 Great. Thanks for that introduction and welcome to everyone here at Product School. I am delighted to be here. My name is Nikhil Singhal and I am here to talk to you about your product management career. Now, today I'm going to go through some of the experience I have in speaking to folks that I coach or I've managed over the years around how to unlock those career moments, how to find the best advice to really help you in those times when you're questioning things and probably these days you're questioning your career a little bit more than you used to because if you've been in the industry for a while we're in a pretty rocky time where growth has slowed in the industry but then there's new opportunities like AI that are pulling us forward and it's hard to understand where to go, do I stay, how to think about career broadly, long-term and where to get the best advice. And so just a bit about me as we get started. My career is sort of held in three chapters. I started my career doing startups. I loved early stage companies. I saw myself as a founder. I did a couple of startups, one which got popped by IBM, one which got popped by Google and then for the first time I became a product manager. In fact, when I was at Google I had to look up what even the product management term meant. I never had been a product manager before and for those of you that are watching, I'd love to get your perspective on how did you start your career and if you did have a big transition that took place because I think those transitions are really career additive as we'll talk about in a second. And for me, it was me kind of working through product management for the first time and I was lucky enough to be part of the Hangouts product launch. The Photos product launch eventually became Chief Product Officer for a company called Credit Karma and went through this hyper growth phase where I was now able to see what growth was like, which is different from late stage companies like Google and certainly different from early stage. And after doing four years of both Google and Credit Karma, I have now been at Meta for about three and a half years leading the home products and the group's products for Facebook. But in addition to sort of working through my product management and founding career, I've also started to spend a lot of time over the last decade coaching folks like yourself, helping them understand these career transition points. And in fact, I got to a place where there was enough folks that I had learned from that I started to put out content. So if you go to skip.show, you'll see some of the newsletter and podcasts that I do and today's discussion is really about some of the lessons I've learned and pulling some of that content together in an easy place that you can learn from. So without further ado, as we're going through my top five, maybe I'd be curious if you take a second and think about what's the best career advice you've gotten and maybe share it here with the channel for all of the people that are attending today. Well, my first one is to actually take advantage of the fact that all of you are product managers and use that to help with your career. And so what I mean by that is think about your career like it's a product. Now, when you think about a product, it starts with a vision. It has a strategy and then it has some tactics, you break it down into these product releases. And in some ways, that roadmap is actually what guides your discussion around what's version one, version two and version three. And you avoid these short-term optimizations. And I think that when you think about careers, they're longer than almost any product that's out there, products that live five, 10 years, careers last 50, 60 years. And so I always want people to think about not just the move of should I stay versus go or is this the right offer? I'm always asking, well, what's it's in service of? What's your skip job? That's why I call my content skip. Because I think the skip, your boss's boss, what is that person doing? Your job after next, those are the key things that you want to think through. Then the next thing I'd say is that there are product phases that exist in any product that moves forward. What I mean by that is there are products that start out in this drunk and walk, early stage format where you're trying to navigate and find something that works. Then you move into hypergrowth, which is really when you're in a process where you're really trying to scale the product because you have so much demand. And then lastly, you have this sort of market leadership. And so I think that these three chapters in some ways kind of apply a bit to your careers. In your first act, you're learning, you're trying, you're experimenting, and your goal is to establish what you know. Then you move into leadership, where you're actually in a place where you're actually managing and having the greatest impact. And it's at that place where leadership in this case is command of a team or a large product area where you can push that forward and establish the most impact. And then lastly, most people, when they've established themselves as a leader, they eventually transition to an act three, which is different from maybe learning and leading. It might be more closer to giving or perhaps resting or advising. And so in some ways, think about not conflating these. Don't spend too much time trying to give and lean forward when you're early, early, early in your career and make that your primary. And we'll talk a bit about what I mean by that. Similarly, don't stay in execution and direct impact mode if you are mid-stage career. And don't try to optimize for leadership impact or leadership compensation too early. And so it's sequencing these things correctly. That's important. And then lastly, think about the fact that in any product, you have data, you have user research, you have customer feedback, which really helps guide your product more than just your intuition. And they really drive growth. You almost have this signal that's coming in that's helping you figure out what's next. And what I'm hoping for is that all of you think about ensuring that you have the right feedback and coaching and you build the self-awareness to listen to that so that you can operate on your career and moves that you should be making, just like when you launch a product, you end up getting that signal and you end up acting on it. Okay. The second thing is to really, again, it's in the same arc of thinking long-term, but ensuring that every transition you make is career additive. And it's really a question around, hey, what are you optimizing for? And I think the thing that I'm trying to avoid is I want you to optimize for the stories you can tell more than the level that you've achieved at your past company. So what I mean by that is so many people come to me and say, hey, I want to talk about career. Let me talk to you about what my company's telling me it takes to get promoted. And I'm like, well, that's a good signal. It's almost like feedback. But ultimately, when you think about your next job and you're talking to them about what you can do for them, they're going to ask you about, well, what did you do? What did your team do? What kind of impact? What was the difference between your contribution, the team's contribution, where the company went? And you can sit down and say, look, I have this great level, I had this impact, I had this responsibility. But ultimately, if it's not a story that you can tell about yourself and about your understanding of the setbacks that you hit and what you built, it's going to be diluted. And so I want you to think just as much about the promotion and the level that you have had, I want you to think about the story that you can tell. I also want you to think a little bit about how fast you are growing. And what I mean by that is, just because you've established a lot of responsibility, you've hit a certain place, if you were given a choice between hire someone, hiring someone who had established themselves as a leader or had a fair amount of scope, and you had someone else who's an up and comer, who continually picked up new things and went from developing to understanding to mastering. And you had to bring them into a new environment, your company, for example. Well, the person is a quick study who can adapt, who is able to very quickly figure new things out, is going to just be a better hire. Because every organization, every project, every team, every person is different. And so I think adaptability and growth is going to always trump responsibility. So in both of these cases, I'm trying to avoid a scenario where someone's like, well, I've established X and I've been at level Y. And that's the reason why you should hire me. And that's the reason why I've been able to be successful in career, versus someone who's like, well, let me walk you through the experiences I've had, the stories I can tell, and how quickly I was able to get through things that is very empowering. And then lastly, the thing that I'm always interested in understanding is ensuring that you don't become so tightly held on the mission and the product of the company that you want to connect with, that you lose out in the culture and learning of the organization. Better said, a lot of folks have come to me and said, I'm really looking for a product that I can connect with directly. You know, I'd love to work on consumer products, or I'd love to work on a mission. And you know, honestly, everybody wants to do that. But the fact is that when they join those companies, let's say you found this great product or you found this great mission that speaks to you, which is terrific. But then you come to me and you say, hey, by the way, the culture is kind of terrible. People are kind of mean to each other. I don't really think that they're seeing the work I provide. My manager is really out to lunch and doesn't really help me at all. And ultimately, that's just going to be more career additive than whether or not you work on something that you personally connect with. Because heck, if you can personally connect with something, but nobody listens to what you have to say, well, that's not going to be such a great gig. Or if you have this product that you believe in that you decided about, and you tell your friends, but then you have a role that you basically stuck at and you don't move forward, that's not career additive. I always find that what really unlocks people is the learning they have or the culture where they can kind of be seen in their true self very quickly. And those can often come in companies that are somewhat boring or that are a little bit counter cyclical or that aren't necessarily the most attractive companies that are out there, but they can move quickly through those phases and they can have a story to tell. Okay. Number three is around this notion of connecting with people and ensuring that you know folks. Number one regret I have when I hear, when I talk to people is they'll come to me and they'll say, look, I'm leaving this company and one of the things I wish I had done is I wish I had gotten to know more people. And you can almost assume that you're going to say the same thing in your current job. You're going to say, hey, I wish I knew more people. And I wish that all of you would sit down and think through like, hey, are you spending enough time getting to know folks? Maybe you can chime in here and say, how much time are you spending in connecting with people that aren't necessarily based on that's not organic per se? Like how much time are you spending with folks when you are... Let me just make sure my slack is off here, hilarious. How much time are you spending with people that you are naturally talking to and trying to build a meaningful relationship with? So as an example, what I like to say is that in phase one of career, what you end up doing is you end up learning about who you... It's what you know that's most critical. And what I mean by that is you're learning the craft of your particular function, in this case, product management. But in phase two, it's the people you know that really help you move forward. And the biggest regret that people have, as I said, is they don't know enough people. And then networking in and of itself is very inauthentic. And I hate that term because I think it's too transactional. I think that it just sort of says you should meet people for the sake of meeting people. And those people that meet people for the sake of others, they all meet each other and they don't really have much to show forward over time. But if you were to sit down and spend 30 minutes every week finding one person that you can have a meaningful relationship with, and those people can be peers, they can be leaders, they can be people that are in different parts of the organization, they might be new folks, they might be interns, they might be customers or partners. Well, what you end up finding is that those folks end up being tremendously helpful as you go through your next opportunity. Because when you go to the next opportunity, what you end up finding is that often those are the ones that maybe have an opportunity to pull you forward or you go to another opportunity and you want to work with people that you know or that you trust and you pull them forward. You know, in some ways these kind of, if you call it connections, drive luck. They drive opportunity. They drive experience and learning and wisdom. And yes, they favor extroverts who end up connecting naturally with others. So those of you that are struggling a little bit with meeting folks and maybe you're a little timid or shy or it's not natural, find 30 minutes. Find ways to connect with folks and then just suggest to people maybe what you can give to them. Maybe they're new and you can help explain the company. Maybe they're early in their career and you're a little further along. Maybe you want to learn from them on something they're doing and just ask them, hey, I'd love to just spend 30 minutes and get your sense of how this works. So maybe you have an area that you have an expertise and you want to walk them through it. But in the conversation, it doesn't have to be so like serious. It can be just like listening to what the person has to say. Half an hour is not a long time. But what you'll find is that if it's natural and it feels organic, maybe you'll end up making it a second meeting or a third meeting and you'll end up building a friendship and that friendship and that natural connection can carry you a long way. Okay. Next, I think that it's very important for you all to find an area of strength. And then I want you to make it a superpower. And so what I mean by that is I think that more and more people should be looking at one or two areas that they are spiking in as opposed to being just broadly generalized. It's just very hard to focus unless you have an area of excellence. And so as an example, I talk about on the podcast a bit about these different areas. Crafters are those that create features. Growth are those that scale projects that are working. Domain are those that understand something like hardware or AI. Market understands the strategy of where organizations need to go and how the competitive landscape flows out. Organization ambiguity is those that know how to take complex projects, split over multiple teams and get them to drive forward. And team is the classic team builder, manager of manager type. Well, if you want to have an elite career, you need one or two of these areas to be excellent at world class. But generally, people need to make sure that they at least have a working knowledge of all of these areas. And ideally, you will probably see one of these and you're like, oh, that's kind of my thing. And if you were to lean in there, that will carry you more forward. And especially these days when there's fewer management opportunities, recognize that for the most part, people are looking for builders that know these skills. They're not necessarily looking for team managers and manager of managers all the time. So this is my focus on get your story, get your build right, and then that will carry you forward. And it's this spiky development of your skill, as opposed to just generally trying to be good at everything that I'm trying to ensure. And then the last thing and probably the most important is that I want you to not outsource your career to your manager and to your company. I want you to bet on yourself. I think that managers are incented to essentially coach you on the way that they largely grew up and became a manager. And they're dealing with constraints that the business and the team may have. And the company does too. So the promotion ladders, the feedback you get are always going to be through the constraints of what the organization values. But ultimately, those things aren't necessarily the same thing as what you need in order to drive your career. And so I really want you to think through your strength areas, your superpowers. I want you to make sure that you are in a position to focus on the stories you can tell, that you get that feedback, those soft skills that are really critical, and you build that empathy and that self-awareness. Now, mentors themselves will help you. And in fact, those you connect with authentically will help. So you almost need a board of directors or a small number of people around you who are cheerleading you, helping you at times of need, and that you ultimately are serving on other people's board so that you can ultimately drive that piece of giving in small ways early and in larger ways as you become more wise and more impactful. But if you think about these five areas that I just walked you through, this notion of product managing your career like a product, ensuring your moves are career additive, making sure that when you know what you know will be a piece of what will drive you forward, but whom you know will be a piece that you ultimately will find an area that you can specialize and be a superpower, which will carry you forward. And then ultimately, you're betting on yourself. I think you are in for a terrific product management career. So lastly, the one ask I would say to you is that I'd love to hear if there are other rules that have really helped you in your career that I didn't necessarily cover. And part of it is the content that I'm sharing here today is part of my Skip podcast and my newsletter, where I cover these types of career additive tips and tricks and advancement. And you can follow me on LinkedIn, you can follow me on Twitter. And there are ways that most importantly, I'm always looking to learn and understand where you are in your career and what are really things that you're struggling with. Because when I hear those and I get a chance to talk about some of the other lessons that I've heard, it really frames my content towards career. So it's a pleasure to have a chance to speak with you today. Thank you for the opportunity, Product School, and enjoy the rest of today's class.