DancingHamster

AMA 🎙️: Hey all, I am pmsprint, Director of Product Management at a Unicorn in India!

Hey everyone, excited to be doing this AMA!

A brief about me, I work currently as a Director of Product at an Indian unicorn startup

About my career:

Did my undergrad from IIT and then masters from an Ivy league school
Have been in product for almost 10 years now - across 2 Indian unicorn startups and a publicly listed company

Would love to take questions on what it means to be a PM, growing within the role, building your career, and other things :)

Will be back here at 4 pm and start replying Shoot away!

18mo ago

Find out if you are being paid fairly.Download Grapevine

GoofyBagel

Stealth18mo

Kitna kama lete ho?

DancingHamster

Nykaa18mo

Slowly but surely.

SwirlyBagel

Stealth18mo

@pmsprint bata de bhai, hum hadap nahi lenge screen se.

FluffyKoala

InMobi18mo

How do the goal setting differ from small startups to unicorns to public companies?

DancingHamster

Nykaa18mo

Goal setting is about objectively putting the vision into actionable items. At a startup, while the broad vision is clear, your quarter or annual goals change as you experiment and get feedback from customers. So you adapt quickly. At a public company, you need to plan for annual targets and expenses, so your goal setting is at least a year out. There, the job of CXOs and like is to manage the risk of some bets not working out. (Cue - Margin Call scene of "Why I make the big bucks..."). Unicorns are somewhere in the middle. Similar principles, different variances. All said and done, goal setting is important to clearly communicate to the org where we are headed. I'd also recommend personal goal setting for the same reasons. You should have a vision of where you want to be in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years. Better to base it on problems you want to solve rather than the $/title you want. Easier said than done.

SquishyQuokka

Gojek18mo

Margin Call is underrated ++
Amazing cast.

But damn, this answer is pure 🤌🏻✨

SquishyQuokka

Gojek18mo

Did your ESOPs eventually amount to anything? 😂😂😂

Tell us about this from your startup experience. If they did, then what %age gains did you end up making from them.

Also, how did the liquidation event turn out for you?

Grapeviners deserve to knoww. 🍇🥵

DancingHamster

Nykaa18mo

Unicorns - not yet. Still hopeful. Public company - sold when I quit. If it is equal to liquid cash, I'd rather treat it as such.

SquishyQuokka

Gojek18mo

@pmsprint May your ESOPs 100x just like my respect for you. 🫡

DerpyBoba

InMobi18mo

How do you work on the perception that is building this year that all PMs do is talk? PMs everywhere lately get trolled behind their backs. I honestly find worth in thr role. Just curious

DancingHamster

Nykaa18mo

Seen both sides of it. Seen PMs who just talk and others who solve. Just focus on the quality of the work, and make sure you have a good boss who can bat for you at the right places. Rest will take care of itself.

GigglyNarwhal

Stealth18mo

No one asked but I just want to say as an SDE that I really appreciate the work done by my past PM and APMs. They were excellent and involved the tech team closely in many product decisions. The PM was very transparent on what they didn't knew. Additionally in any interaction with him, I could always learn something new about the product or industry. Thank you all legit PMs for making our lives easier.

ZippyDumpling

LivSpace18mo

How did you crack cross team collaboration (especially w/ engineering teams) over time?

I’m not a PM, but as part of my role I find it to be the hardest thing

DancingHamster

Nykaa18mo

Cross team collaboration is important. As many questions have indicated already, it is amply clear that PMs generally have to prove the worth and demonstrate that the direction they want to take the team in, and the team has to truly believe that the direction is worth going in and investing their time in. So, to foster cross team collaboration, you give visibility into the problems, solve them together, debate on them and have the team's be on the same page. It works better when you are focusing on solving the problem rather than who solves the problem.

ZippyDumpling

LivSpace18mo

Thanks for answering, very helpful My main challenge today is being unable to figure out if the timelines that engineers/designers are coming back with are fair

At what point did you become good at figuring this out?