Opinion
Shah: Most Microsoft employees were 'wildly unproductive' post-Yammer acquisition
“Lo and behold, I was at the world's largest productivity company at Microsoft. And most people there, in my opinion, were wildly unproductive and I wasn't shipping a lot.”
Opinion
Shah: Web3 is in the strongest position it has ever been in
“I genuinely believe web three is in the strongest position that it's ever been in.”
Insight
Shah: Visible progress is the only way to maintain team morale
“So in my opinion, I think that the only way to maintain morale is to make progress. I think that no speech, no sort of extrinsic You know motivators, like we're gonna give everybody some free crypto to keep them motivated about it or something like that really…”
Insight
Shah: Amazon PMs cannot divorce product from business and revenue growth
“Amazon was a place where you couldn't divorce business and product. You couldn't be a product manager without thinking about revenue growth, without thinking about go to market.”
Insight
Shah: Amazon works backwards from launch; Airbnb works backwards from quality
“I would almost frame it as working backwards from sort of like a moment in time or a launch, like you said with Amazon versus working backwards from a quality standard in some sense of an 11 star experience.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shah: David Sacks personally ran Yammer product reviews as CEO
“David Sachs would do this too. He actually ran the product reviews. It was the CEO of the company doing product reviews, not some Kind of middle tier of director of product who was just running them. They were force involved and there were things to delegate a…”
Insight
Shah: PMs should reframe executive pushback into shared goal alignment
“Purely based on the word that has come to label a behavior that alternatively could be about, how do I shift the direction on something? Or how do I help the business actually succeed when I disagree with somebody about something? And that's a very different m…”
Insight
Shah: Professionals are intentional on micro moves but miss macro goals
“A lot of people
Are very intentional in the micro. They think about their next job, their next title, how much salary and equity there is. And in good ways too, they think about the team that they're going to work on next with, but they're very unintentional a…”
Insight
Shah: People have false precision about career moves based on ten hours
“I think we all have a lot of false precision about what we think a given career move is gonna lead to or what it's gonna be like. And we forget that, you know, a lot of career decisions are made out of maybe 10 hours cumulatively, like talking to a team and ge…”
Insight
Shah: Four-to-seven-year employees provide irreplaceable institutional knowledge
“I think that some of the absolute sort of like gems, if you will, in Silicon Valley and tech are the teammates that are willing to stay around for four or five, six, seven years, right? And they have institutional knowledge that nobody has. They have a positiv…”
Opinion
Shah: Polygon, Solana, and MoonPay offer exciting Web3 PM opportunities
“I would suggest Polygon, Salon, or Moonpay. I know it's three, but I want to give some breath in the Web three space that might be exciting to people.”
Assertion Supported
Shah: Uniswap, Gemini, and OpenSea are hiring Big Tech product managers
“Specifically Uniswap just made a big hire out of Meta. I saw that Gemini also did the same. We're seeing OpenSea hire a lot of talent along these lines too, even through the ups and downs that Their business has seen. So, and at all levels, whether it's kind o…”
Assertion Supported
Shah: Uniswap beat Coinbase's daily volume with only 100 employees
“Uniswap has done more daily volume on certain days than Coinbase. And Uniswap is about a hundred people versus 5000 plus at Coinbase, right?”
Assertion Partly supported
Shah: Amazon gives new employees business writing classes and tip cards
“Every employee goes through actually like a business writing class after they started Amazon, they give you a little card with five tips that you're supposed to keep on your desk about Concision and specificity in the words you use.”
Insight
Shah: Cutting words from documents forces clarity and intentional trade-offs
“I've found that really useful in emails I write or documents I write to this day is just going over because not because you're saving ink by cutting words, but because it forces clarity of thought. Fewer words means every word is, you know, 10 pounds in weight…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shah: Alchemy founders meet with every job candidate
“The founders still meet with every candidate.”
