Yien: Frontloading role negatives at offer stage prevents six-month attrition
Kevin Yien · Unorthodox PM tips: Automating user insights, unselling candidates, decision logs, more | Kevin Yien · Aug 18, 2024 · at 49:49
Kevin Yien, product leader at Stripe and formerly Square, explains his 'unsell email' strategy for avoiding mismatched hires at startups.
0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.1s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And if you can tell them that up front and they can read that whole email and still be equally excited to join, you find yourself any plus higher. But if they read that and they're like, I don't know anymore, it's way better to say, great, this is not a good fit. Let's go our separate ways. Then have them leave after six months.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Kevin Yien
Yien: Aspiring PMs Should Start in Engineering, Design, or Sales
“And when you're just getting started with a new product, the people that should be doing that are the people who are building it, right? That's an engineer. That's a designer. That's a salesperson or a support person. They're the front line of the smallest loo…”
Yien: Developer and designer-focused companies do not need dedicated product managers
“The broader point is that truly not every team needs a product manager, but the activities, the outcome that one would drive needs to get done no matter what. And in some cases, this is why the prototypical companies that everyone references when they say they…”
Yien: PMs who cannot sell their product should not build it
“And I'm working backwards from the belief that if you can't sell or support your own product, I don't trust you to build the product.”
Kevin Yien: Reading PRDs and support articles will not improve PM writing
“I explicitly do not mean read a bunch of other PM artifacts. Like you're not gonna become a better writer by reading PRDs or, you know, whatever it is. Or support articles. It needs to be Writing that compels”
Yien: Most product teams underinvest in design capacity
“Most people I would say under invest in design point blank. And when you get to a certain scale, maybe things change, but like truly, I don't think most teams have experienced what it feels like to have a really high design ratio and what that actually does to…”
Yien: Great products require overlapping roles rather than strict swim lanes
“I think it is tempting when we think about engineering product and design to draw these really clear swim lanes and say, you do X, I do Y, don't tread on, you know, my area, but you need these murky overlaps in order to build something really good.”