Write to improve your career

from kupajo

I write. A lot. If practice made perfect, my writing would be pristine, but it’s a daily struggle. Be more direct, to the point, less fluff.

By knowing how to parse and convey the right information, a good writer can relieve and prevent a slew of headaches. They can herd disjointed efforts, give direction to projects, sell ideas, solidify shared purpose, document processes, and foster knowledge sharing.

Writing is challenging because it’s an attempt to cohere the incoherent. You’re never sure the words are good enough. Does it convey the point you’re trying to make? Is it grounded in truth?

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AI Product Management

from Andrew Ng

Even today, most companies have difficulty finding people who know how to develop products and also understand AI, and I expect this shortage to grow.

This is especially true as modern machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms become more complex. Decision trees are easy to understand. Reinforcement learning is intuitive. Deep learning architectures, on the other hand are obtuse.

Increasingly, I also expect strong product managers to be able to build prototypes for themselves. The demand for good AI Product Managers will be huge. In addition to growing AI Product Management as a discipline, perhaps some engineers will also end up doing more product management work.

This is reality. AI in its myriad of forms is here to stay. More and more, I’m thinking of a product team as less of one where each team member plays a specific, defined role and more of one where everyone does similar work but fills slightly different gaps. There are no product managers. There are no engineers. There is only delivering value to people anyway you can.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Found on February 17, 2025 Read the original article

My Take on 'Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager'

After taking three or four months off from work, I’ve been looking around for my next landing spot after leaving Pantheon in November of 2023. That amount of time bought me a lot of clarity in how I want to practice the art of product management. It also gave me a lot of time to read! I’m still cranking through a lot of books, but one that I’ve been thinking about a lot is Ben Horowitz’s “Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager” essay, especially as I’ve been interviewing again and it’s hard to avoid thinking about what makes me a good (and bad) product manager.

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Cracking My Favorite Products

My time in school has come to a close. It is bittersweet in that my love of learning seemingly knows no bounds. I could spend years exploring more nooks and crannies in computer science, but the time has come to say goodbye.

If that’s the “bitter” part, then the “sweet” part is the job hunt! I’m finding that I enjoy the process of looking at companies, wrapping my head around their business, and evaluating if their product interests me enough to apply to an open position. As part of the job hunt, I am prepping for interviews. A vital step considering I’ve spent the last 18 months with my head down in the land of bits and am applying mostly to product management positions which are a blend of bits, business processes, and user needs.

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Overcoming the Trough of Sorrow

Before I dive in, I should note that this post was written as LexBlog hits its fifteenth birthday. It’s been my pleasure to work in the Seattle offices at LexBlog for over 6 years. So much of that pleasure stems from truly enjoying the people that work here and overcoming the challenges we face on a regular basis. Here’s to another fifteen for a great company of great people.

There’s a line in Fight Club that I love that comes to mind when thinking about my favorite memories at LexBlog:

You met me at a very strange time in my life.

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Getting To Know You, Getting to Know All About You

Every Product Manager that I’ve had the opportunity to speak with, listen to, or read about makes one thing abundantly clear: Knowing your users is your job. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. If you take a moment to peruse career pages or job boards with Product Management positions, you’ll notice that each listing notes an ability to simultaneously be an Excel/SQL/database master and product expert. The nature of product management requires you to live, breathe, and eat the customer’s experience while understanding why their experience is the way it is.

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