Fortunately, most tech companies have accepted that you don’t need to make hiring decisions based on Ivy League degrees or a history of working at FAANG. But the dismissal of these basics can fool us into believing that we’ve conquered the credential — we no longer apply prestige-related bias at…

Since stumbling into Silicon Valley, “Day 1, User 1” has been on my bucket list. If you’ve worked at a late-stage startup, you know that a few foundational decisions have an outsized influence on the trajectory of the company. I have always been curious about what those decisions feel like…

Early in my career, I listed questions to ask potential employers — how is the product team structured? What features or capabilities drive the most impact to key metrics? How are decisions made? The diplomatic answers were never satisfying. I was reaching for an explanation of product team culture that…

No all-team virtual happy hours necessary. — My product manager peers who (remotely) started new jobs during COVID-19 seem to agree: the biggest challenge is building relationships. On the surface I didn’t find this surprising — it’s intuitive that no live face-time, fewer casual encounters at lunch or between meetings would make it more difficult for colleagues…

Insights from building behavior change products — It’s January, and my social media streams are full of meal prep ads — losing weight (one form of behavior change) is top of all our minds again. I’ve written before about building products designed to promote behavior change. The more users I’ve interviewed, experiments I’ve run, and products I’ve…

Becoming a people manager, I found the same problem I originally set out to solve with Path to Product. The typical advice is generic — rarely based on real, specific scenarios, much less scenarios in your discipline. (Yes, it’s important to build trust and communicate… now what?) I have found…

Is your product a nail? — Silicon Valley loves to mock itself. We live for the latest Halting Problem writeup or Sara Cooper tweet. Every shiny new technology — chatbots, blockchain, AR/VR — gets its moment in the spotlight before the (limited) use cases are revealed… and it fades into obscurity again, appearing only in satire…

Can we do more to help you grow as a product manager? Let us know in our 2-minute readers survey. Your feedback will directly inform our next Path to Product articles, events, and more! Thanks again, Emma and Eliza (Path to Product editors)

Path to Product Readers, We are so glad you love our product management articles on Medium. Since 2017, we’ve grown to over 34,000 followers! We’re ready to grow this community and provide even more value for you on your product management journey. Help us understand how we can help by…