This Week in Product – Mar. 22, 2019

Product, Not Process

Wondering what it is that hiring managers are looking for? Well, this one has a pretty clear answer: product, not process. If you’ve been too hung up on roadmapping and writing specs, think again. Good PMs are great doers, but they’re much more well-rounded than that. Are you a Vitruvian? Looks like Steffan Howey is hiring.

 Think Backwards

Sometimes I think that if two technologies came out in reverse order, we’d still hail the latter entrant.

“Email starts to replace Slack, improves worker productivity by 63%!”

“Uber except you keep the car in your garage and it’s a zero-minute wait and there’s no small talk.”

— Sahil Lavingia (@shl) March 22, 2019

Many PMs are working on a technology that they hope will disrupt the way that things work today. But this made me think: what if we reverse engineer the next product we’re building? Not to be the “next thing,” but to be two steps ahead. I’m not sure exactly what that looks like yet, but sometimes opposites day can make more sense.

Supersize Me

My public service announcement for #prodmgmt: invest in the supersize post-it notes; made all the difference in our group #roadmap session @HarvardBizEdu yesterday pic.twitter.com/ykdUAkulQk

— Ellen Desmarais (@EllenDes) March 22, 2019

Something of an Occam’s razor moment here. Sometimes all you need is a bigger Post-it.

Babysitting 2.0

Finding a babysitter can be a nightmare, as many parents know. But what if you could help build the product that makes all that easier? This position at Sittercity in Chicago is a chance to become the hero of parents everywhere, and to really learn something about customer empathy.