Learning’s from year one as a PM

  1. Keep the problem space and solution space separate. Do not switch between them.
  2. Experiment a lot, and be comfortable acknowledging what you don’t know.
  3. User attitude and user behaviour are extremely different. Learn how to identify, measure, and distinguish between the two.
  4. Be a good listener. Listen to as many people as you can, and listen intently.
  5. Experience design is one of the most underrated components of building tech products.
  6. Don’t tell someone how or when to do their job. Share your requirements, explain their importance, and communicate your deadline. Understand what is feasible and scope the solution accordingly.
  7. Learn to manage your motivation; your motivation impacts your team’s motivation. You are responsible for your team.
  8. It is extremely important to create artefacts for all decisions and trade-offs made for any product or experiment launched. In the short run, this is a cumbersome exercise, but it compounds as the breadth increases.
  9. Writing is an extremely important and even rare skill. The bar for good writing generally stands at correctness and completeness. Don’t settle for that. Hold yourself to a higher standard.
  10. Your job as a PM is to think extensively and holistically, from end to end, and to transfer your thinking to other members of your team in the simplest, most articulate way.
  11. How you tell the story behind an experiment or feature determines whether it will get prioritised.
  12. Be data-informed. Decisions can be taken based on your taste when you are data-informed, or when data has led to an impasse.
  13. Don’t engage in subjective debates. Approach problems objectively. If debates are subjective, especially about user attitude and behaviour, build a framework to conclude the debate.
  14. Listen to your gut. If you’re not convinced about something, ask. Identify the reason and discuss it in the right forum.
  15. Know your systems very well. Pick the brains of developers as much as you can.
  16. Overcommunicate.
  17. Thinking is non-linear and messy, and that’s okay. The narrative you create will be linear, but only after you have clarity.
  18. Measure your outcomes. If you don’t measure, it won’t improve. (I disagree with its complement though, the more popular belief: what gets measured gets improved.)
  19. Have fun! If you’re not having fun, identify the L2s. Building products is fun, and you should enjoy all of it.