The Exchanges

Q terms of other tips for getting good feedback, is there anything else that just comes top of mind of how to get better feedback from people? Because, you know, it's hard to do. Most people talk about getting feedback and then don't, or they just don't know how. So one is just, you said, repeat back exactly what they told you and be like, very appreciative. Is there anything else?

A I'd share out feedback. It's a little easier when you are a manager, but for example, most managers that are listening, you know, have a staff discussion. Maybe, you know, it's, it's sort of awkward, but maybe you have a standup and you are giving, you know, notes to people. So as a manager, as you know, someone will come to me and they'll give me a piece of feedback. The next Monday when I have my staff meeting, I'll make Comment about something and I'll say, well, a lot of this came because I got this great piece of feedback from, you know, and I'll name the person. And I'm like, it really helped me see this challenge. Now that feedback could be about me or that the project or about the team, and it might be positive. It might be constructive. People hear that and they're like, wow, I get recognized for giving this guy feedback. Sign me up. You're always trying to find a way to break down that barrier.

AI assessment note: “I'd share out feedback. It's a little easier when you are a manager”

Q Final question. What is one thing every PM listening should do to help their career?

A Ensure that the story you will tell about the work you're doing today is meaningful for your skip job. So if you sit down and you write down in six months, in 12 months, in 24 months, when I achieve or finish this role, here's the paragraph I'll write. Here's the problem I solved. Here's the skill I built. Here's the headwind I faced. Here's what I did to overcome it. Use I in the sentence. Do not use we. We will do good things. You are who we are thinking about your career. We're not looking for we master the story. Now understand the story. If the story sucks, you probably should be thinking through how to make the story not suck. But that to me is a very good career decision. And I think everyone is building their story today. I want to know that story. I want that story to be incredibly compelling because whether you promote it or not, that story is compelling. You'll be promoted in career. And that's, that's what we're looking for.

AI assessment note: “Ensure that the story you will tell about the work you're doing today”

Q the next area I want to touch on is you wrote this kind of like hot take on something you call ex-growth companies and how it's not good to be at an ex-growth company currently. So can you just talk about what is an ex-growth company and then why is that not a good place to be as a product manager, but probably any kind of, any kind of role?

A I have a pretty strong opinion on this that I think that the, for 10 years we, we We created the hypergo blitzscaling type phenomenon, and there was a lot of good reasons for that, some of which were just distribution platforms just got so good. You know, you could take out Facebook ads, you could grow with Google, and you could, you know, grow in 18 months that, you know, maybe took previous companies 10 years. So I think that the, the idea was that all of these companies could instantly grow when they found product market fit, and that birthed all these unicorns. And then suddenly, 18 months ago, it almost like the music stopped, zero percent interest rate went away, and it became a lot, lot harder to find growth through just fueling it with capital. And I think that this sudden change meant that not only capital was harder to raise, but companies started to focus on their core products. You know, and you've talked about it On this podcast, just how many layoffs and restructuring and managers moving to ICs and all of that work is happening. Well, the one funny pocket was there's these large number of growth companies who have raised substantive dollars. So they're not going to run out of capital in 20, 22 or 20, 23. What's going to happen is they actually have quite long periods of time. So you don't see them raising new rounds. You don't see them laying off. But in some ways…

AI assessment note: “these companies are privately held. And so they're sort of sleeping in the shadows.”

Q a smooth developer experience. Go to WorkOS.com to make your app enterprise ready today. So you talk to, I don't know, hundreds of product leaders regularly run these communities for CPOs and senior product leaders. I guess on balance, are people doing, would you say better than the last, than like two, three years ago? Or is it just like, oh man, everyone's like burning out and in big trouble.

A I think that how people would describe it and how I describe it is slightly different. I tend to be more around like when people are doing better, I think they have more choice and they're a long-term going to be happier. From that perspective, I think people that are at the top of their game are doing much better. For the reasons I mentioned, they're just more interested in their jobs. I think that they're more stressed, but I think they're stressed because they wish they had more time to feed the yellow lamb at night, which is a different form of stress than the stress that they experienced in the past, which is, I don't know if my point or my team is going to get through the, the malaise of decisioning that exists here. So I think that people are doing better. However, I think our industry is very much in stress. I think that on average people, even if they're doing well, they feel more stressed because they worry they're either not keeping up or they worry that this industry is going to change and it's going to essentially there'll be roadkill along that way. And so that has a lot to do with, you know, people are not, you know, generally that arrogant and they don't Always believe that everything's going to work itself out. And there's a lot of evidence that things are changing and so change is hard on humans. And so I think that there's a combination of both, but I think t…

AI assessment note: “I think people that are at the top of their game are doing much better.”

Q Chaos is a ladder as, as the, uh, Littlefinger famously said, um, Nikhil, is there anything that we haven't covered anything else that you think is important for people to hear? Any other advice, anything you want to double down on before we wrap up and get to our very exciting lightning round?

A I would just say that There's a lot of room to be optimistic right now, but you have to find it within yourself to recognize that there is a small period of change and exhaustion that's required to find that moment of joy. And I just urge everyone to find those reserves to get there because once you do it's infectious, but the longer you wait, The harder it is to cross that chasm. And so I really want people to feel optimistic and find that moment of joy. But I also recognize that there is a lot of activation energy that it takes to get there. And so my hope is that, you know, you, you've, and there's a lot of people going through it. And so, you know, there's some safety in numbers here, but definitely I urge everyone to try their hand at, at rethinking their craft.

AI assessment note: “I would just say that There's a lot of room to be optimistic right now”

Q This is a good segue to maybe the last question. Um, you told me once that a lot of the people that you work with that have kind of made it have a lot of mental health challenges that they didn't expect their life to be the way it is necessarily when they got there. Can you just talk about what you see there in that, in that group?

A Yeah, this is a story that I don't think is told very, very well right now. And partly because it's such a luxury problem. It's almost a little embarrassing to, to discuss it openly as so many people struggle with so many basic needs, you know, going through layoffs, going through all these challenges. I mean, these are real issues, but I think that, you know, what I've noticed is that if you kind of break career as we've done in this podcast between sort of act one, act two, and act three, you know, if act one is sort of learning and being that sort of Builder, and then, you know, maybe building the car, and then act two is building a factory. Act three is like, what's after that? You know, what do you do after that? And I think that act three in the past wasn't as long as it is now. Before, people would, you know, proverbially retire in their sixties when they used to actually physically work. Now, almost all your listeners sit at a desk all day. So They don't need to retire by any means. And health is getting better. You might see folks work until their seventies or eighties. So that means that their careers are, you know, potentially 60 years long. So even if you're 20 years or 30 years in your career, you're only halfway through. So this act three could be a thing. And I don't think we talk about act three enough. And what often happens is, uh, and this is what I've been w…

AI assessment note: “they sort of succeed and then they become lost and they almost goes hand in hand.”