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What are useful interview questions for product managers?

Fermi’s problems + Prod Mgmt Estimation questions

If you’re a Product management aspirant or took Product management interviews, it’s quite common for you to come across questions such as:

Estimate the number of flights that land in San Francisco per hour

Estimate the number of restaurants in London, UK

How many search queries per second in Google

I was reading (rather listening, on Audible) this book called Range. I came across something called Fermi’s problems.

Who’s Fermi?

Fermi is a Physicist, who’s known for his research on the “atomic bomb”. While testing the Atom bomb before World War II in 1945, he wanted to estimate the power of the atom bomb.

How do you estimate the power (yield) of the Atom bomb?

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#productmanager #pm #product manger interview

What is a Product Backlog?

Know 10 items in a product backlog

For a PM or a TPM a product backlog is the Bible. He or she is responsible for owning, maintaining, prioritizing and productionalizing the backlog.

But backlog is not an easy thing. A product backlog can be as complex as an Indian pickle :

A product backlog can be as complex as a cocktail:

A Backlog is no less than a complex cocktail , and a PM is no less than an expert chef or a star bartender

What makes a Product Backlog Cocktail

The backlog for a product consists of a variety of items. They are:

product features for the current release: simple and straight forward. what features should you release for this version. as a PM, what is enough for the MVP or this release?

bugs raised by QA: QA tests the build released by the devs and raises bugs. as a PM, will you fix all these?

bugs raised by the UAT: user acceptance lead of your team will raise more bugs after testing the build released by the QA. as a PM, will you fix all these?

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#productbacklog #pm #projectmanagement #productmanager

5 Startup lessons from Japanese soldiers in WW-II

Chilling fight show by the Japanese

It’s April .. 1945. It's the fag end of the World War-2 and the Axis powers are neutralized by the Allies. But there’s one country that’s not ready to let go of it…that’s the small island nation

… Japan

The US are entering and capturing the Japanese territories one after the other, and the Japanese are trying every strategy available to restrict the US Marines.

Strategies by the Japanese include:

ambush and surprise attacks on the islands,

naval attacks,

air attacks,

planting spies in local village folk.

encouraging local village folk to suicide

KAMIKAZE attacks.

Japanese war philosophy:

Try EVERYTHING to scare the mighty US

Demoralize the US with the bloodshed and suicides

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5 Startup lessons from Japanese in WW-II

#startup

What are the life skills for a new engineering manager?

What books don't teach

I had about 2 years of stint as a Project Lead/Engineering manager managing a handful of devs, marketing, and sales teams across startups and a mid-sized organisation. I must admit I had a successful and content stint throughout.

Thanks to Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people” ! It helped me learn how to manage people in a “human” way. I strongly recommend it to everyone reading this blog.

I faced multiple types of issues or challenges during this time. They are:

uninterested employees

not able to trust my leadership capabilities

not able to gel with my working style

company/team vision is not employee’s vision

selling my vision or ideas to my leaders

conflict with leaders of other teams

am I doing it right or not

and many more, Read More About 4 life skills for a new project lead or a new engineering manager?

#pm #project lead #engeneering lead

How would you approach your teammates and communicate your ideas?

It's quite common that your ideas will be rejected by your teammates. How will you get the team aligned to your vision, and how will you rally the team behind you to get the vision executed is the challenge that you will have as a PM or TPM.

The developers and other team members should have a conviction about the vision you want to implement. However, sometimes they reject your vision or ideas about the product. Then how would you convince the team?

Lets look at my personal example…

Why they rejected my ideaContinue Reading Of :

Tell me a time when your teammates REJECTED your idea — PM question

#productmanager #product management #productmanagementinterview #PM

7 ways a new Product manager can succeed in an organization

How can a new Product Manager succeed in an organization ? Let’s look at it..

(Here a PM is a Product manager, but it usually applies to a Technical Product Manager, or Project manager, or Program manager too)

A PM joining a new organization and getting through the first 30–60–90 days is a bit of madness. But its better we setup some process to that madness, so it’s more organized and productive.

Hurdles for a PM after joining a new organization

Who are the stakeholders

How to get introduced to the stakeholders

How to learn about the product

What’s the pulse of the customer, what do they want?

Why a particular feature is built? And what is the product decision for a particular feature?

How everyone handles the disagreement— how to handle the seniors ?

How to contribute or write to the first PRD or user story

How to pitch the first product requirement to the stakeholders

How much technical knowledge to gain?

What should a PM do after joining an Organisation?

#productmanagement #productmanager #PM #tumblr #trending

Why do layoffs suck? What happens after a layoff ?

you’re more than just an SDE at Amazon .. you’re a human!

“.. you’re more than just an SDE at Amazon .. you’re a human!”

Layoffs are brutal, let's address that first. There is no way layoffs can be easy.

My personal story — Brief

Why do layoffs happen?

Why layoffs are tough?

How to mitigate the effects?

What happens a year after layoff?

Conclusion

My personal story — Brief

I was a TPM at Expedia. I had a great experience as a Data Engineer and a Software Developer at Expedia. Within 9months of becoming a TPM, I was laid off.

It sucks because…

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