52:59] the tracks,
[52:59] right?
[53:00] SPEAKER_03: So I'm literally thinking in my head of like personas right now.
[53:05] SPEAKER_03: One is they never stop learning.
[53:08] SPEAKER_03: So my eng partner now,
[53:10] SPEAKER_03: she over Christmas was like,
[53:12] SPEAKER_03: I feel like I'm not up to speed on like the latest on the models.
[53:15] SPEAKER_03: I'm just going to go spend some time and play with it.
[53:18] I remember like Daniel Isson,
[53:19] he'd be like,
[53:20] I'm going to go write some code.
[53:21] SPEAKER_03: I'm solving some Lee, sorry, what do you call it?
[53:24] SPEAKER_03: Lee coding exercise, right?
[53:26] SPEAKER_00: Lee coding, I was building some side projects.
[53:28] SPEAKER_00: Right, building some stuff.
[53:28] And this was a director of engineering,
[53:30] a senior director of engineering,
[53:31] something like that.
[53:31] SPEAKER_03: Phenomenal guy.
[53:32] SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't to everybody's liking or taste,
[53:35] SPEAKER_03: but I loved him because this was just a human who cared deeply.
[53:40] And this is actually a good example of the second category I
[53:42] was talking about,
[53:42] SPEAKER_03: where the delivery might've come across in a certain way,
[53:45] SPEAKER_03: but actually at the core,
[53:47] SPEAKER_03: it was just a good human.
[53:51] SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, nobody hates it.
[53:55] SPEAKER_03: No one truly loves it.
[53:56] SPEAKER_03: It's what I believe as well.
[53:57] SPEAKER_03: But anyway,
[53:58] SPEAKER_03: but there's another persona at YouTube now that I'm thinking of,
[54:02] SPEAKER_03: a VP,
[54:02] SPEAKER_03: been there for a while,
[54:03] SPEAKER_03: phenomenal guy,
[54:06] SPEAKER_03: Christos.
[54:07] SPEAKER_03: And I remember when I joined,
[54:08] SPEAKER_03: people were like,
[54:09] SPEAKER_03: oh my God,
[54:09] SPEAKER_03: Christos,
[54:10] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[54:10] SPEAKER_03: I don't know,
[54:11] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[54:11] SPEAKER_03: I'm just going to talk about it.
[54:12] SPEAKER_03: Like, you know how I am.
[54:13] SPEAKER_03: I just, you know, and they're like, oh, you know,
[54:16] SPEAKER_03: like warning.
[54:16] And I met,
[54:17] you know,
[54:17] we're in a meeting and he said something and I was like,
[54:19] I disagree.
[54:20] SPEAKER_03: And people pinged me later like, oh, no one disagrees with Christos.
[54:24] SPEAKER_03: And I just saw a human who was curious.
[54:27] SPEAKER_03: And we've gone on,
[54:27] SPEAKER_03: like we don't interact that much,
[54:29] but he's gone out of his way to literally Google with something
[54:32] called spot bonuses.
[54:33] SPEAKER_03: It's a weird thing.
[54:34] SPEAKER_03: I still don't understand.
[54:35] SPEAKER_03: I get it and I'm like, you just gave me money for doing a good job?
[54:38] SPEAKER_03: Okay.
[54:38] SPEAKER_03: But anyway, but it's not so much about the money.
[54:40] SPEAKER_03: It's a token of recognition.
[54:42] SPEAKER_03: Literally my,
[54:44] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[54:45] SPEAKER_03: I have two spot bonuses from Christos because he's like,
[54:48] SPEAKER_03: you delivered something that took multiple people,
[54:51] SPEAKER_03: tried and failed.
[54:53] SPEAKER_03: It took 10 years.
[54:54] SPEAKER_03: Nobody shipped it.
[54:54] SPEAKER_03: Thumbnail AB, thumbnail testing.
[54:56] SPEAKER_03: And you guys, you did it.
[54:58] SPEAKER_03: And he saw that.
[55:00] SPEAKER_03: And we went through...
[55:01] SPEAKER_03: What I just thought was a high friction,
[55:03] SPEAKER_03: because he was,
[55:04] SPEAKER_03: this guy is like somewhere else in the org.
[55:07] SPEAKER_03: And he was like, I am concerned about this for creators.
[55:10] Explain to me,
[55:11] not his domain,
[55:12] but he cared deeply and never stopped being curious.
[55:14] SPEAKER_03: He was like, help me understand.
[55:16] SPEAKER_00: So this is kind of a mix of caring and curiosity.
[55:18] SPEAKER_03: It's curiosity.
[55:19] SPEAKER_03: It's never stopped learning.
[55:20] SPEAKER_03: And one thing with Christos is,
[55:23] vp but you can bring up anything he will go down to the detail
[55:27] like he understands
[55:28] SPEAKER_03: it deeply and by the way this what i'm describing for engineering
[55:33] SPEAKER_03: for UX,
[55:34] SPEAKER_03: for product,
[55:35] SPEAKER_03: for data science,
[55:36] this ability to understand that you're a student of life and
[55:39] you keep learning.
[55:41] SPEAKER_03: You never get tired of learning.
[55:43] SPEAKER_03: So that's one thing I always see.
[55:45] SPEAKER_03: They're like,
[55:45] SPEAKER_03: even the ICs,
[55:46] SPEAKER_03: it's like,
[55:47] SPEAKER_03: I just found,
[55:47] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[55:48] SPEAKER_03: the ones that send you,
[55:49] SPEAKER_03: hey,
[55:49] SPEAKER_03: I just played around with this new model,
[55:50] SPEAKER_03: da,
[55:50] SPEAKER_03: da,
[55:51] SPEAKER_03: da,
[55:51] SPEAKER_03: da,
[55:51] SPEAKER_03: check it out.
[55:51] SPEAKER_03: Here's my observations.
[55:53] SPEAKER_03: Like this yearning for learning, right?
[55:55] SPEAKER_03: So that's
[55:56] SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
[55:57] SPEAKER_00: what I would add is at the engineering level,
[55:59] SPEAKER_00: I think outside of the engineering manager is a little bit different,
[56:02] SPEAKER_00: but as engineers,
[56:04] SPEAKER_00: they're not afraid to get their hands dirty.
[56:06] SPEAKER_00: That's it.
[56:07] SPEAKER_03: Learn and get their hands dirty.
[56:08] SPEAKER_00: That's a nice way of putting it.
[56:10] SPEAKER_00: And they will not just come like, oh, I've learned this.
[56:13] SPEAKER_00: No, I wrote the code.
[56:15] SPEAKER_00: Here's a pull request that does it.
[56:19] Create a bit of a friction where they'll go to a team and
[56:22] they'll be like,
[56:22] SPEAKER_00: oh,
[56:22] SPEAKER_00: we'd like to do this.
[56:23] SPEAKER_00: And a team will be like, nah, that'll take us like two, three weeks.
[56:26] SPEAKER_00: Can't do it.
[56:27] SPEAKER_00: And these people... Are the kinds that are like, why?
[56:30] SPEAKER_00: Well,
[56:30] either they'll ask why and then they'll get to the point that
[56:33] it's not that
[56:34] SPEAKER_00: difficult and they'll do it.
[56:35] SPEAKER_00: Or sometimes they just do it.
[56:36] SPEAKER_00: But they do it in a way where it's not showing off or something.
[56:39] SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, I did it.
[56:41] SPEAKER_00: Can we progress?
[56:42] SPEAKER_00: It can be done.
[56:43] SPEAKER_00: Or tell me what I'm missing because you're the expert.
[56:46] SPEAKER_00: And I knew that used to piss off.
[56:48] SPEAKER_03: It could piss off people.
[56:50] SPEAKER_03: But it's like, same with my eng partner, Mathilde, same thing.
[56:53] SPEAKER_03: She'll be like, I'm sorry, I'm going to call.
[56:55] SPEAKER_03: I'm going to call.
[56:56] SPEAKER_03: This is not passing my sniff test.
[56:58] SPEAKER_03: Why is it two months?
[57:00] SPEAKER_03: And then as they start going in,
[57:01] what you find is you'll be able to help them problem solve oh
[57:04] because you thought
[57:04] you needed to do this extra thing have you thought about doing
[57:07] that oh okay like
[57:08] there was something we were talking about recently like we
[57:10] could just remove this
[57:11] this traffic have we oh okay we didn't realize that was an
[57:14] option and actually you
[57:16] know so that's there's two sides to that one is they're willing
[57:20] to get their hands
[57:21] messy and you know roll up their sleeves but the other side of
[57:24] it which is they're
[57:25] SPEAKER_03: also very comfortable with that being done to them yeah
[57:30] SPEAKER_03: Like the strongest leaders,
[57:32] SPEAKER_03: they're the ones who in a room be like,
[57:33] SPEAKER_03: huh,
[57:33] SPEAKER_03: I never thought about it that way.
[57:34] SPEAKER_03: That's a good point.
[57:35] SPEAKER_03: They're willing to call out that they were wrong.
[57:39] SPEAKER_03: This notion of vulnerability is your strength.
[57:42] SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
[57:43] SPEAKER_00: I think they basically,
[57:44] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[57:44] SPEAKER_00: they're competent,
[57:45] SPEAKER_00: but they don't let the ego get ahead of it.
[57:47] Like they kind of put away their ego and they assume that they
[57:50] might not be
[57:51] SPEAKER_00: competent all the time,
[57:52] SPEAKER_00: right?
[57:52] SPEAKER_03: And it's the same,
[57:54] SPEAKER_03: I think the common,
[57:54] SPEAKER_03: it's like,
[57:55] SPEAKER_03: because you're a student of life and you're always learning,
[57:57] SPEAKER_03: you understand that the more you learn in life,
[57:59] SPEAKER_03: anyone who's a student of life knows that the more you learn,
[58:02] SPEAKER_03: the more you realize how much shit you do not know,
[58:04] SPEAKER_03: right?
[58:05] SPEAKER_03: Like just how much you don't know, you know?
[58:07] SPEAKER_03: And so if...
[58:10] SPEAKER_03: But they have strong conviction, which I'll get to in a minute.
[58:13] SPEAKER_03: If I say this is the way to do A,
[58:15] SPEAKER_03: they're open,
[58:16] SPEAKER_03: but you better have a strong rationale,
[58:18] SPEAKER_03: which is where some people buckle.
[58:20] Because they're not able to have the vulnerable conversation to say,
[58:24] actually,
[58:24] I disagree.
[58:25] SPEAKER_03: And then, oh, actually, no, no, no, actually, you were right.
[58:28] SPEAKER_01: Right?
[58:29] SPEAKER_03: So most people are like,
[58:29] SPEAKER_03: I'm not even going to defend or challenge them because they have such a,
[58:33] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[58:33] SPEAKER_03: they're so clear in what is,
[58:36] SPEAKER_03: you know the type?
[58:37] SPEAKER_03: It's like, you can't challenge them.
[58:38] SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
[58:38] They just thought about what they're saying before they opened
[58:41] their mouth.
[58:42] SPEAKER_03: Right?
[58:43] SPEAKER_03: But they're usually open to being wrong.
[58:45] It's just that they've thought about it so much that you need
[58:49] to do the work to
[58:50] SPEAKER_03: rationalize why it's wrong.
[58:51] SPEAKER_03: And they're okay with being like, actually, you know what?
[58:54] SPEAKER_03: Good point.
[58:55] SPEAKER_03: I'm wrong.
[58:56] Like in this case,
[58:56] with this example,
[58:58] I was like,
[58:58] you know what I'm going to do?
[58:59] SPEAKER_03: I hear you.
[59:01] SPEAKER_03: I understand the feedback you're giving.
[59:02] SPEAKER_03: I don't think it's a concern.
[59:04] SPEAKER_03: but we may be wrong, right?
[59:07] SPEAKER_03: But what I'm gonna do is at every step of the rollout,
[59:09] SPEAKER_03: you're not in my chain,
[59:11] SPEAKER_03: I don't need your approval,
[59:13] but I will send you an email with the metrics that I'm seeing
[59:15] and we should make,
[59:16] SPEAKER_03: let's have a one-on-one or discussion.
[59:18] SPEAKER_03: This is what I did with the VP Christos.
[59:20] Let's have a one-on-one on like what you think and maybe
[59:22] there's something I'm not seeing.
[59:23] SPEAKER_03: And both parties, like my case, I've not been at YouTube for that long.
[59:27] SPEAKER_03: This guy's been there for like 15 years.
[59:29] Like in his case,
[59:30] he also doesn't know,
[59:30] like I know what I'm talking about.
[59:33] SPEAKER_03: And so at each step,
[59:34] SPEAKER_03: Actually, the conviction was correct.
[59:37] SPEAKER_03: But the thing he called out made me think about,
[59:40] SPEAKER_03: oh,
[59:40] these metrics that he's called out that I just need to make
[59:42] sure in the go-to
[59:42] SPEAKER_03: market we solve for.
[59:44] SPEAKER_03: So they are, one, students, they're willing to, they always be learning.
[59:49] SPEAKER_03: Two, they're willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands in it.
[59:52] SPEAKER_03: And that usually means you actually need to dog food your own products.
[59:57] SPEAKER_03: Sorry, PMs and people out there.
[59:59] SPEAKER_03: It is not okay to never have gone through your onboarding flow.
[1:00:02] And also,
[1:00:04] I'll call out the most efficient engineers who are the ones who
[1:00:07] went through the...
[1:00:09] SPEAKER_00: At Uber, for example, create a driver account.
[1:00:11] SPEAKER_03: Drove and deliver food.
[1:00:14] SPEAKER_00: Or even just do the simulator and see what the onboarding flow is like.
[1:00:17] SPEAKER_00: Or open the competitors app and see what it takes to sign up there.
[1:00:20] SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
[1:00:21] SPEAKER_03: And I think especially in big tech,
[1:00:24] SPEAKER_03: people get so removed from the product that they just forget to use it.
[1:00:27] SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, how are you going to have empathy?
[1:00:28] You're building something and putting it in the world to
[1:00:30] millions of people.
[1:00:31] SPEAKER_03: You don't care enough to use it?
[1:00:33] yeah that that's i feel like that's it's it's it's happening
[1:00:38] but i think it's good
[1:00:39] that we're talking about it and and then this final piece which
[1:00:41] is that you know um
[1:00:43] the conviction like they have a strong opinion they have
[1:00:46] convictions where they say
[1:00:47] like this is the way they're not like wobbly like uh maybe
[1:00:51] whatever they're willing
[1:00:52] to have skin in the game but they're also willing to be wrong
[1:00:55] and be like you know
[1:00:55] SPEAKER_03: what
[1:00:56] SPEAKER_03: actually, I take it back.
[1:00:57] Actually,
[1:00:58] I didn't realize that I see Mathilde do that all the time,
[1:01:00] like in meetings.
[1:01:00] SPEAKER_03: She'd be like, oh, no, I didn't.
[1:01:02] SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's a good point.
[1:01:03] SPEAKER_03: Oh, I never thought about that.
[1:01:04] SPEAKER_03: Right?
[1:01:05] SPEAKER_03: So, but she's also been like, guys, I'm sorry.
[1:01:06] SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
[1:01:07] SPEAKER_03: My sniff test, my intuition, like they trust their gut.
[1:01:10] SPEAKER_03: So, and that comes from years of training.
[1:01:12] SPEAKER_03: So those are some patterns.
[1:01:13] SPEAKER_03: And then of course,
[1:01:14] SPEAKER_03: there's some other tactical things like,
[1:01:16] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[1:01:16] SPEAKER_03: they're actually able to communicate
[1:01:19] SPEAKER_03: Like you might not be,
[1:01:20] SPEAKER_03: I don't mean you need to be able to go on stage and present or whatever,
[1:01:23] SPEAKER_03: but you can just talk human to human.
[1:01:25] SPEAKER_03: You can have a conversation.
[1:01:27] SPEAKER_03: And because it's so important,
[1:01:28] SPEAKER_03: even if you're like shy or task turn,
[1:01:30] SPEAKER_03: you're able to kind of distill what you're saying into simple terms.
[1:01:33] And the ones I love the most are the engineers that don't make
[1:01:36] you feel like an idiot.
[1:01:38] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:01:38] SPEAKER_03: And even at my, you know, I was an engineer.
[1:01:41] SPEAKER_03: I think I'm actually good at, you know, technicalities.
[1:01:43] SPEAKER_03: But there's some engineers in the room.
[1:01:44] SPEAKER_03: They just throw out the acronyms and throw out this and throw out that.
[1:01:47] And I'm like,
[1:01:48] you think this makes you look smart,
[1:01:50] but you're actually isolating yourself.
[1:01:52] SPEAKER_03: Actually,
[1:01:52] SPEAKER_03: power is when you're able to take wisdom and,
[1:01:55] SPEAKER_03: I mean,
[1:01:56] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[1:01:56] SPEAKER_03: Buddha or Gandhi,
[1:01:58] they have these very simplistic quotes because they take
[1:02:01] something that's so complicated,
[1:02:02] distill it down where everyone can access that information and
[1:02:06] that power.
[1:02:07] SPEAKER_03: And that's powerful.
[1:02:08] SPEAKER_03: Now, here's the shock or whatever.
[1:02:11] Everything I've just described,
[1:02:12] I think,
[1:02:12] applies to every strong person that I have met.
[1:02:16] SPEAKER_03: The designers, the PMs, the data scientists, it's the same patterns.
[1:02:21] SPEAKER_03: They're hungry, they stay hungry, stay foolish, they have conviction.
[1:02:25] SPEAKER_00: I'll just say that for software engineers,
[1:02:27] SPEAKER_00: what I've seen,
[1:02:27] SPEAKER_00: do not be afraid to get your hands dirty and code.
[1:02:30] SPEAKER_00: Like...
[1:02:31] SPEAKER_00: Because there are things that apply to everyone,
[1:02:33] but the people who I've seen fail at Teams who look good as
[1:02:37] they just talk to talk,
[1:02:38] SPEAKER_00: but they don't get involved for whatever reason.
[1:02:41] SPEAKER_03: But that's the same with designers who,
[1:02:44] SPEAKER_03: design leaders who have not opened Figma to actually play with a mock.
[1:02:47] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:02:48] My design partner,
[1:02:49] Brian,
[1:02:49] he literally will mock up something as we're talking.
[1:02:53] SPEAKER_03: You know, I mock up stuff till today, right?
[1:02:56] SPEAKER_03: I can write a PRD.
[1:02:57] Like now I'm not going to be a hundred percent as efficient,
[1:02:59] but I can still do it.
[1:03:01] And that is so important because you have empathy for the
[1:03:03] person in the role,
[1:03:04] SPEAKER_03: not just marching orders,
[1:03:06] SPEAKER_03: you know?
[1:03:06] SPEAKER_03: So like,
[1:03:07] SPEAKER_03: I really genuinely think it's like these skills,
[1:03:10] you get better and better by being the student all the time and
[1:03:14] by getting your
[1:03:14] SPEAKER_03: hands dirty.
[1:03:15] SPEAKER_00: One thing that you've done,
[1:03:16] SPEAKER_00: which was really,
[1:03:17] SPEAKER_00: really interesting to me,
[1:03:18] SPEAKER_00: is you mentored a lot of my engineers on the team.
[1:03:22] SPEAKER_00: And they actually grew a lot faster professionally.
[1:03:25] SPEAKER_00: It was great.
[1:03:28] SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen other PMs do it.
[1:03:30] SPEAKER_00: What are tactics that you suggested to them?
[1:03:32] SPEAKER_00: And these could be things that an engineering manager could also use,
[1:03:35] SPEAKER_00: a tech lead,
[1:03:37] SPEAKER_00: or even just an engineer who's,
[1:03:38] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[1:03:38] SPEAKER_00: like a senior or engineer who's mentoring other engineers,
[1:03:42] SPEAKER_00: because luckily there's more and more engineers mentoring.
[1:03:44] SPEAKER_03: What works?
[1:03:45] SPEAKER_03: I know I'm going to sound like a broken record,
[1:03:48] SPEAKER_03: but I do believe repetition doesn't spoil the prayer.
[1:03:51] This is a phenomenal example of where the playbook tracks
[1:03:54] regardless of the role.
[1:03:57] SPEAKER_03: Really?
[1:03:57] SPEAKER_03: It's not just engineers.
[1:03:58] SPEAKER_03: I mentored designers, as you know, on the team.
[1:04:01] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you did.
[1:04:02] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I actually even managed the team.
[1:04:03] I managed the design team when our design manager went out on
[1:04:07] parental leave.
[1:04:07] SPEAKER_03: And then you were swamped and then we wrote some PRDs for you.
[1:04:10] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
[1:04:12] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was so swamped.
[1:04:13] SPEAKER_03: You wrote the PRDs.
[1:04:15] SPEAKER_03: Which, by the way, is one of the tactics.
[1:04:17] SPEAKER_03: It's like, care so much about the product.
[1:04:22] SPEAKER_03: Be a product leader first.
[1:04:24] SPEAKER_03: You care about the data science.
[1:04:25] SPEAKER_03: You care about the metrics.
[1:04:27] So that you are a participant in what are these artifacts that
[1:04:30] you contribute to?
[1:04:32] SPEAKER_03: It's the vision doc.
[1:04:34] SPEAKER_03: It's actively participating in the PRD.
[1:04:36] SPEAKER_00: And this would apply not just for product managers,
[1:04:40] but for engineering managers or anyone who is either in a
[1:04:42] leadership position or
[1:04:44] SPEAKER_00: wants to be in one.
[1:04:45] SPEAKER_03: You know the Oprah Giff?
[1:04:46] SPEAKER_03: Oprah Winfrey Giff where she's like...
[1:04:50] SPEAKER_03: It applies.
[1:04:51] SPEAKER_03: So, you know, and it's not like checking a box.
[1:04:55] It's something meaningful because when you now go to that PM
[1:04:59] that you helped out or
[1:05:00] SPEAKER_03: that busy partner or that marketing partner or that designer to say,
[1:05:06] SPEAKER_03: hey,
[1:05:06] SPEAKER_03: endorse my promo,
[1:05:08] SPEAKER_03: they are like,
[1:05:09] filming at the bit to do it because they've seen you actively participate,
[1:05:14] right?
[1:05:14] So I think caring about the product in a way where you're also
[1:05:17] a contributor
[1:05:18] SPEAKER_03: actively to like the OKRs,
[1:05:20] SPEAKER_03: the whatever,
[1:05:21] SPEAKER_03: you know.
[1:05:21] SPEAKER_00: So when you say caring about the product and the business, right?
[1:05:23] SPEAKER_00: Like just caring why we're here, why we're working here.
[1:05:26] SPEAKER_03: Actually, we didn't do that.
[1:05:27] SPEAKER_03: You know, product is like three things at its core.
[1:05:31] SPEAKER_03: It's the business impact.
[1:05:33] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[1:05:33] SPEAKER_03: It's the feasibility, the technical, you know, what's possible.
[1:05:37] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[1:05:37] SPEAKER_03: And it is the customer experience.
[1:05:39] SPEAKER_03: That's product.
[1:05:40] SPEAKER_03: That's the definition of product.
[1:05:41] SPEAKER_03: So when I say we're all product leaders.
[1:05:43] SPEAKER_00: You never told me this before.
[1:05:45] SPEAKER_03: No.
[1:05:46] SPEAKER_03: I don't know where I read that from.
[1:05:47] SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's like some people call it viability, usability, feasibility.
[1:05:50] SPEAKER_03: Right.
[1:05:50] SPEAKER_00: That's what we used to call it back then.
[1:05:53] SPEAKER_00: I like the second one better.
[1:05:54] And that is actually why I like to say we are all product
[1:05:59] leaders because there is
[1:06:00] no product if I come up with a shiny UX mock and it will be
[1:06:04] great for the business.
[1:06:04] SPEAKER_03: But engineers are like, this thing is going to take two, three years.
[1:06:08] But I think this is just really good to think about because
[1:06:11] these days I feel more
[1:06:12] SPEAKER_00: and more engineers will become product people.
[1:06:16] SPEAKER_00: Leaders.
[1:06:16] SPEAKER_00: For example,
[1:06:18] SPEAKER_00: you leave your tech company,
[1:06:19] SPEAKER_00: you have a lot of savings,
[1:06:20] SPEAKER_00: you start a startup to build a product.
[1:06:22] SPEAKER_00: You're a product leader.
[1:06:22] SPEAKER_00: You're now a product leader.
[1:06:24] SPEAKER_00: You join a team where there's not a product manager,
[1:06:26] SPEAKER_00: either you become a product leader or,
[1:06:28] SPEAKER_00: you know.
[1:06:28] SPEAKER_00: I mean, look at linear.
[1:06:30] SPEAKER_03: Like,
[1:06:30] SPEAKER_03: I mean,
[1:06:31] SPEAKER_03: they're multiple founders,
[1:06:32] SPEAKER_03: but linear that,
[1:06:33] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[1:06:35] SPEAKER_00: we remember working with him.
[1:06:36] SPEAKER_00: They hire for product sense and taste for all of engineers.
[1:06:40] SPEAKER_00: And the reason they have so few product managers,
[1:06:42] SPEAKER_00: they now have one or two because everyone is one.
[1:06:44] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[1:06:45] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[1:06:47] SPEAKER_03: Which makes it that more,
[1:06:49] SPEAKER_03: another podcast,
[1:06:50] SPEAKER_03: but that much more important that I used to say this,
[1:06:53] SPEAKER_03: you remember me saying this,
[1:06:55] SPEAKER_03: if you take a PM out from a project,
[1:06:59] SPEAKER_03: there should be an order of magnitude exponential effect.
[1:07:04] It's not like you went from nine to 10,
[1:07:06] because we've worked with eng leaders
[1:07:10] SPEAKER_03: we had people on the team who could do the nine to 10.
[1:07:13] SPEAKER_03: They were really thoughtful in sending the updates, in the standups.
[1:07:18] SPEAKER_03: So a PM comes in, your goal should be like an order of magnitude.
[1:07:23] SPEAKER_03: And so in a world where like, what do PMs do?
[1:07:25] I'm like,
[1:07:25] if you are going from nine to 10,
[1:07:27] you need to go rethink what you're doing as a PM.
[1:07:29] SPEAKER_03: It's like, it's exponential.
[1:07:30] SPEAKER_03: It's not immediate, but it's exponential.
[1:07:32] SPEAKER_03: So going back to like this stuff, I think one is be a product leader.
[1:07:37] SPEAKER_03: Now we all have the same definition.
[1:07:38] SPEAKER_03: And that means you understand the business implications.
[1:07:41] You understand how the metrics that you move ladder up to the
[1:07:44] core businesses metrics.
[1:07:46] SPEAKER_03: Like there's a direct correlation.
[1:07:48] SPEAKER_03: We knew how incremental whatever moved Uber's numbers.
[1:07:55] SPEAKER_03: I think the second one is treat your career like a project.
[1:08:01] SPEAKER_03: What do I mean by that?
[1:08:03] SPEAKER_03: Most of the time,
[1:08:04] SPEAKER_03: I'm not a fan of when people reach out to me like,
[1:08:05] SPEAKER_03: hey,
[1:08:06] SPEAKER_03: I have this issue,
[1:08:07] SPEAKER_03: can you be my mentor?
[1:08:09] SPEAKER_03: Sounds horrible,
[1:08:09] SPEAKER_03: but nine times out of 10,
[1:08:10] I don't even engage because I just don't know enough about you
[1:08:15] to help you.
[1:08:16] SPEAKER_03: I think mentorship,
[1:08:18] SPEAKER_03: and I've become more of a big believer in sponsorship,
[1:08:21] SPEAKER_03: which is even more important than mentorship,
[1:08:23] SPEAKER_03: I think.
[1:08:25] SPEAKER_03: I met everyone on the team at the beginning,
[1:08:28] SPEAKER_03: but over time when I became more of a lead of the Money Hub site,
[1:08:32] SPEAKER_03: I started meeting what I called,
[1:08:35] SPEAKER_03: for me,
[1:08:36] SPEAKER_03: those kind of ambassadors of the product.
[1:08:42] SPEAKER_03: The ones that I knew were at the top,
[1:08:44] SPEAKER_03: top fifth percentile who they could have an exponential effect.
[1:08:47] SPEAKER_03: They would come to me and tell me,
[1:08:49] SPEAKER_03: something is wrong with the architecture or there's something.
[1:08:51] SPEAKER_03: And then I would catch it.
[1:08:52] SPEAKER_03: And that's where we did the architecture sprint.
[1:08:54] SPEAKER_03: Remember, to redesign the stack.
[1:08:57] SPEAKER_03: But that came from a one-on-one walk with an engineer flagging it, right?
[1:09:01] SPEAKER_03: Who cared enough to bring that to me.
[1:09:03] SPEAKER_03: So...
[1:09:04] SPEAKER_03: I start thinking more about sponsorship,
[1:09:06] SPEAKER_03: which is like I'm a voice for you when you're not in the room.
[1:09:10] SPEAKER_03: I am, you know, helping you sort of get to the next level.
[1:09:16] SPEAKER_03: It's not just fixing skills.
[1:09:17] SPEAKER_03: It's like we're actively getting you to the next level.
[1:09:20] SPEAKER_03: So I start to say, you know, look for sponsorships instead of mentorship.
[1:09:24] But your sponsors and mentors should be people who are deeply
[1:09:27] aware of your work.
[1:09:28] SPEAKER_03: It's not some random person online that you message on LinkedIn.
[1:09:32] SPEAKER_03: That's not, you know.
[1:09:34] SPEAKER_03: When you have that,
[1:09:35] your career becomes a bit more like a project because if this
[1:09:38] was a project,
[1:09:40] SPEAKER_03: you would check in on a weekly basis.
[1:09:41] SPEAKER_03: Maybe you'd have monthly updates.
[1:09:43] SPEAKER_03: You'd be aware of what the risks,
[1:09:44] SPEAKER_03: the results are,
[1:09:45] SPEAKER_03: what the challenges are,
[1:09:46] SPEAKER_03: what the,
[1:09:47] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[1:09:47] SPEAKER_03: PPP,
[1:09:48] SPEAKER_03: progress plans,
[1:09:49] SPEAKER_03: problems.
[1:09:50] SPEAKER_03: Too many people have that conversation when it's too late.
[1:09:52] After you've gotten your rating and they're like,
[1:09:54] oh my God,
[1:09:55] what did I do?
[1:09:55] SPEAKER_03: It's like,
[1:09:56] SPEAKER_03: actually,
[1:09:56] why don't you have an active forward-looking conversation where
[1:09:59] you're like,
[1:09:59] SPEAKER_03: hey,
[1:10:00] SPEAKER_03: Gergay manager,
[1:10:00] SPEAKER_03: I'm aware that I'm not doing X,
[1:10:02] SPEAKER_03: Y,
[1:10:03] SPEAKER_03: Z.
[1:10:03] SPEAKER_03: How can I fix this skill?
[1:10:05] What are examples of other people who are doing a really good
[1:10:06] job of this skill
[1:10:07] SPEAKER_03: that I can emulate?
[1:10:09] SPEAKER_03: That is such a more collaborative way
[1:10:12] SPEAKER_03: to step up because it comes from a place of curiosity and learning,
[1:10:15] SPEAKER_03: which we just talked about,
[1:10:16] SPEAKER_03: right?
[1:10:17] SPEAKER_03: And then I think the final one I'll say is, this is going to be hard.
[1:10:22] SPEAKER_03: And this is why sponsorship is so important.
[1:10:25] SPEAKER_03: I've never gotten a job that I applied for.
[1:10:31] SPEAKER_03: I know.
[1:10:31] SPEAKER_01: Wow.
[1:10:32] SPEAKER_03: Never.
[1:10:33] SPEAKER_03: I've never gone online, clicked apply.
[1:10:36] SPEAKER_00: Is it because you didn't apply or you got jobs else, the different way?
[1:10:40] Somebody is like,
[1:10:42] we need to hire her,
[1:10:43] recruiter reaches out,
[1:10:45] and then I apply.
[1:10:47] SPEAKER_03: Every single job.
[1:10:49] SPEAKER_03: Now, I have an atypical CV.
[1:10:50] SPEAKER_03: I'm a Nigerian girl.
[1:10:53] SPEAKER_03: I'm not a typical profile of like 10 years or whatever,
[1:10:56] SPEAKER_03: but I'm not a CV that,
[1:10:57] SPEAKER_03: I mean,
[1:10:58] SPEAKER_03: now maybe,
[1:10:58] SPEAKER_03: but at the time,
[1:11:00] SPEAKER_03: even when they hired me as a PM,
[1:11:02] SPEAKER_03: what did I know about product management?
[1:11:04] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:11:04] SPEAKER_03: Right.
[1:11:05] SPEAKER_03: But it took people who I'd worked with as a GM who were like,
[1:11:08] SPEAKER_03: I know her from West Africa,
[1:11:12] SPEAKER_03: engineering brain,
[1:11:12] SPEAKER_03: and that was like the folks in,
[1:11:16] SPEAKER_03: you probably remember them now,
[1:11:17] SPEAKER_03: but they were the ones that literally worked on the bin numbers,
[1:11:21] the operations folks who had worked with me as a GM who like
[1:11:24] told my hiring manager,
[1:11:25] SPEAKER_03: like,
[1:11:26] SPEAKER_03: we know her absolute like,
[1:11:28] SPEAKER_03: joy to work with.
[1:11:29] SPEAKER_03: And that's happened consistently.
[1:11:31] SPEAKER_03: Like people come to me like, oh, how did you get on the Lego board?
[1:11:34] SPEAKER_03: I met the recruiter five years ago.
[1:11:36] SPEAKER_03: Talking about something else, entirely different.
[1:11:39] SPEAKER_03: And from just sharing knowledge and talking, when the time came,
[1:11:43] SPEAKER_03: And, you know, they put my name in the hat.
[1:11:46] SPEAKER_03: So in every opportunity,
[1:11:49] if you focus on doing good work and you focus on making every
[1:11:54] moment a teaching altruistic,
[1:11:57] SPEAKER_03: I'm not like,
[1:11:58] SPEAKER_03: I'm not doing this because I want to like get something.
[1:12:00] Like it's not like I'm doing this because I want to check a box
[1:12:02] so I can get promoted.
[1:12:04] SPEAKER_03: I feel like people smell that stuff.
[1:12:05] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they do.
[1:12:06] SPEAKER_03: Right.
[1:12:07] SPEAKER_03: And I just, I'm just like, I see what you're doing.
[1:12:08] SPEAKER_03: Like most people do.
[1:12:09] SPEAKER_00: I also remember people who were doing this and I look back,
[1:12:12] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[1:12:12] SPEAKER_00: 10 years later and they're stuck where they were.
[1:12:15] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[1:12:15] SPEAKER_03: And the ones who just did good work,
[1:12:18] SPEAKER_03: we talk,
[1:12:19] SPEAKER_03: we've been talking about them in this room right now.
[1:12:22] If somebody pings me and they're like,
[1:12:23] even if they don't know,
[1:12:24] and they're like,
[1:12:25] SPEAKER_03: would you refer this person?
[1:12:26] SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh my God, there are people I've said.
[1:12:28] SPEAKER_03: I would give Move Mountains to work with them again.
[1:12:31] SPEAKER_03: They don't even know.
[1:12:32] SPEAKER_03: And it goes both ways.
[1:12:33] SPEAKER_03: When people ping me as well, then they're like, hey, this person.
[1:12:35] SPEAKER_03: I'm like, you know what?
[1:12:36] SPEAKER_03: That person did X, Y, Z to their team.
[1:12:39] SPEAKER_03: These are the good things.
[1:12:40] SPEAKER_03: These are the bad things.
[1:12:41] SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure I would choose to work with them again for these reasons.
[1:12:43] SPEAKER_03: It goes both.
[1:12:44] SPEAKER_03: Careers are long.
[1:12:46] SPEAKER_03: And so play the long game.
[1:12:47] SPEAKER_03: And so if the long game is ultimately you care deeply,
[1:12:51] SPEAKER_03: we've just been talking about people in this room,
[1:12:53] SPEAKER_03: right?
[1:12:54] SPEAKER_03: We remember them, Charles.
[1:12:55] SPEAKER_03: I know what Charles did.
[1:12:57] Charles was the one who came to you and said,
[1:12:59] you should listen to your PM.
[1:13:01] SPEAKER_03: Right.
[1:13:02] SPEAKER_03: There's something to be learned from.
[1:13:03] SPEAKER_01: Right.
[1:13:03] Like you could have had another manager was like,
[1:13:05] oh,
[1:13:05] screw product management.
[1:13:07] SPEAKER_03: They always think they're the CEOs.
[1:13:09] But if you play a long game and you just care about doing the
[1:13:12] best that you can in
[1:13:13] SPEAKER_03: that moment,
[1:13:14] SPEAKER_03: like if you were in a sports team,
[1:13:16] SPEAKER_03: I really like using sports team or musical team.
[1:13:18] SPEAKER_03: When you're reading your notes in an orchestra,
[1:13:21] SPEAKER_03: you're like,
[1:13:21] SPEAKER_03: I'm going to play the best that I can.
[1:13:23] SPEAKER_03: for me and this group of this note.
[1:13:25] SPEAKER_03: It's not like I'm doing it so I can become,
[1:13:27] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[1:13:27] SPEAKER_03: you're just like,
[1:13:28] SPEAKER_03: there's this love for it.
[1:13:30] SPEAKER_03: I come back to this word.
[1:13:31] SPEAKER_03: When you do that, I feel like the rest follows.
[1:13:34] SPEAKER_03: There'll be people who will stand up to sponsor you.
[1:13:38] SPEAKER_03: And then you don't need to be,
[1:13:39] SPEAKER_03: you know,
[1:13:40] SPEAKER_03: think of your career,
[1:13:41] SPEAKER_03: be aware of it,
[1:13:41] SPEAKER_03: not just forget about it,
[1:13:42] SPEAKER_03: but at the same time,
[1:13:43] SPEAKER_03: let that not be the thing that defines you.
[1:13:45] Because I feel like in a world where everyone is doing
[1:13:47] everything for some outcome,
[1:13:50] it's just so refreshing to meet people who are doing it because
[1:13:52] it's like the right
[1:13:53] SPEAKER_03: thing to do.
[1:13:54] so then wrapping up the so the three things that you mentioned
[1:13:57] the first one was
[1:13:59] caring be a product leader be a true product leader yeah so
[1:14:05] like all those are
[1:14:06] product leaders sponsor people where you can and play the long
[1:14:10] game right the the
[1:14:12] SPEAKER_03: um
[1:14:13] SPEAKER_03: Be a product leader.
[1:14:15] SPEAKER_03: Treat your career like a project.
[1:14:18] SPEAKER_03: Periodic check-ins.
[1:14:19] SPEAKER_03: Don't wait until... You wouldn't talk about a product when it's shipped.
[1:14:24] SPEAKER_03: You would talk about it along the way.
[1:14:25] SPEAKER_03: So treat your career in that way with your manager, with your peers.
[1:14:28] SPEAKER_03: Like, hey, how am I doing in my this?
[1:14:30] So check in periodically because people are more willing to
[1:14:32] give you low stakes
[1:14:34] SPEAKER_03: feedback when it's not like perf,
[1:14:36] SPEAKER_03: right?
[1:14:37] And finally,
[1:14:38] don't go out actively just looking for like mentorships and
[1:14:41] checking the boxes.
[1:14:42] SPEAKER_03: Just do great work.
[1:14:43] because the sponsors will come who will sponsor you when you're
[1:14:47] not in the room by
[1:14:49] just caring well well ab this was wonderful and just really
[1:14:54] good to reconnect i
[1:14:55] know i know i know i wonder what our next eight years will look
[1:14:59] like wow eight
[1:15:01] years i hope you enjoyed this conversation with ab in a
[1:15:04] slightly different format
[1:15:05] SPEAKER_00: than what we do with most podcast episodes
[1:15:08] You can connect with AB on social media as listed in the show
[1:15:11] notes below.
[1:15:12] SPEAKER_00: For more tips on how to work with product managers,
[1:15:14] SPEAKER_00: CT dives into Pragmatic Engineer,
[1:15:16] SPEAKER_00: also linked in the show notes below.
[1:15:17] SPEAKER_00: If you've enjoyed this podcast,
[1:15:18] please do consider leaving a rating on the podcast player
[1:15:21] you're listening on.
[1:15:22] SPEAKER_00: This helps more listeners discover the podcast.
[1:15:24] SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and see you in the next one.

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