Maria Angelidou, former VP of Product at Meta and CPTO at Personio, responds to Harry Stebbings' suggestion that Facebook's conflicting direct feedback culture was evidence of a poorly run company.
Opinion
Europe has 10 to 20 times fewer solid specialized product candidates
“You know, this is actually one of the things that I had to adjust, is that for every let's say, 20 maybe 10, 20, if it's specialized role, candidates that you get in the U.S. That are solid, maybe you get one in Europe. And that actually really slows down your…”
Opinion
US tech workers exhibit greater ownership than their European counterparts
“I would say that there is a difference in the states People feel like their job is a much bigger part of their identity, and I think in Europe is just less of a phenomenon, and when you feel that your job is important to you personally, I think you put in more…”
Opinion
Tech entitlement stems from younger workers expecting cushy workplace benefits
“I actually think it's more kind of like the younger generation across Europe and the US. I think especially people who maybe this is their first job, and they had a job that is, like, pretty just cushy from the perspective of, like, you know, all the benefits …”
Insight
Highly senior individual contributor PMs are harder to find than managers
“It's much harder to find very senior ICs who have, you know, superpowers on different topics than to find managers, right?”
Insight
Any process not driving speed or product quality destroys company culture
“There's, companies do better when there is, yeah, just minimum process and the process and means to an end, and that end is, you know, it's either for, to help people go faster, or to help them ship better products. Any other process is waste of time, and you …”
Insight
Talking is expensive because it consumes valuable team execution time
“I disagree with the philosophy that talk is cheap. Just because talk doesn't cost us any code doesn't mean that we need to do more of it. I think, like you said, you know, talking costs us time, and that is the time that you can be spending, you know, progress…”