10 points on my first 60 days as a PM at FB

TL;DR

It doesn’t matter if it’s your very first day as a PM, or you are an experienced PM joining a new team, Being a n00b could be tough. These 10 principles always came to my aid when onboarding myself into a new environment and I find them universally true and applicable to other disciplines too.

1. Draw your own map.
2. “Don’t lose your fresh eyes”.
3. Provide context and direction.
4. You are not the dumbest person in the room (although it might sometimes feel like it).
5. Divide and conquer.
6. Volunteer… but!.
7. Play with your product, a lot!.
8. Listen!.
9. Invest heavily in personal relationships.
10. Reflect.

Terra incognita —

“I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe.” (Robert Louis Stevenson).

Right when I started, I was lucky enough to receive a dossier from my manager (Yoav Schwartz) with the product 1-pager that included product goals and strategy, some historical context, and a list of ~30 key people that I needed to meet for 1:1’s along with some pro-tips about each person.

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Facebook leans more on oral communication and relationships I was told, and although it is true, everyone here writes a lot and they write really well, which provides you with enough data to start drawing your map. If you are not as lucky as me, ask and meet as many people as possible to get a 360 degree on the company, product, and the team. A good map will save you precious time and get you going much faster. One important point about maps to remember is that maps are representations of reality mediated by the ones who draw them. Use whatever you get as a starting point but draw your own map. New maps can get you to an unknown land. Who knows what you can find?

The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883

“Don’t lose your fresh eyes” — During my first few days, when I was in the routine of meeting for 1:1s with many people as I possibly could and soak in whatever I could to draw my own map, I met Michal Singer who runs the show of our product execution as a TPM. In her speedy and productive pace she preached me: “Don’t lose your fresh eyes — you only get to look at your product with completely fresh eyes once”. I wrote this down in my notebook (Yes! I still prefer my handwriting and messy note taking over any other digital medium).

Simple remarks such as this, are banal or cliche only if you only look at them on the surface. It is because they are so often used, that we stop seeing the truthfulness of their meaning: There are things you can only do once. Being a n00b could be tough (especially during the working-from-home pandemic phase), but as Michal reminded me, it could also be a gift, only if I use it to my advantage.

Context over control, direction over output — When I was interviewed for my current position at Facebook, I meticulously asked any interviewer a lot of questions:

How decisions are made?

Who decides what we build?

How roadmapping done? and so on.

The truth is that I only cared about one thing, which is the fundamental question behind all the questions I asked during my interview process:

How empowered do you feel as a PM at Facebook?

Everyone who interviewed me explained about Facebook’s bottom-up culture, the freedom you have to create your product strategy, and that it is up to you to convince the leadership that your product strategy is sound, coherent, and worth executing. I also read about the freedom of engineering to choose the projects they feel will bring the most impact to the product and to Facebook overall. All of it is capital T True. It also flips the essence of PM’ing compared to many other places on its head; Instead of control over what we build and how we are executing, PM’ing is all about providing others with product direction and context on why we are here, why we should build the product, how we are going to win and how to keep score. When the direction is right and the context is clear, we as a team can execute the strategy and win any game.

It reminded me of my basketball coaching years — at the end of the day, you are not the one who shoots and scores, but sometimes you can draw a drill to put everyone in the right position to score much more easily.

Phil Jackson, 11x NBA champion as head coach

You are not the smartest person in the room. You are not the dumbest either (although it feels like it) nor anyone else —

And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you’re a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it’s only a part. Who wouldn’t? It’s called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it’s why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh… So cry all you want, I won’t tell anybody.” (David Foster Wallace, Good Old Neon)

It seems like everybody is talking about impostor syndrome in the last couple of years, and if you have been working in tech long enough, you must have felt it first hand or know someone who suffered from it for a time… and let me tell you if there is one position where you might get hit with it the hardest is product management and being a N00by product manager in an already running and established product — is the worst. My hypothesis is that product managers are relatively more susceptible to impostor syndrome than other professions, because… what is the craft of PM-ing? What exactly do we do? We don’t ship code, we don’t create beautiful, well-thought out UX, and at FB we are not even the ones who solely “call the shots”. Even if you are an established PM with a track record of shipping good products, it’s so easy to question your impact, and from there the road to feeling like a fraud is short. The shortest route out of it is to invest in ‘being open’ about it, first with yourself and then with others — tell other coworkers how you feel, remind yourself that some people betted on you and they are committed to your success. You’ll be amazed how many people will jump and help you out in your work.

“Divide et Impera” (Divide and Conquer) — Has proven efficient as a political warfare tactic to acquire and maintain power since the ancient days of Philip II of Macedon. It also proves its usefulness if instead of pointing it towards people you point it towards problems. Some problems are just hard to solve for; breaking them to sub-problems and, if needed, each sub-problem to even smaller problems until these become simple enough to be solved directly, goes a long way. This simple algorithm is useful to anyone who is learning a new subject, especially PMs working on a new product strategy, learning a new market segment, or trying to solve for a new persona. Throwing yourself into “terra incognita” you need a map (return to point: Terra incognita), and you can start drawing it with a ‘Divide and Conquer’ algorithm. If you are a N00by to a subject, first outline all your questions (make sure you ask all the 6W’s; Jordana Young, the researcher helping to drive growth for Facebook Connectivity explains why the 6W framework is critical for product strategy [link]), categorize or group them, and choose the ‘easiest’ group first. Why the ‘easiest’ first? because you want to feel a sense of control and when it is done, when you feel you have a good grip around the problem or the subject area, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment that will help you get going and move to more difficult problems (and avoid the notorious impostor syndrome). What is the ‘easiest’? I guess you’ll know it when you see it.

Volunteer to drive… but! — When literally referring to the act of driving a car, there are those who love the sense of freedom and control that only driving your own car can provide, and those who prefer the pleasure of sitting in the front passenger seat and enjoying the view; until autonomous vehicles mature and become the norm, we still have a choice to make whenever we enter an old-fashioned car — where do we prefer to sit? In your first months in a new position, the decision on “where to sit” is not as easy and straightforward decision as it might seem (and it is not implied directly from your job description); on one hand, you’re eager to sit behind the wheel, feel the engine and drive your own impact on the product — like driving, you know that you’ll feel comfortable once you start executing as a PM.

On the other hand, you must acknowledge you really know nothing about your product or how to execute successfully in an unfamiliar environment. If there is one piece of advice I can give from my own experience, it's the advice my manager gave me when I started two months ago — be conscious and selective with what you decide to take on. Being conscious and selective is more of an art than a science — as a PM, if you choose to “do it ALL and right away” you’ll quickly become swamped, at the crossroads of everything, in a constant chase over your calendar running from one meeting to another, from a high-level product strategy meeting to a discussion about a minor bug — everything will look important and urgent. Sooner or later, you’ll feel drained and exhausted — this is being unconscious, and it happened to every PM I know during their junior years. It can also happen to experienced PMs starting at a new company or joining a new team. So how can you be more conscious and selective?

• Sit next to the best PM/driver around — Sitting in the front passenger seat won’t teach you how to drive a car but listening in on how the best PMs in your team conduct themselves in meetings, articulate strategies and make product decisions is immensely important. I couldn’t be more fortunate “sitting” next to Nataly Loewidt and learn from the very best.
• Religiously ask: How can I help? — Until you feel comfortable enough to have your own opinion to drive impact for your product, help others achieve their impact. Execute for others. It might be that the task you take on is mundane, uninspiring, or tedious, but you’ll learn a great deal on some of the aspects of your product or the processes around it.
• Gradually take the wheel — On the strategies you are driving, ask an associate to assist you by commenting on your strategy, pick their brain on how they will drive this strategy into execution, ask them to attend discussions with you and ask for feedback.

Play with your product. a lot! — This may sound like the most obvious advice of all, after-all the P in PM is the Product. Well, it’s not that obvious. As much as the process of PM onboarding at Facebook is intended to be structured, guided and common (and it is!), it is still very much dependent on every individual PM. The intersection between the product, the team, the process, the company’s culture and you, your pace and background are as unique as a snowflake. There are a lot of adaptations and learning to do — for some it will take weeks to feel somewhat comfortable with their new environment, for others it might take months; it’s not that it is not recognized — it is — I’ve been told by anyone I met that I just need to “take the time” to “soak” and by all means “don’t hurry yourself’”… and it’s true, they all do mean it when they say it takes 6 months for a PM to feel comfortable in their own skin at FB, as one of my new colleague told me on my second week on the job: “I feel you… you must be feeling like you are drinking from a firehose right now”. To be fair, I don’t think you can avoid this feeling of being overwhelmed, however if there is one thing you cannot invest enough in, its playing with your product. a lot. I cannot stress this enough. Play with your product until you become the product guru. The time it takes to get a deep understanding of the product may differ based on the product size and stage, but the steps on getting there are all the same:

• Understand your product’s core value-proposition and purpose. You should be able to pitch your own product effectively. You’ll know you are on the right path when you have your own product pitch that works for you.
• If there are multiple personas interacting with your product, make sure you understand each one and perform their journeys on the product. Do it multiple times.
• “Turn on the history channel” — Learn about the product history by asking how the product changed overtime.
• ‘Reverse engineer’ the product — While going through the different journeys, features, and capabilities, ask what the goals were, what the tradeoffs were and what the product decisions were that made the product what it is today.
• List! — Take notes of everything. List your likes and things you feel the product can do better (Facebook does not have a dislike button :)).
• Learn how users use the product by reading product research, engagement metrics and users analytics flows.
• You have an amazing opportunity to find bugs and contribute to the product quality.

The product is the means to make the life of others simpler and happier, and for the company to be successful. You cannot invest enough in your product understanding, so use your first few weeks to get closer to becoming your product guru.

Listening is hard, but it’s the key to identify the right problems — Listening is not about just being quiet, it’s about actively participating in conversations by listening; I argue that listening is the hardest skills of all to master and it is the one skill that not only will make you a better PM but also a better manager, a better colleague, a better friend, and a better person. Active listening is about focusing on truly listening, to not just hear but to understand what the speaker is saying. It requires a suspension of judgment until you have fully understood, an ability to empathize so that the speaker feels enabled to express themselves fully, and a discipline and resistance to the temptation to give in to all your old habits around talking and listening. To be completely honest, I do not excel in listening, it does not come to me as naturally as speaking, and if you ask my closest friends, they will rate me as a mediocre listener (on a good day). When it comes to being an effective PM, “listening” and empathy are crucial to your personal success and more importantly your product success. I put listening in quotation marks to depart from the common use of the term and extend it to a product-management practice that is beyond exercising listening as a conversational-only act. As a PM, the act of listening and empathy precedes the act of solutioning not only as steps in a process but in principle too — Listening to and empathizing with the people using your product will ground you as a PM with the right problems you need to solve for. Being a PM at Facebook is much more about identifying the right problems to work on than by being the oracle who provides the solution to a problem. You are expected to identify the right problems to work on and drive an alignment across an organization around the problem the team and you identified is the right one and worth our attention. It all starts with the act of listening to the people problems via all the means you have at your disposal.

Invest heavily in personal relationships — Like many others, I changed jobs during the pandemic. My entire recruitment process and interview loops happened remotely, most of it during Israel’s 2nd tight quarantine period and my actual onboarding as an employee took place during the 3rd quarantine. Career changes are hard enough without the uncertainties of a global pandemic, and it is even more difficult to get a clear and vivid picture of the product, the team and the company vibe overall when everything is done remotely and you have never been to the office or met anyone in-person… it’s really hard to get into a productive working-rhythm when you cannot really turn your head to the working-station next to you to ask a colleague a question. Here a basic, universal truth comes to your aid — It’s all about people!… and product management is no different; I’d even argue that it is more so in PM’ing, because ultimately, PMs are only as successful as they can help make the people around them be. If you accept this fundamental principle, your priorities must shift to reflect that. Great product is an outcome of fruitful relationships and a great product is the ultimate relationship you can have with your customers; If you accept this argument too, the only conclusion is that investing in relationships is really investing in the product and vice-versa. So, some tips on how to form a good starting point with your colleagues:

• Get a list of people you must meet during your first few weeks (return to point: Terra incognita).
• Meet each one of them for 30 mins.
• Use the 80/20 rule: invest 80% of the meeting time on your colleague — let them speak 80% of the time by asking questions about them, their work and their priorities. (return to point: Listening is hard, but it’s the key to identify the right problems).
• Ask a lot of questions. One question I like is: What is your biggest challenge right now?
• Ask for some advice on how to be successful as your job.
• Take notes — you won’t know what is useful until it becomes useful.
• Build a strong and credible relationship with the engineering team starting with the Engineering Manager.
• Appreciate! — people are investing their time to help you get started.

This list of tips might come across as cynical or inauthentic way to build relationship. It is definitely not my intention. There is no algorithm for fruitful and strong relationship but to put an honest, day-to-day effort to understand and care for others. Nevertheless, if you like me tend to feel awkward and nervous meeting new people — try those tips to get you started.

Digest and reflect —Being conscious is also being able to remove-yourself-from the day-to-day so you can digest all you just observed. Digesting is the process of organizing your internal space, putting stuff into boxes, label the boxes, place them on your mental shelves. The first few weeks at a new job could be exhausting, as your both body and mind are triggered and alerted to make sense of so many new things. A new job, any job is a marathon not a sprint, and for that reason you should find the right pace that works for you. My manager knows that I run 40 KM every week to connect with my body and meditate, and on our first 1:1 meeting he urged me to find the time to continue with it. Another thing I do is run through my notes at the end of every day, if I don’t do it, or just skip a day or two, I usually don’t understand my handwriting or why I wrote a specific point. This process of running through my notes help me reflect and focus on the right things. Being a PM, like many other positions in tech, is a demanding practice — do whatever help you focus and stay in-shape — hard problems needs all the energy and determination we have.

It doesn’t matter if it’s your very first day as a PM, or you are an experienced PM joining a new team, I find these 10 points universally true. I used them as my guiding principles and return to them time and again to ground myself. I also think they are applicable to many other disciplines too.

If you got this far let me know what are your guiding principles.

Thanks for reading!

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