 Hey guys, I'm Mike. So I come from a pretty technical background. I have an undergrad degree in robotics and a master's degree in computer science My my path to Facebook camp. I actually was an intern at Facebook three years ago So I'm for engineering intern and my team happened to be a little bit understaffed in the product manager department So this is an opportunity for me to kind of Step up and try some of these exercises like working with designs working with marketing sales Working cross-functionally and understanding how are the different requirements and how that influence me in the project I was building so from that became an intern at a different company and came back to Facebook after I finished my master's Hi everyone, I'm Lizzie. I Came into product management by way of analytics and data science actually did that in industry after after school So I was doing that realized that I think I was interested in doing more cross-functional work was Interested in doing more than just my analytics work, which I loved but wanted to try something new so Discover the art camp program and started it at this past major I studied business in college, but worked mostly in design before switching into product management I think there are a lot of things that I learned to respect and appreciate with the design process like building products based off of a User problem going through a very diligent and careful iteration process But ultimately I wanted to try my hand at not only thinking about how to design better products But how do we make sure that that product ends up in the hands of users through execution? And so that's what made me want to try product management out I was working at a startup where I had an internship in UI UX, but I had a hunch I would enjoy PM so I asked the startup if I could get some more product D responsibilities So they gave me some analytics Jobs and then also worked on spec me out a feature as well as designing it And so that kind of helped me confirm that PM was what I wanted to do and then join the art camp program right after college graduation cool, um Well, there's a lot that we can dive into but really we want to know what you guys are curious about Learning so don't be shy asking questions. We're here as resource for you. Yeah Question was ideal candidate terms of years of experience so We I didn't like jobs at the beginning. We have a super super wide range of backgrounds We have people who come to an undergrad sheet out of perhaps both straight like like from industry experience We have people with anywhere. I think the number is now like five to seven years of experience So it really is a broad range. It's not there's no like ideal candidate or typical candidate at all The only thing that we ask is that the program is for people new to product management You can be working in industry, but if you have product experience less than two years of product experience Yeah Well probably speaking so we have three six month rotations throughout the program you have a manager that stays with you for the 18 months You also have a I guess mentor or what we call operational product manager You work with on each of your six month rotations So kind of two mentors at every step along the process and one that stays with you for the whole 18 month program Aside from that there's a variety of like what we call it community events So we organize what we call learning circles So you get together with your peers and you chat about your common experiences So my class there's 12 RPMs that started August of last year and this is we've slept in two groups of six And every week we need to talk about common problems faced between us So there's very much sense of a community amongst the RPMs in like there's only about 30 and say total RPMs currently So it's a very small number. You get to know everyone really well Are there curriculum? Yeah We have like other task force where we work on what we call development task force Which is basically like one of the skills that you need to learn and how one of the different ways We can deliver those skills one of those is meeting with your peers and learning circles Another might be like bringing in speakers and more senior product leaders might be like have a dinner with them or lunch with them Just to talk about your career development. It really expands But I'd say like a curriculum feels like an off term to you It's only because like the best way to do it is to actually like throw you in on a rotation And a product team to have you learn in the diverse way that that product team requires you to work as a PS So whether it's like building a product from scratch zero to one or like dive in with more data and iterating on gross That's kind of like the curriculum that you select for yourself as the rotations that you make we also do When you start you do two weeks of our engineering boot camp and you also go through our full data camp But all of our data scientists and data engineers go through So you get a feel for all that we also Like our design our amazing design program has like something like all designed for non designers that like we all go through So we definitely like take the opportunity that we do have like a cohort to do educational opportunities But it's also mostly self-driven like it when we decide like okay Like we're feeling kind of like I know like a couple years ago They were saying like oh and we don't feel like we have our hand like data the data camp was so long ago We kind of forget some of it So they like did a one-day data intensive we like brought in data leaders and product leaders to help learn And your second question is about Google and APM versus Facebook are yeah So I'm thinking I'm intern before I joined Facebook full-time I think the main thing to consider is like there's like the logistics and the differences between the program So Google is to one year rotations Facebook is three six month rotations So with that at Facebook if you have a rotation you're not super excited about it six months I will if you have a rotation you're not super excited about it. It's one year and that's half of your rotations In terms of like company size Google is roughly for exercise of Facebook in terms of number of employees So it's just a bigger company and all the challenges associated with that I Think the other thing is like there's fundamentally product differences between what Google offers and what Facebook offers So if you're someone who's particularly motivated by like Android Chrome Google Maps like all the different sweet that people offers versus Facebook, you know Facebook Instagram Messenger and what's that there's fundamentally different products Whatever sites you want. I think for me one of the main sign points with Facebook is the very fluid company So as I mentioned before I was actually an engineering intern who happened to pick up a lot of product management tasks, I guess along the way and that's like a very unique opportunity at Facebook where even though your role may say you literally this there's definitely opportunity for you to seek out other opportunities and Work with that and you'll figure out. Is this something you're interested in want to transition We have a lot of people internally who transition between roles Even in your class. Yeah, you're gonna pass you about five people Yeah, I class over 14 five of them original transfers from different functions at Facebook to the idea program So it's just one of the main sign points. I think just about the company in general is how fluid it is and how much flexibility there is Infrastructure I see a couple notes about that, but how much do you interact with that in terms of you know, telco Infra project and possibly, you know Infrastructure in virgin kind of things like that Like us as pms specifically or Facebook as a company. I like internet that or Yeah, so we have our pms who are on internet that work products They're on some other connectivity work. We also I Think it just depends on your product team like kind of anything But there are pms across the org that touch a lot of different in first basis So I was on a team last half that worked a lot like our security and for engineers And it just depends on your team, but we definitely have opportunities wherever there's a product team in our pms can exist We're not kind of excluded from anything Because of the domain or complexity So you said you have a manager for 18 months, right? So what is his role? I mean, what is the interaction between you both? What is his responsibility? The manager is basically there to see your growth through all three rotations So they know your strengths and weaknesses day one and they'll know them day leads a program And I think to have someone who's there with you throughout that entire journey is very helpful Ultimately, they're the ones who are like evaluating you and helping you grow to know like how you can become a better PM The problem with this is that your manager is often not on the team that you're currently rotating on So that's why we have another manager PM who's supporting you more on the day-to-day operations And it's pretty cool to think about the fact that there's like two fairly senior pms of the company who are Focused on you and your growth. So that set up makes it such that every or them has a lot of support So I guess it's important to note If you're actually interested in finding the RBM program, please do so tonight because the application is actually closed tomorrow So that's an important caveat Answer questions, so typically we do like in one or two phone screens to kind of start the process off The first screen maybe with the recruiter and just asking like why are you interested in product management on Facebook? The second phone screen will be with the product manager We'll just ask them like a space like questions about product sense What are you interested in like pigs and proxy legs and proxy don't like etc If you get through those rounds and typically we do onsite interviews the onsite So we actually do so we have the recruiter screener and then you have two Yeah, so the process might change the process changes often So we apply different cycles So you have a you have two video interviews with current product managers in product sense and product execution So product sense is like what Mikey said and product execution is more an execution trade-offs metrics type interview and then our onsite So then the onsite we have three interviews The first one is focus on leadership and drive So this is more of your like soft skills type of questions Talking about a time you're on a team what went well went wrong. How do you motivate people? The second view is another product that's interviewed So tell me about products you like products you don't like if you're the product manager on this Facebook product If you're the product manager on this app, what would you do and then the third interview is again product execution Which is more I guess like product sense like talk about ideas talk Would you like product execution is diving more into like if you were the PM on this What do you think are the most important metrics for your product or if you were a launches experiment What do you think what metric will go up what metric might go down? So it's very like More granular and more focused on the end like what we call execution So Yeah, so not having any experience in product management. How do you go about preparing for specifically the product sense of the execution? The leadership one you can drop from other Different experiences in other industries, but the product sense of the execution, but how do you go about preparing for that? So I think one of the biggest things to note is that because you aren't expected to have Product background it is about potential So like it's not a conversation in general these there's no writer on the answer It's about how you think and how you how you work through problems So I think the it's more of a I think of them as like problem-solving and like what is your intuition say? Versus like knowing an answer to a project like can you say like hey if this metric goes up this metric might be like our Quality metric or we make sure that this one doesn't go down at the same time like it's more than that type of thinking But I don't know about preparation Well, I mean I'd say like it's just kind of like a product thinking I view is kind of like a muscle So like for me when I was doing design work I was like constantly flexing that muscle of working on it But there's other ways to do that like for example like if you're like winning an obnoxious amount of time for an uber Like are you thinking about maybe ways that uber as a product could be built better? Or like if you're in line at a grocery store and the waitress and waiters are like all over the place Like what something that you can do to be better just like constantly getting into a rhythm of like recognizing a problem and isolating it And then what's potential solution and you can do that like standing in line at the grocery store? I think like there's a bunch of different ways to like constantly be practicing this that's more for product sense Yeah, and for execution. I think it's more like are you a logical thinker? Which is again like something that you just kind of like stretch over time and I'm sure with whatever roles or responsibilities You're currently experiencing there's some kind of way you can figure out how to make that work for you So currently I'm on messenger games So Facebook has been a gaming company or involved in gaming for a long time going back to a farm bill days for better or worse And so now we're building up a new platform on messenger around gaming So you can imagine that like there's a ton of potential there, but it's completely new platform Facebook we don't make our own games ourselves We work with third-party developers a lot and they have their own ass And we have to balance that what we want to build and what they want us to build So it's like it's a really exciting opportunity because it's learning building a platform from the ground up And it's like you can think about Lots of different companies and also talented. I feel like this is a pretty unique opportunity I was on our anti-spam team last time which was I don't know if I can answer if there was like a Favorite part of best part, but it was super super interesting and I learned a ton. I think like the interactions of What happens like when we don't take something down because what happens when we take things down wrongly It's like a very interesting kind of real problem that people face that like we are just always trying to be better at Like ideally right you have like nothing policy violating on the site and everything that was allowed on the site on the site So there was definitely like a cool balance of trade-offs of stuff like that And I think it was something that I had never thought of as being So important and like you don't think of you don't think about it unless it goes wrong And I really like being on a team that was about If you're doing our job right no one no one talked about us and I thought that was a really unique place to be for me, I don't know if it's favorite but last half I was on the Facebook profile team and my Rotation was focused on basically building a zero-to-one product Which means like I joined the rotation and there was like just an idea a shell of an idea And it was my job through the rotation to kind of bet that idea work the designer to build a product and eventually ship it Which we did globally by the end of my rotation So to have been able to see that like end-to-end Product life cycle just in the span of one rotation was absolutely incredible So if you make an album that has more than photos, it's because of her yes Yes, I worked on the new Facebook albums product and it was in a space that I was very interested in which is just like Helping people create and share their authentic self, which is really interesting to me And then right now I'm on a sharing growth team working on new formats to help people share kind of in similar vein One of the products I work on is the really obnoxious like background colors on text posts We don't have a name for that officially yet But that's one of the products that I work on which is really fun to work with because I'm working with like an art team to make Those background styles and we're thinking of new ways that we can help people share really lightweight ways Yeah, you have a lot of styles things like that super fun All up to your whether we're like You guys in specifically like yeah, can you quickly go over your thought process for like how you guys decided? This is the future you want to add to your problems. Yeah I'd say like the team high level has like a strategy So every team is gold on a main metric and as a product team You're kind of thinking about what are ways that we can build a new product or just the letters to fulfill the goal And the way that we want to so the profile team had a strategy And so one of these ideas was like to fulfill this strategy Why don't we kind of build this product and how we make sure that that product continues to fulfill the goals that we initially Signed up to to the film. That's a very oversimplified version Kind of two questions. One is as a product manager You know, you've mentioned that each team kind of has their own goals that they're already going for How much top-down direction do you have where you're implementing versus autonomy to create something completely out of thin air essentially based on an idea your team had and then Second one second question is as far as rotational program and stuff you're rotating around the three different teams How much say you haven't which teams you end up on or do you have like a list where you get to pick like your top ten choices? Then, you know, you guys can match you go to what we can do better these are So the first question was about like Are we just executing on some talk-down vision or is it up to us to kind of influence? Well, how much of the choice of balance right ultimately the product manager It's up to you to decide what your team works on. So Quite frequently, you know, our leaders will have opinions about what your teams work on but we're kind of always taught to like question Like just because someone said to do something doesn't mean you have to do it And if you don't understand exactly why they're telling you to do something you should question it So like as a product manager, you're ultimately responsible for your team success. It's on you So you need to understand exactly what you're doing and why it's the most important thing to work on So that being said like there are people with tons of experience at the company who give you advice on this sort of stuff But it's it's up to you to make that decision I would say there's a lot of autonomy Mike rethought the metric that his team was going on in his first rotation and like that's something even though the team previously and top down had an idea I'm bragging for you Even though the team had an idea for what they should be going on like he questioned that and then like had the autonomy to make that happen And that means like staying in your case, right? So like if you think something should change you better have a really good reason I And in terms of like picking rotations, it's very much like a matching process There's the good news is there's always more projects available than there are actual rpm So rpm's have the point of leverage to basically like we have coffee chats with the pms who are offering new projects And they're thoroughly vetted so it should be a very impactful substantive product Like frankly for a space doesn't have time to have you p.m a side project So projects are very substantial and then it's just kind of this two week coffee check It's no people all think that decision has to be getting And for the most part rpm's get their first choice because as jasmine said there's more projects in their rpm's And it tests me that you have people at different teams about what they'd rather work on that there's not a lot of conflict I think going back to also like some of the manager questions earlier And that's like a huge huge point of having a manager is that I think people Make the assumptions like oh like these the projects everyone's gonna want but everyone's trying to grow in different areas Everyone has like different strengths in different in different areas of opportunity So you're often picking a rotation like especially when you're looking at like oh like going to second We're like oh I got a lot of you know really heavy my last rotation felt like very execution phase I really want to like stretch my product sense muscle So I'm going to try and choose rotation more like that even if it's really out of my comfort zone Because you have this opportunity to be on the team for six months and really just learn and grow like we are This is a growing program like it's a learning program. That's what we optimized for first Awesome Is there a rotation program in the hardware group building eight? I don't know Yeah, I'm not having projects offered for RPMs. They're yet though RPMs have landed there after afterwards after There are many former RPMs Building eight is also relatively new as well. I think it was just within the last year That it was kind of created so at some point in the future maybe Yeah, there's a different work structure than kind of other It's not what I think Frameworks that we could go down right now I'd say one of the ways that I was told when I first started at facebook by another Older arc and that I really resonated with was basically saying there are five Key skills that basically a PM will Use on the job Execution which is basically like working with engineering. How can you scope things down? How can you like be firm but also understanding to work with engineers? Your design skills. So how well can you think about the user problems and design a product? Vision How can you motivate the team that to like not only focus on the day to day But also like this grand plan for how you're going to change the world Leadership which is just generally like How how do you lead? How do you get people to enjoy what they're working on? And yet get things done and then the fifth one is analytics So just general like data aptitude. How well you think about data questions? What are the things that you want to know? How do you find those answers? And so the idea is every PM coming in because people come from such diverse backgrounds There are spikes or basically their level of each of those five skills is going to be different Like for me coming in as a designer my design Skills were like higher than let's say like my analytics skills for example Whereas for someone more technical might be a different level But the idea is a good PM has a baseline of all five of those skills And beyond this baseline arbitrary level it could vary and every PM is going to have a different strength Some are more visionary. Some are more ruthless prioritizers oftentimes great pms have both That's one framework of many to think about it I don't know if you guys are there I have a simple answer Yeah, I think the ability to learn At Facebook and as an RPM and Especially at Facebook you are with the smartest people in the world doing their jobs So I think that every day is like a learning opportunity And I think learning within like these frameworks that are much more thought out than my answer is It's like pretty Um, I think there if there's a day where you don't feel like you learned like you've done something wrong And it's on you So and that might be learning something like from you for the routine It might be like learning like learning one of those muscles a little more, but I think the best hands at Facebook and like even are like super high like senior vpus who talk about this Just talk about always learning and how they like learn new stuff every day And I think that's also part of like the pms role is to teach about like what your team is doing Jeff's actually talked really well in the past about like it's our job to understand It's like our job to understand kind of what everyone else is doing to you to know how it affects our team But also it's our job to like be the voice of our team in the same way But learning Um, I like the expression strong opinions weakly held Because basically as a product manager a lot of the time you have to have an opinion about something We also have to realize that as Lizzie said, there's a lot of really smart people at Facebook And you're not always going to have the right answer So I like to always like try to have an opinion about something But also understand that you know, it's a learning opportunity You need to learn from everyone else's ideas and kind of take all that amalgamated informal opinion on top of that So that's what I like Yeah, um, so my understanding of the interview process is that basically decisions are partly made by committee So I'm curious if Do you actually get to talk to the person who would eventually be your manager ahead of time or how does that normally work? Is that matched up after our manager chosen usually after okay? Yeah, so It's our standard product manager interview process. Yeah, which is kind of cool. Is that like we go through the exact same process But your rotation is decided Well closer to your start date With the announcement of Facebook, you know Doing business in china How much of that do you feel, you know, regularly on a daily basis and move more in terms of the international Aspect of things and then the culture overall Uh, you bring up china as just an example I don't know if we can comment on that specifically but in terms of international certainly you like we We take a lot of international trips as a result of just either one research trip So we need to meet with the users in mexico because we have their their social circles What they find funny is different than what is found funny in africa versus london versus Cupertino california So for us, it's really important to travel internationally just to because our user base is two billion people around the world And that's just for facebook And the second thing is like we have product teams Around the world So like I went to london to meet with like our machine learning team there because we have like hubs So So i'm actually going to singapore in a week, which is uh, The reason being is that uh for game developers It's a bunch of game developers located in different countries around the world So singapore reason as our asia hub for game developers Um, but you can imagine like as jasmine said with two billion people It's kind of impossible to not think about problems around the world Um, some teams have more focus on specific countries. Some teams are just focused holistically We always have to consider pretty much people everywhere in the world I think this is something I don't know if you were like what you thought of coming into it, but for me I was I was um It was on my mind basically being from a non-tempable background But I think like the this goes back to like facebook is full of smart people Like you're not expected to be the top engineer on top of being the top product manager on top of being the best data scientist on your team Like that's why we form the teams in the structure Your job as a pm is just to set the privatizations in the vision to make sure the team is moving in the right direction In terms of convincing people oftentimes it's not an engineering question Maybe like a data or a search question Like can you point to a reason for why one engineer is working on at any given time is the most valuable thing? But I've never wanted a situation where I felt like my opinions weren't respected just because of my background personally No, and I have a somewhat like technical background with analytics but it No, uh, I think I really like it's interesting too because I was I was we're going to work with designers I was like, I don't speak their language. I don't know if I'm gonna like be able to like I was very concerned about that in some ways and everyone Everyone also recognizes like people's strengths in the room And it's plays to their strengths and also balances it So I think I always say like part of the product manager girls like everyone has Similarly the full mic was saying like people have very strong opinions based on like what they know in like their areas Like in a little bit like this is what like move the metric the most right design will say like this is like the best design Research will say this is what people are saying the most in usability studies and it's just about it's a balancing act of all of those things um And generally everyone in the room I'd say like using data and not just like number data but research data or like a fifth like If engineering is going to take two days versus eight months Like the two days one might win and so just balancing all those things I think is more important than any like Being able to read the codes Uh, can you talk about like one of the most like difficult person that you have during your um Rotation and what did you do with that person? To achieve your goals I think I also say a difficult person situation, but I think People like a big thing about Facebook is assume good attention So when in doubt you assume someone's coming in with like their best knowledge based on what they are saying So I guess going back to previously like people like the researchers might say this is what we're hearing in every single usability study So they might be very hard on their opinion rightfully so um, so I think it's just all about compromise within all within everyone but never like If someone being a difficult person I think is that any jobs I guess it's my last job too is like if there's enough people who are like this person's being Difficult like they all think that's okay Yeah, in my experience like I've had difficult conversations with people who are very strongly opinionated Facebook has an expression data with arguments so a lot of time like If you can get tough conversations where you have an opinion someone else has an opinion They might be in conflict But usually we try to find some data that can help mitigate this argument So, you know, whether it's user research and like you have 30 people said this or if you have an experiment You can run and show that this is more like well received than this So we try and mitigate some of these things by having like a quantitative way to break the tie I'd also say that facebook I it's my first company out of college, so I can't speak for other places, but what I found really Surprisingly amazing about facebook is just how open and receptive people are to feedback both giving and receiving So I can't really think of a specific instance where like I was like at odds with someone for over a long period of time Because if I recognized it was a problem I would just give them that feedback and likewise I received similar feedback And I think those really open walls where you know people aren't going to hate you and you feel very Trusted to give your opinion. I think it's super productive as a company. So I'd say that's another Everyone goes through a training call crucial conversations that you are able to give Sure, Sanford is very big on this training. It's now like outside of Facebook. Yeah. Yeah Part of reviews Yeah, they're different on every team. I found on my team There's like different flavors of product reviews. They could be roadmap reviews Which is like this is what we're focusing on over the longer half and why we're focusing on it so Leads might like test our assumptions or question our strategy There's kind of like decision reviews where it's like we're making this drastic metric trade-off. Are we okay with this? There might be like specific like actual like feature reviews Those are more like for design cred so honestly, maybe like check-ins on my team at least these are kind of the different flavors And I have my reviews with my VP And typically what happens is there's just like presentation. What's of interest to the VP will like drill down upon It's really just a space for you to get very actionable feedback And either get like validated on the strategy that you're working on or building a better strategy with their feedback Yeah, I think I really depend on every team. Yeah, some of them some people do them like two weekends Is the review some people might do it at off like just when someone wants it. It's totally a part of every game A little bit of a patient's part is there a difference in between our PM and the problem with entry level PM Does look bigger than the institution So I don't think we hire like Level three pms I think all like the new pms have to go through the rpms program Yeah, I'm not sure keep it There's like we are the most entry level PM you can be at facebook like there isn't an equivalent not rpm But I think one of the cool things about being an rpm is that like our titles are product manager They aren't associate product manager. They are we are product managers in the rpm program So there are like people on your team who might have no idea that you're an rpm like you are you are the PM on your team You might I think there's a difference between like if it's your first rotation your scope is going to be small You've never been in p.m. Before but I think that's similar. I would hope that So for me one of the advantages or things that appeal to me about being a product manager Is the ability to focus on breadth as opposed to depth so again coming from a technical background as an engineer What about engineering problems and how to build things and what technologies that sort of stuff as a product manager You have to think about business design legal sales like all engineering as well and all you different challenges So for me that was really appealing. That was kind of the reason I wanted to stick as being a product manager um I think switching between switching from data science to p.m. Was a really like scary shift for me data science was very Comfortable. I think similarly I think it was very execution. It was very like I kind of knew what my job was But I think the biggest thing for me was during my interview process the people that I met I remember coming out of my interviews. I was just like these are brilliant kind humans I'm still friends with most of my like all of my interviewers and I People just speak really highly about working at facebook and the company culture. I think is I'm not biased at all, but I think it's And just the opportunity to learn I really was just looking to learn more. I think like Mike said you you learn Every day because you're working with so many different teams and every rotation is very different like you're learning You might have a really design heavy rotation like I've been on very like in for analytics heavy rotations where like I never really talked to a designer because it just like wasn't in what my product was working on so I think All of that but the people For me and say like I had a feeling I would enjoy product based on my design experience, but Really like I said like execution and making sure that It wasn't just an idea But it was actually something that people were using and it was making an impact on people's lives was something I saw as like Something of course on stability of what a pm would do When I talked to some of my friends who are in difficult situations where they're considering maybe like engineer versus pm Or design versus pm. I think like the big question to ask yourself is do you care about What is being built and for me that seems more PME Versus how it's being built, which to me seems more like design engineering. They're interesting challenges in both But for me, I just personally enjoyed more of like strategy defining opportunities to find a mission that kind of stuff Yeah So we're hearing a lot about being kind of the voice of your team and studying that mission Within your program are there any people who perhaps are non-native speakers of English where there is You know, they have difficulty maybe explaining Your self and maybe they'll come into meetings like that as well as people who are a bit more introverted and are just not That strong personalities Yeah, so there's a huge variety of product managers so a lot of people will let's say lead by influence as opposed to Leading by being the most extroverted and confident person in the room So some people prefer one-on-one supposed to be 20 person meetings And so they'll have all their necessary conversations in a one-on-one setting and they'll be able to you know, figure out get people aligned with them Etc. In different scenarios, you know people find out what works for the best So we have to have lots of people who come from you know different countries around the world You know different backgrounds different levels of cultures different levels of extroversion versus introversion It's all about like people find what works for them If you for respondent for bigger settings, if you want to send emails instead People find out what works for them. They play their strengths I think similarly like like was said previously we're we are building products for two billion people We don't have the luxury of having every single PM be the same. It wouldn't work. Our company wouldn't be successful It wouldn't work for the program. So Like we are always looking for like diversity in every sense of the word Because it's important to our products that we that we do that the intro is an extroversion question I find particularly interesting for PM because something I noticed myself when I first started or one of the challenges I had to adjusting to PM It's like sometimes you wake up and you just feel like introverted, right? Like you just don't for people who are introverted or have had those moments, right? and so for me I had to get used to like like I feel introverted I look at my calendar and it's jam packed with meetings that I know I have to be on that day And that's just uh, it's just one of those things. It's like for the sake of the job Like you just have to do it So like if you if that does make you a little apprehensive about pushing PM That's just something to think about Uh, but for me it's just like kind of uh, it's just part of the job Like you just have to just gotta do it And I think knowing I think like one of the great parts about facebook is like our work life balance Um, so if so I know I have days where it's like at the end of the day I like need to leave right by eating over I need to go home and just sit on my couch like watch TV And that's okay. Um, so people like are definitely also good about setting boundaries Like when they need to take like self-care time when they need to when they Like we oftentimes like work from home one day we depending on your team Um, so there's definitely opportunities for stuff like that too Yeah To Yeah, um, so I'd say like we we talked about kind of like the three flavors of interviews those product centers Which is like very designing like you're gonna get up on the whiteboard and draw some draw something Um versus like execution like interviews and that's kind of like where you would show that that's let's go like execution Because you can't show someone that you would do a great job executing over the course of three months in a one hour interview But it's mostly just kind of like what's your logical approach to getting things done. Um, and I think like business and execution Skills come out in both of those types of interviews And also like interviews are just hard because it's so hard to like give the interviewer a sense of like your Well-rounded skills and so I think like we've done a good job in segmenting the interview in those different Areas to basically try to get a sense for someone for what's like I wouldn't worry about it too much to be frank So a lot of suggestions I wish to Oh Yeah, I think the For a designer, I think what's really helpful is like Let's say you have a beautiful design If I ask you to go one step further and tell me like if you could only work on one of the features that you design Which one would it be and how are you making that decision? Is it based on metrics? Is it based on user problems? And that kind of exercise I think is helpful Just getting very used to assuming you can't have it all and like if you could only have a bit of it Which one would you take and then how would you incrementally build? I think that's where the p.m. Side of design comes in like how do you know you make the right decision? Yeah Like what was success? so like You kind of reject that Yeah Yeah, and maybe like for something that you're working on like what's the business goal? What is it fulfilling for the company? Why are you working on it? Being able to have like not only the designer's perspective of how the user might interact with it by having the company's perspective for how it's all helpful Let's say it's one way to exercise that one more question. Okay. Um, a different how that one um So, how do you do a p.m. To make? um We are working on that skill all the time Having a meeting without an agenda without a goal that you want out of that meeting. You probably shouldn't be happy yet um, if you can do it over Messenger you do it over Email and that's like preferred communication channel for your team that you shouldn't do it I also know the opinion that if you send more than five messages in a row about something You should just meet the person and talk about it. So it really is There's always skills people are working on I think also going back to like feedback is like we are always gathering feedback Like I don't my team pretty much like once a month is like, okay Are all of our meetings like useful if I'm having weekly one-on-ones with someone I might say should we move this to bi-weekly? Should we do daily stand-ups like we don't have any set system in place? um, but I think ruthless prioritization And always being able always knowing that something's going to change Like if your product your product might change to a say where you need to do daily stand-ups Or it might be in like a whole state where maybe you could do like five weeklies with like weekly email updates I think always adjusting. Yeah, I agree So one of the problems I struggle with I'm not sure if that's the end Maybe because I talk with ITs as a designer at the end so I have to less Wait in their eyes So one of the challenges I'm having because we don't have to have all this very specifically As our IT guys, they're so busy and my project unfortunate man is the least priority one So I always have a phone where I put how I'm meeting with IT guys Is um, this is the fact this is what we want to focus on to improve or whether they come to get out This is what we talked. Um They need a refreshment. So always like there's excuses for not doing the work and we had to push them to I know you have a task schedule, but this is also part of the work So So, uh, one of the nice things about being a fan is you typically have full of knowledge of all the different projects that are going on That's again kind of part of your job is to understand what your team is working on even some what I say that the team Is working on to see the overlap of interest at all So if you happen to come to this scenario where you're trying to get an engineer or an IT person Whomever to work on something and it seems like they're too busy or they don't have time I think it's really up to you to question the prioritization And if you agree with the prioritization then what you're proposing you should understand They're not going to get to if you don't agree with the prioritization Then you should have to question it and be like so it seems like you're working on this Why do you think this is more important than this or like and you have an honest conversation about it Um, yeah We agree with the same prioritization a lot Yeah I So I haven't touched code in like over a year now I mean because as you know from our backgrounds we all have different backgrounds So there's no way we would expect pms to be able to do that and that's why we build our teams as such There'd be no expectations upon you to build prototypes or something if you want to for you know Your own reason you think it's the fact that you can but there'd be no expectations and as I said like in my year at Facebook as a product manager, I haven't needed to do any of this work Yeah I will say something that does come up is like for whatever reason like let's say Your designer recently left on paternity leave or like someone switching teams data sciences to switching teams your job is the p.m. Like Built into the understanding of your role is like to fill in by any means necessary So like if a situation arises where like you're you don't have a day of scientists But like that's a crucial you can't go a month without really understanding what's going on with your product You might have to be the one to jump in so it really depends on our news bases But I yeah on the whole like like I said We hire very smart people and they're amazing at their jobs and we trust them about what they do Yeah, to be clear the code I changed was to like change the color of something But I think yeah like jumping in on goals super like my team we our data scientists The paternity leave last half it happens And because I had designs background like I was comfortable kind of jumping in and being like okay like all look at the tables I'll do this I'll monitor at my new they are way more brilliant than I am and like We kind of just like got by for that one, but you definitely jump into those roles So Like the architecture design So, I mean typically we lean on engineers to help us with this Like in terms of how early it's decided often how you're going to build something influence the timeline for that project So usually what we're not engineers to say this will take two weeks versus this will take you two months But again, this is kind of like project specific team specific Yeah It can change any day. Yeah So would you say then that it's uh To kind of rewind a little when you're talking about the qualities for a the ideal candidate or something Oh, he's like not ideal candidate, but just what I find Yeah, I want to So Would you say that it's highly beneficial to be sort of a jack of all trades rather than a master of one or two? And you were mentioning, you know, kind of filling in different holes How many additional skills have you guys picked up or would you say you learned over You know the first year or two of the program, you know, what would have added to your repertoire during that time I think going in and like within the Interview process. I don't think it's like jack of all like I don't think it's one or the other I think it's like how you reflect your previous work So I don't think it's like if you have no analytics background like don't try and go home and like learn All the analytics stuff in the world, right? Like that's not it's about like your willingness to learn I think what jasmine speaking here was also like You will learn these things and that's like what we do and it's it's it's important I think to know where you stand in all of them Just like that self awareness is really important, but not to be like One or the other and then what was your second skill to add into our repertoire I'd say uh for me, um, I'm on a growth team right now, which is inherently like he was also on a growth team So speak to all the data nuggets that we learned to go out the entire half But on a growth team like it's very opposite from what I was used to as a designer It's very much like what's the hackiest thing we can build an implement in the quickest way run an experiment Let's learn and let's iterate on that and so it's very data heavy very like experiment design and setup And so that's something that like I didn't know if I would like it coming into The rotation from based on my background, but I actually like it a lot And actually my manager was a designer and then he turned into a very growthy PM because he himself was interested As a designer to find like a right answer and like Mikey said data wins argument So the fact that I'm so like immersed in it is really fascinating to me just to um to learn I guess another side of how to prioritize the decisions I think what do you think about skills? There's kind of two buckets You have the buckets that you are common across the PMing on any position. So this is like communication skills You're constantly working on uh, how to lead a team how to motivate people you work with these are common things You continue to get better at and then there's some of the more specific things like for Jasmine's case She's on growth. She's doing a lot of data stuff. This is new uh for myself right now I'm working with a lot of I'm working with game developers and it's it's different from thinking about what users want And now be about what developers want And there's a trail between how we get the best set of features for developers But also create the best user experience in the end. So that's like a completely different opportunity that there's by watching for I mean if you pick up like game designer or something like that Working with a lot of I'm trying to figure out how deep into the technical stuff You just sort of innately pick up just from your interfacing and everything else on the job. I'm just kind of curious I know a lot about spam now I think there's something about our expert like everywhere But I think the bigger skills you learn are the ones that are clickable kind of across like yes He's working on like games and like developers first users, but like for example like on events Which is what I'm on right now Like it's it's a Tuesday market right with people who make events with people who consume events Like it does it even though our teams are like on the surface very different. I'm feeling we're probably doing similar things In terms of the skill set there's like skills and then there's like industry knowledge and they're kind of different So and I think like problem. This is interesting about the arcane program You're working in different product spaces like industries and product problems. So it just depends on which I have a master's in computer science So we have people coming from MBA Uh, I don't know if we have any PhD It's not a function. If they just function we just haven't had uh It's a fact that we haven't had one not that we wouldn't take one. So again, I'm also not confident that we haven't had one But definitely like a master's like all different types of backgrounds. There's no like hard requirement Talk to us after In this background of technology, you may have more option Uh So standard is officially on a 4.0 scale, but there are some classes that offer 8 pluses and 8 pluses are 4.3 at a 4.0 So throughout my Throughout my master's degree, I average Above in between an 8 and 8 plus because of some courses that operate pluses My GPA was not that Any second question about Why did I choose pm as opposed to open ai or some other type program? Going back to some of the previous comments we've made facebook has two billion people That's a lot of people that you can affect change with In those types of opportunities are hard to come by The only thing about different technologies you can work at different technology stacks that you can work on Being able to affect change for two billion people. That's like that's a very very unique opportunity And especially going back to the role as a product manager It is your job to affect change for some facet of their lives For each of us, we have slightly different positions in what we're working on and what that change means But again, it's like you focus on breadth of problems and you come up with the direction That your team should take so it's definitely within your power to affect some level of change for two billion people All questions on the interview process Not on the GPA Yes, but if you consider candidates like you know, I've seen a lot of places they would either Strictly take, you know, people from interior roles and I know you just talked about you have a pretty good sense of background But somebody who's already had let's say been working as you know, a software engineer for like let's say five or sixty years and then Does that know this guy already probably has a very rigid mindset For that kind of role so you might not be a good fit for PM role, you know, because as a Pressure Otherwise, you know, it's easier for a person to bend his mind towards, you know, the people culture of PM Do you think that kind of like Some in some way it affects a candidate's profiles so so we I'd say have About half of our candidates each year who have who have been out of school in variety of capacity. I think I think people range up to like five to seven years of experience in a variety of things We have someone who was an aerospace engineer in my class for like three years. We have people for tfa. We have people who Like it's a super wide range of backgrounds and people come from all over We have people who did something else then like maybe did like PM a startup for a year But our five six seven years out of school And then move into the program. So there's no I think like that might be a personal concern of like, are you know, it's a learning program and like you have to be willing to learn That's like one of the biggest fundamental core values that we have But if you are able to like reflect that in your interview process, there's no like disadvantage at all I'm just a small question on that, you know, and I'm suffering in general, but it's very easy They take your call, you write the call, okay, so that's it's more like finding a PM role just more quality is one of the qualities that you would like specifically So I think like one thing that Comes up pretty frequently from the valuable capacity What if you do is like your ability to think critically about a problem whether that's like a leadership You know how you work with this team or whether it's a product or whether it's like Executing on a team. The ability to like kind of question assumptions and think critically is really really important That's one thing that comes to mind Yeah, I think it might not be as like quantitative as you say like a engineering interview, but it's still like It seems to be like very logical, right? Like it's it's like a problem It's a different type of problem you're solving but still a problem So I wouldn't say like there's specific like soft skills like of course like communication framing Can you be structured and articulate? That's all very important. But at the end of the day, it's just very much like Yeah, like do you have a structured approach? It's important to think about it's like if you're if I was to ask you like tell me about an idea for a product You have if I leave this conversation be like that's a really good idea That means you've done your job and however you get from there and point A to point B Like being as I'm a pretty logical person myself I would kind of grill you onto the details and see like what about this about this different interview with different backgrounds, but again, it's like Can you take me along your like sequence of thoughts and can you make people leave in your idea? And if the answer to that is yes, then that's that's a good interview I think back to communication piece Being able to adjust so like I think sometimes I know I was I definitely struggle with like getting feedback and being like Oh, no, no, no, like I'm going on my way, but it's okay to I think if someone asks like a follow question It's okay to either like agree with them But also know why you're agreeing with them don't agree with them just to agree with them Like it's very much how we operated our jobs of like if someone says like oh you should do this You either say like, okay, this is why I think you're having me do this Like let me like walk through like their reasoning or be like, no, I'm still going to do this walk me through my reason Kind of adjusting So whoever's here that's question Yeah, you've been raising your hand for a while Okay Like you mean a little bit of a so I might be some part of the answers So I basically have two questions The first question is you guys are from hand background so In the job like how much percent Of the background you have background you use in the current job and How does that help and uh Because I'm not from the So I'm wondering like So just for a quick context, I'm actually going to the technical background Well computer science backgrounds So Lizzie comes from like a data analytics background and Jasmine comes from more design background So in general Facebook product managers come from a variety of different backgrounds and they bring their own expertise to the forms of hand So for myself, I to be quite honest use my technical background very little Because one of the great things about facebook is you have really strong people you work with across all different job functions so All the engineers I work with are very strong and if I actually get involved and what they're doing try to understand It's actually not to be used to my time And I'm better off just like not knowing the details. I'm just letting them figure it out and thinking more about some other aspects Yeah, I don't think having a technical background hurts our health. I think it's just how you bring your previous experience Yeah, and it's also much like using a certain percentage of your past background but rather like It's like shape the way you think and interpret problems and products So I can't give you like a percentage, but it's just like kind of It's probably your story And then in terms of how to prepare Glassdoor has some questions Spoiler So like if you want to find some questions for like past Yeah, what I recommend is like if you have friends who are product managers Go through the exercise of picking a product to use and thinking creatively about it If you're the product manager on this product, whether it be an app, whether it be like a hardware product, whatever What would you improve on it? What do you think is working well? What do you think is not working well and that actual act of going through thinking about it critically Explaining your thought process to someone else. I think we'll do a long a lot of good to help you prepare for interviews As a follow-up to that question, did you take any walking to do is our Practice the questions from the course that are a bit of a long time I think our single someone is Yeah, I think I'm going to prepare very differently I think it depends on where you are in your career depends on who Who you know, like some people don't know any p.m. Just like they're the only ones do it like they might just do a lot by themselves I think Working with someone who might be in a similar role or might work people similar roles is always helpful But I think everyone like if you ask all 30 of us right now how to prepare every single answer would be different And how many rpms to get some higher these two you think of the exact number There's about 30 of us around right now in three classes I set schedules is that kind of a fixed Decision because you mentioned that things change over time is it kind of a situation where like we're going to do Whatever it takes to meet these milestones and deadlines Or did more kind of like, you know, we plan to work Kind of work with plans things change like like like how how how set in stone? um, so There's a lot of aspects to that question. Um, I think one in general it's good to have a sense of where your team is heading It's good to have Like typically like at least for the next month kind of where you think your team is heading But these are generally never rigid because things come up all the time Um, and so it's like important to understand one where you think the project ahead But also understand that things can happen and you need to be able to react to that Um, I think in general for face-guided company. Nothing is really rigid It's just yeah things move all the time people change roles Like your product has a new as someone has a new idea that comes up And you think it's greater than what you're currently working on so you change a bunch of stuff But it happens all the time I think most similar like you might set goals like metric goals and generally if you want to change a metric You're going to have a really good reason to but how you get there might change a lot Uh, it's also how I think about it But if you have to change my goal, do you change it? Yeah, uh, what challenge do I like individually about the interview process? Like when you're waiting, what was the most challenging to interview your product? And I have a second question and I'm going to ask something Uh, it's probably like a Satisfying answer but for me, I think it's frankly just confidence. I think like To prepare around specific questions specific type of questions I think you're never going to be able to fully predict so for me a much more effective prep strategy was just to like Trust my intuition and like The way my mind thinks about problems and rather like I would practice with my friends for sure But for me one of the more challenging aspects was just like how do I exude this confidence that PM would typically have in an interview How do I be receptive to feedback? How do I think about ideas quickly? How do I quickly like Give reasons for why I'm focusing on focusing on More like the soft skills and just the general like headspace of an interview was probably The most important and what's challenging for me Yeah, for me was the leadership type interview Because I was used to being intern and working on teams and other people that set up So I see the culture that some other product man heads out for the team But actually when you start thinking critically about like how do you motivate people? That's like a really tough question to answer especially if you're coming like my I was straight out of uh straight out of college So that was I think Probably the the injury that I struggled the most with or had the most not difficult to with That was the leadership Yeah, my list is definitely the product sensible. Um, I've been going from analytics background. I was just like Wanted numbers for everything I remember like whiteboarding something and being like so you really want 12 buttons on one page and I was like Oh, no, that's probably not a good idea um, but I think also knowing when I think like the soft skills was like knowing when to Stop like you're giving an answer and just because they're not interrupting you doesn't mean you need to keep going I think like the being concise and being clear It's important to be like, okay, I'm answering your questions and now I'm done talking and I Shuggle with that skill in general So that was like just something that I need to be really aware of as well Uh, I kind of follow up. Uh, what was one thing that we uh, was unexpected is pricing when you went to the end position And obviously I'm like, oh my god. I did not expect this at all Um, so quite frankly, I was kind of surprised at how much responsibility I had on day one Um, I kind of assumed that like I know I'd be handheld for Some portion of time in the program and like Uh, so like we do have an orientation we have like a sport four week what we call flu camp Which is like how does Facebook work? How does it work? Can't work. Um, but then from day one on a team after four week Um, I was instantly giving a lot of responsibility I was instantly giving a lot of faith and a lot of trust Um, and I was I was actually pretty surprised that like I had people who have been into the facebook for like five years Being like, hey, what do you think we should work on or what is your what is your thoughts about this? And I was like, I just joined this team To be clear like there's a net underneath you where like your your manager and your operating like p.m Will be there for you like they will not let you fall flat on your face But also think it's a very big facebook culture thing We're just because your new doesn't mean you aren't valued Like they say on the first day like this is now your company. So we also say like if you see something fix it Like nothing is somebody else's problem. Like keep going with like facebook sayings. Um, but The new opinion is not the person with five years of experience and this is like a beautiful thing about facebook culture They want to know your opinion because they've been in the weeds for five years and they know they're not seeing something Like they know that someone who like has thought about this from an actual perspective Who doesn't know all the like technical limitations and doesn't know what we tried a year ago Will like come and ask the hard questions day one and that across the board like rpm p.m Whatever your function is Exists like just because your view doesn't mean that you aren't valued in some ways people will turn to you and being like Hey, we've been trying to solve the problem for two months and none of us have good answers Like what's your crazy idea? Yeah, I would also say like similar along the same vein Like I think it's more like recognizing that you people are like looking to you despite your new I think one of the things I was most surprised about being both a new grad and new to facebook I was kind of like very acutely aware of like the seniority levels and like the levels of the people who have been at facebook longer Um, and even just like above me like my vp's opinions I went into one product review where it was like very chaotic in terms of like discussion And then after the review my designer like turned to me and was like, you know Feel free to like take control of it because we're like looking to you to be the person to like provide that direction Even if you're new and I think that was like a very impactful conversation for me because uh, I think I was waiting to be invited to like have an autonomy when I just realized day one like it's mine And I don't have time to waste to like think about yeah to wait Thank you There's another question So I have a question Yeah, so Yeah, so typically we we want to keep pms who come in externally for our program to have lessons to use total experience But in the class that was started six months ahead of mine. I think there was three There's two in your class there's there's a bunch of coming that are like one-year piano experience at a different company or something like this Yeah, what was the most difficult So we can't talk about so they get any questions I've all I've discussed like our difficulties and where we felt like good No, the great question Yeah And This is one of the hardest Most exciting parts of the product development life cycle because it's so open-ended It's like you're searching for the answer to that execute on We have like a very sensitive like research team on my team We have qualitative researchers and quantitative researchers The difference being qualitative will like sit in a lab with the user right in front of them and watch them Use the product quantitative being like what are some survey questions we can run and run across all facebook to get Some feedback at scale And so this is something that we leverage on top of that like we have a ton of data And it's all about like how can you make the data work for you to answer the questions that you need to know? So leveraging both the research and data is kind of how we're able to then uncover opportunities within the within our metric that we're trying to grow I would say the most eye-opening for me has been like some of the more Qualitative work though. I think we look at numbers a lot and we I think sometimes a super important part of pms to have empathy for like an individual user Because we have two millions But even if you're working on a small product at facebook like you are talking about hundreds of thousands of people at minimum 10 percent is still a big number so I think sometimes like having five people come in And have it just like five random people and have them all like I had an experience where They people were scrolling and they scrolled past it every time Right and our metrics were like super low and you're like, oh like our click through is like really really low And we're like trying to figure out why like what's going on and when we saw people using it Like that's something that you can't get from numbers. We saw people using it. They literally didn't see that it was there Like they just kept scrolling and we're like, hey, do you see that? We're like, what? It was a normal post like it was not so So That like for me at least that was really eye-opening for me being from such a quantitative background To be like that is not something that you see with numbers You don't see five random people come in and all have the exact same problem Like it was eye-opening. So that was for me at least like one of the Coolest it was really cool. Uh, one of my rotations. I was on the registration flow for instagram Which is really interesting to think about from a product perspective Probably not a lot people think about registration flows, but it's actually really interesting And like for people generally in america, like if they want to sign for instagram, they'll make an account Like they don't typically get stuck on the registration flow But what we would do is we went to developing markets around the world and we would speak with people who are maybe new to the internet Like they never used a phone before they never on the internet before and for them going through a registration flow Is vastly different than how you or I go through a registration flow And in this case, there's no way I could even begin to understand the problems without user research and even like within america It's like I would struggle to find someone who has never used a phone or never used the internet before So for that, like we literally had to go into the field and we had to go do some of written markets around the world And do in-home user research to meet these people So So in general we protect data like very very very carefully Like we would never trade off someone's personal data against some product feature or anything Yeah, so typically you're not making these try the chaos because the answer is no This is like this is the most one of the most important things for facebook as a company is to make sure people feel trusted Like they trust facebook when they use the app. They know that we're not going to maliciously use their data or do anything else with it Uh, what's the most fulfilling thing you've done at facebook when you were talking about re-editing you? There's like different types of feeling so I think there's like Like the first time that I felt like in a meeting I think kind of like what jasin said before That I felt like I remember is probably I was definitely giving my opinion day one like like we said earlier like that's very valid But there was a meeting where it was like we either have to do this or this and I had to like Make the decision and people literally like I was turned and looked at me and I was like, oh man Um, so that was like one of those things like the decision was not a big deal And like it was a couple weeks in and I'd say like I made way bigger decisions later on But that was the most fulfilling and like oh, this is real. I'm actually doing this Um, so I think there's like that personal that that for me like the thing where I look back And if it was our like weekly stand-up meeting that we had every week for six months that like we made much crazier decisions in later on But it was the first one where I said like I remember the decision was we had two options for design And the data was like fine either way and I said, okay If the really good design takes less than two weeks, there's one that was clearly a nicer design If that one takes less than two weeks, we'll do it because the other design you would take us about three hours And that was like the first time I was like, I am making a trade-off right now And it was the first like you're making decisions constantly, but it was the first one three I was like super concrete. So that was like personal fulfillment We went with the two week one because there's like a take for it For myself As I kind of alluded to earlier as a product manager a lot of times are ultimately responsible for your team's success As Jasmine talked about filling in different roles like it's a lot of times It's ultimately up to you to make sure your team is on a good trajectory and you're helping out with the most important things So I remember during my second rotation. My team was in a rough spot for about a month and a half And we were coming close to the end of the half and typically, you know for our program We're on six month intervals. So I'm coming close to the end of my rotation. I'm like crap like my team is really not in a good Spot right now And we were struggling we were struggling. We didn't know what to do We had some ideas that weren't working as we initially thought And then It wasn't even my idea someone else had this great idea And as soon as we tried it everything kind of turned around and we ended the half on a great note And that was like going from that like low spot where you have like a bunch of people We work with who are like they're out They know the teams on a good spot You're really internalizing it because you're the program team taking that then Changing trajectory in any really great spot was like By far the most fulfilling experience in baseball I think on top of personal fulfillment like Lizzie talked about for me one of the most like product-wise fulfilling things was like The my first launch day when we were launching the product We were in a war room and we like flipped the switch We had a dashboard and then like after launch the dimensions went way up We were refreshing a google query that was just like In the news tab because we were looking for the articles to come out and then we saw the tech crunch article come out We're just like So exciting and that and then like when I saw like my friends using the product in my news feed That was like a really I think like that's a very special facebook experience Like only because we work at facebook we can like really see See that see that in a while That's awesome Did any of you guys have a previous experience like Like an app or something or a leadership experience like planning a club or something in college That gave you some context for the leadership interviews Yeah, I attribute a lot of my the reason why I went to pm to that So in college some friends and I started an incubator on campus for startups Basically just to provide mentorship support funding to a lot of the startups in the space and that was kind of the first time where We recognized a problem and you know, there's a lot of problems where we say like someone should do something about it It was the first time where we were like we are going to be the ones to do something about this And you learn a lot throughout the process is very similar. I think to what a pm goes through I think that's one of the most valuable prep experiences. You could get to know if pm is something that you want to do Um, and I also think that that kind of self-starter attitude serves you very well as a pm I didn't even do like non-technical stuff like I like started a student org about like mental health support in college that Like even like just working with different stakeholders, right? Like we had to work with like our counseling and psychological services and with like student orgs and with student government to get funding like just that like Cross-functional even though like who my cross-functional partners are has changed dramatically That experience like I spoke about it a time during my energy process because it like defined me as a leader, I think Um, in my case I did a bunch of hack-a-pons throughout college So those are an opportunity to be like a mini product manager for your hack-a-pon idea. So we had a lot of not so great ideas But like throughout all this you learn along the way like what works what doesn't work How long does it take to build can you finish it in time when you're explaining to someone else why you made this Can you succinctly do so and convince them that it's a reasonable idea? All those like the same like very similar things we do in day-to-day justice Still three more questions It'll fail yes I mean I think I'd be surprised if an rpm has never like had a failure at all It's almost like again like if you don't write a message Yeah, if you don't fail you're almost like not doing it Right because you shouldn't be taking conservative approach that you know are going to succeed all the time because that's not how you have like That's not how you drive a lot of impact So generally like I've made countless poor decisions throughout my time as an rpm But through those you're always learning throughout the process like what was wrong about the decision in hindsight And generally it's very well received like people will encourage you to fail again Because it's a learning program and they know the best way to learn is through failure And your team around you like They won't expect every single thing you say to be 100% accurate or like the best decision you could make they realize that like You know, you can't know always what two million users are gonna like Um, and they know that you will have to fail sometimes in order to succeed in the long run I think it's I'm Sorry you We have a I mean you have a six-month rotation So typically like even if you fail once you have more than enough time to try something else or um, yeah We have a phrase that's moved so it used to be move fast and break things It's no it's it's now just move fast Because people were taking that quite too early at facebook and like trying to break down the site But you're encouraged to move fast and if you haven't Made a bad decision you probably aren't really fast It's also the difference between making one mistake once in the same mistake twice So I would like to be careful of the latter, but former is very much an encourage So I want to know like uh think about the day when you joined and today What have you changed Um, I think for myself confidence has changed a lot Just in terms of like again, my going back to my original point about the strong opinion to really help I I generally feel more secure in the decisions I make knowing that if I have to change to my will But a lot of time that you can build upon these experiences you had even though I've only been at facebook for a year I've had a lot of ups and downs. So now I feel more confident. Oh, I've seen this in the past. Maybe this is similar So I have some idea of what to do with the scenario Yeah, so I think for me it's about this confidence Okay, okay, I could say like similar same answer different reasons confidence And it's something that like I think I'm continuing to work on because I'll never be done really I think like uh particularly Where I've seen being at facebook helped me with that I think a lot of our product leaders like one of the reasons why mark is such an effective CEO is because if you present him with two options He just has an intuition to like look ahead magically and like know what the right answer is or at least like What a very well articulated answer is and that skill takes a lot of confidence and like own personal belief in Like how do you make decisions and where you see the world headed? Same with kevin sister. I'm headed instagram Like he has a very strong idea for like what instagram is and what instagram isn't and he has the confidence to like Let go of some opportunities because he's like that's not what we're doing This is what we're doing and so I think like recognizing that as a p.m That is very much needed for your job is something that Because I see it in leaders and it's something that's very top of mind for me every single day And someday I improve and continue to improve a lot since day one Think why it's like slightly more tactical. I've learned how to like have an unfinished checklist So I go into every meeting and come out with three things to do like I feel like I don't hear them You go into a meeting and you're too many people need to be there and I think going back to the prioritization I was always someone who felt like I had to do everything all the time And as a p.m. You just you can't And you like you can't know everything and you can't know answer to everything like I've gotten feedback And I like dig too much into the weeds because I want to know how it all works And that like isn't like letting go of that is really was really hard for me at first Like I wanted to know how it really worked and it's like our systems are not simple and Like similarly we've been here to have been on teams for three or five years And they don't know how all of it works. So like I'm really not the person to do so So I think a like personal growth thing for me has been Like leaving at the end of the day and not I think I was just like very Executional role like oh you'd like build this dashboard or do this analysis or do this And that's like no longer the role I'm in So learning how to have an unfinished checklist has been And like changing the checklist like I said we've been on the checklist for a week and it hasn't been done And finally to be there Last question We definitely I mean Like we've been saying like diversity is like very important to us and we do us the program the company no service if we are It's very rigid in The archetype of a p.m. So For any of those kind of questions the answer is like, yes We will definitely consider those people as long as they like attribute like these skills have like the self-serve attitude, etc Um in terms of like how we build diverse. I mean diversity is very important to us I think if you saw all 30 of us standing up here, you would see that diversity is very important to the program And also like we've been talking about to facebook and the products that we build We serve 2 million people around the world We need to be diverse just to like survive and to have people enjoy our products And that doesn't mean that's like diversity of people diversity of culture diversity of where you're from diversity of personality The diversity of sharing behavior, you know, it's all very important. I'm not sure It's all very important. So Yes