The Skip Podcast
00:24:16 · Dianne Penn, Nikhyl Singhal
That's who ends up struggling more. Like I kind of start to get a sense of that within the first one to two months. It's really like a growth mindset. [00:24:26] S1: What's an example of folks that when they say to you that, Hey, I'm finding it really a struggle. Is it, are there skills to unlearn? Is there boundaries that they have? Is there sort of a way of thinking a mental model? Like what's, what's the barrier? What's the prison you find themselves in?
00:24:41 · Dianne Penn
[00:24:41] S0: I think part of it is, especially for PMs who are coming from large companies, it's very hierarchical from what I've seen where, you know, if your VP says X, then you do X all the way down all of the chain. And there's less of questioning of like, is the right x still the right thing? And I think that's very different than like a traditional academia, which is like the closest analogy to how research works, where like the junior first year PhD student might question their advisor. And so for folks who kind of put aside the hierarchies of how to work that they are used to, and they actually come in and say, hey, I Jared, who's our chief scientist, hey Jared, I know you wrote about X. Here are some assumptions that I think you are missing. This is the reason why. This is why it might actually be more useful for users. Like being willing to kind of speak up very early to kind of enter the discussion rather than assume that like everybody has it figured out and doing that in a way that is curious and trust building, right? Cause what you don't want is people to have very hot takes of like, you're wrong and doesn't really go into details. And so what you really want is folks who join the Discworlders, add to it, build on it, change it in some way, push on people's ideas. Those tend to be like, I think really impactful because that means they've like done their own thinking and come up with like sort of the so what to just three steps when either even others haven't or be willing to try. Like, it's just that persistence on trying. Because the first couple of ideas everybody comes up with might be things we thought about two to three years ago. It's just there was a history of why we didn't do X, but willing to go beyond the surface ideas to do the hard homework, question assumptions in a graceful manner, and then coming up with like a unique point of view, those folks tend to be successful.
00:26:53 · Nikhyl Singhal
[00:26:53] S1: Yeah. So it's the soft skills of communicating that and influencing it's the desire to be both curious as well as opinionated, as well as perhaps a little stubborn. But also I think that you didn't say that those opinions are always right. I think your point was the characteristic is to question the answer of we've considered it and it didn't work out might be an okay resolution. And perhaps now there's another time to look at the answer or the question again. But I think your point is that that is the pattern and the skill that tends to then play out as people get onboarded and they get more comfortable. This notion of questioning assumptions, questioning even authority to some extent, is that because the models are changing so frequently and that's a necessary skill for this type of work? Or is this a anthropic cultural observation that this company tends to promote that type of value?
00:27:59 · Dianne Penn
[00:27:59] S0: I think it's both, but I think it stems from the latter because again, it started as a research lab. A lot of the, like the co founders, they're really, really strong at first principles thinking. And so part of it is this technology works because we didn't take the assumptions of the past to be the same. Right. And so that nature of, especially on like within really strong researchers questioning other assumptions, doing an experiment to prove something, if it works or doesn't work, that types of hands on nature is like really at the core of how the company operates. There's a huge culture of transparency. Most channels are public. You could, somebody could be debating up detail about a product feature and then somebody who you didn't know was in the conversation might interject and be like, have you thought about X? In a kind way, but it's very much a like how yes and or yes and then type of culture. I think maybe one other thing to add to the note about what makes successful PMs. I think folks who are really obsessive about this technology, that might sound like very obvious, but I think the PMs who come in and immediately are spending time dogfooding our product features that are prototype stage or testing the latest models and sharing out their thoughts or opinions into our public channels. Like, that tends to be a, like, show rather than tell of being a good PM and how to contribute on making our products and models better rather than like I'm spending all of my time, you know, in the corner writing a PRT, like participating on making the model and the products work actively. Like that is, I think, also another way some of the really like strong PMs distinguish themselves.
00:30:01 · Nikhyl Singhal
[00:30:01] S1: Yeah. That kind of hands on hustle, I think tends to resonate with people particularly early in career. And I'm curious, like there's a number of things you've said, which made me make me feel like, do you feel, and this is contrary to public opinion right now where early product management people are saying, oh, there's not as good jobs out there and it's hard to find a product management role. Do you feel like early in career product managers are actually advantaged today because they have either less to learn or less to unlearn, I should say, and they have this sort of healthy naivety they bring into the role. When you've built your team, are you seeing both resonance from early in career, but perhaps even advantages?
00:30:46 · Dianne Penn
[00:30:46] S0: I definitely am seeing our earlier tenured PMs be extremely effective and high ceiling exactly for the reasons you mentioned. There's definitely a bit of like unlearning of org structures. For example, like, you're not waiting for somebody to tell you and give you, like, a sign on your document that you might... You can now go do the next step. The folks who are high hustle, high agency who come out with a, like, get stuff done attitude. Like, I'm just gonna... I I think this is what I am owning. I am owning making this capability work, and I'm gonna run through walls. I'm gonna talk to the customers. I'm gonna talk to whoever researcher. I don't care if they're like research lead, etcetera. I'm gonna go figure out what to do in my area. Like people who had that mindset are, like, extremely effective. And so I think especially for earlier tenure PMs, you have less of the, oh, I must go through a set process or I guess more, like, larger company PMs that you don't have to do as much of the, I must get each group, like one step before the other type of box tracking, I think tends to be really effective. That isn't to say like, I would say like our medium to like more tenured PMs don't have that. I have folks who were tenured PMs who then became founders. Like that's another group, right? Like you're just running through walls and, or folks who had a track record internally doing something really hard, where they did have to like run through walls. So it's more the like, did I do something that like the organization or there was a ton of inertia and I had to overcome that inertia, that grit, that, like, get stuff done attitude tends to, like, be more powerful than almost anything else. Because that means you'll be curious. That means you'll go figure out answers so you don't have questions and answers that you currently don't know. Right? It just means you're... You'll be, like, self empowered rather than disempowered.