Category: Becoming a PM
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Recency is a dangerous bias
As many companies did, we just finished product planning (at least for 1H) before the holidays. There are a lot of inputs that go into a roadmap – customer problems to solve, customer satisfaction to deliver, company strategy, product strategy, and beyond. Understanding how to prioritize and weigh these inputs is a critical part of […]
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Starting with questions
It’s very easy to see when there is trust in a culture/community/unit – people start with questions. The opposite is true as well. When there is no trust – people start with solutions. The reason that questions signify trust is that asking questions brings both parties into the topic without the need for defense. These […]
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Accountability requires humility
A big area of improvement for any product manager is demonstrating that they can be more accountable for a larger and larger scope. First I think demonstrating that you can properly own a product is hard enough. Customer development, documentation, was it the right feature, should we kill it. All of these are not easy […]
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Focusing on appreciation
We’re an extremely email happy culture at TokBox. We have automated emails, out of office emails, working from home emails, and then just a bunch of emails about getting things done. As I’ve been drowning in email lately, I started to notice a pattern that I really don’t like. In an effort to move through […]
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Learning to let go
I always tell people that I have 3 babies: Amelia Luka OpenTok And all three have had an amazing year. They’ve gone from needing epic hand holding to having a village around them that makes them better than I could alone. At work, the hardest part has been learning to trust that others can love […]
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6 years later
I started at TokBox six years ago today. It’s been an amazing journey to say the least. I interviewed with 20 companies my 5th year of college. I got a ton of first round interviews because I’d worked my ass off to build a killer internship resume. I just couldn’t close the door though on […]
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Team bonding
This blog post is 6 days late. It all started when I got sick, fell behind, and I’ve been playing catch up ever since. Some of these catch up blog posts are relevant to the day. Others are just random musings. Yesterday we went to wine country as a product team, and it was fantastic! […]
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It’s a scream out loud kind of day
Getting out of email, and being able to solve real problems is hard. Fighting technology as basic as wireless router vs. cooling system is frustrating. Feeling like no matter what you’re 2 days behind is just depressing. So tonight I just hit the reset button. Micky and I let the kids stay up late. We […]
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Competing with equity, passion, and entrepreneurship
This week we lost both Betsy and Byrne to true start ups (venture backed companies as opposed to our corporate backing). The lovely Nicki Dexter is in town, and we’ve been jamming about what it is that makes TokBox tick. The combination has led me to think quite a bit about how we can fight […]
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It’s official…
My promotion to Director of Product Management has been announced to the team. I set as a goal for 30 to be promoted. I’ve wanted this for two reasons: 1) External validation that I’ve contributed to the story of TokBox. I’ve been here for almost 6 years now. I’ve had two careers. One in engineering. […]