Great product management requires thousands of micro-decisions, not macro strategies
Sachin Kansal · Why Uber’s CPO delivers food on weekends | Sachin Kansal · Jun 1, 2025 · at 42:11
Uber Chief Product Officer Sachin Kansal discusses how early-career product managers should hone their judgment and skills on Lenny's Podcast.
0:00 / 0:19exact quote · 19.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And the other thing that I strongly believe is what makes a great product manager is not the five amazing strategic ideas you had over those three years. It's the thousand micro decisions that you made, not the five macro decisions that you made, but the thousand micro decisions that you made.”
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 Sachin Kansal
Standalone autonomous vehicle fleets face structural underutilization without ride-hailing networks
“So if any of these partners try to operate that service themselves, it can definitely work, but you're going to leave either customers dissatisfied, or you're going to have under utilization.”
Demand for human Uber drivers will continue to increase despite autonomous vehicles
“The need for human drivers on our platform or human earners, I would say, is just going to continue to increase because we're going to have multiple earning opportunities for them over time.”
Product leaders miss visceral user reactions without firsthand product use
“Until I get behind the wheel, or I'm a passenger, or I'm using Uber Eats, what I miss is the visceral reaction that you get when something happens.”
The best software engineers do not need a PRD to start building
“I also think that the best engineers are the ones who actually don't need to start with a PRD. They can have a whiteboarding session with a PM, with a designer. They should have just an equal seat at the table in terms of what we are going to build. And then t…”
Uber CPO Sachin Kansal drives and delivers once or twice a month
“So I actually go out either once or twice a month. I will set aside half a day or a day. And then I'll go out and I'll drive and deliver here in the Bay Area. So I've been doing that for many, many years now. I will say that's probably one of the best parts of…”
Driver experience centers on passenger interactions, not the Uber app itself
“The thing that surprised me the most is we obsess about our app, and our app is the center of our universe. But when a passenger gets in the car, the center of the driver's universe is that interaction with the passenger. That human touch between the driver an…”