Chennapragada: Differentiate PMs who drove growth from those riding tailwinds
Aparna Chennapragada · 20Product: When to Hire a CPO, The Three Different Types of CPO, How To Know What You Need, How To Structure the Hiring Process, What Are the Must-Ask Questions, What Tests and Case Studies Should Be Used, How Should Their Compensation Package Be Structur · Feb 3, 2023 · at 41:28
Aparna Chennapragada, former CPO at Robinhood and Google VP, shares her framework for assessing candidates from major tech firms.
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“So you have to differentiate between people who were in the parade versus help the parade. And you certainly have to look for the jerks who pushed everybody aside and somehow got to the front of the parade.”
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More from Aparna Chennapragada
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“I'm biased because I'm really, really bullish on finance and intersection of tech as one of those big platform shifts with crypto, but also broadly financial services.”
Chennapragada: Large consumer tech products suffer from PMs becoming disconnected from users
“This is a big disease in consumer product management, as I see in large companies or large products, where you're so abstracted away from the individual.”
Chennapragada: Early founders risk more hiring wrong PM than waiting
“The biggest risk here is an act of commission, not omission. What I said was, you're going to make a bigger mistake, and like, it's a bigger negative impact on the company if you hire the wrong person versus hire the right person. So it's a high leverage hire,…”
Chennapragada: Early-stage startups should avoid hiring generalist PMs
“Do not hire a general athlete PM is my advice.”
Chennapragada: Interviewing accuracy weakly correlates with performance in judgment-heavy roles
“In fact, actually, like, I think studies have over and over proven for things that are kind of like, there's a lot of practitioner judgment and decision-making discipline involved. The interviewing correlation is only weak.”
Chennapragada: Evaluating PMs purely on moved metrics drives risk aversion
“If you have a company where you say, hey, like, what metrics did you move, and that's the only way you can actually get recognized and Promoted or evaluated. Then what you end up having is a bunch of risk covers folks who will just all gravitate towards the su…”