It's Green in Seattle

I have a weekly sync with one of my favorite colleagues and today I mentioned my 1 minute of internet fame - this quora answer! It had been a while and I was pumped to see it how popular it still is:

85,100 views

317 upvotes

A beautiful comment at the end.

On top of that - there's the time I received MY OWN ANSWER as a suggested prep for a PM interview at a large Seattle tech company... pretty awesome to say the least.

You know which trait of a coworker that is one of my favorites?

Humility. Specifically, those who ask the high-level, introductory, seemingly obvious questions.

It makes me feel comfortable to be vulnerable myself and ask similar questions. 

It often clears up confusion and miscommunication, even among those who *thought* they knew the answer.

And it contributes to a culture of respect, belonging, and openness which, at the end of the day, allows us to do better work faster.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever left an interaction with a so-called “ally” feeling worse than when you entered 🙋🏼‍♀️

And yet, these “allies” have a hard time understanding how their actions might have actually made the issue worse by signaling that you are someone that needs to be saved.

Better Allies has an excellent newsletter than I strongly encourage everyone to read - both to speak up for what you need in an ally, as well as to learn how you can be an ally to others. There’s the idea of an imperfect ally, which means you may not always get it 100% right but by trying and learning how to improve you can make more of an impact.

In this particular post, they discuss the difference between being an Ally and a Savior, and how a true Ally removes barriers. Read on!

If you’re a PM for an identity product, someone who sells a product which includes SSO or even starting to create an side project, you might need to know about OAuth. There are tons of resources out there but I wanted to share my journey to enlightenment... about OAuth. I centered on DocuSign Developer Center for obvious reasons and while it’s a great resource, you could also use a product that works for your specific needs.

Getting Started with OAuth

https://developer.okta.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5AMiWqFVFxF1q9Ya1FuZ_Q/featured

Great blog for getting started: https://www.docusign.com/blog/dsdev-please-mr-postman/

Here are the docs for the three code types we use at DS: https://developers.docusign.com/esign-rest-api/guides/authentication

https://support.docusign.com/en/guides/org-admin-guide-identity-providers

General guides:

https://itnext.io/an-oauth-2-0-introduction-for-beginners-6e386b19f7a9

https://blog.oauth.io/choose-oauth2-flow-grant-types-for-app/

https://auth0.com/docs/api-auth/which-oauth-flow-to-use

https://community.apigee.com/questions/44446/oauth-which-grant-type-to-choose.html

https://www.quora.com/Which-companies-have-the-best-developers-website-and-API-documentation

Product Documentation:

https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2

https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/general/guides/authorization-guide/

https://developer.okta.com/docs/concepts/auth-overview/

https://support.google.com/googleapi/answer/6158849?hl=en

https://www.etsy.com/developers/documentation/getting_started/oauth

https://help.shopify.com/en/api/getting-started/authentication

https://stripe.com/docs/connect/oauth-reference

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/authentication-flows-app-scenarios

Hello - former teacher, lifelong nerd here 👋🏼

I used to tell my students in middle school that science was just about asking questions and figuring out how to answer them. The good scientists are the ones that are never satisfied with their current level of knowledge. 

I always loved science and even almost a decade after I stopped teaching, I still am always learning. Sometimes it’s how to be a better friend or partner, sometimes it’s understanding just how the “cloud” works, and sometimes it’s reading stories from all different viewpoints. 

And then sometimes, it’s about growing my craft as a Product Manager. In the past week, I’ve gone to 2 data science workshops and spent a weekend learning about Amazon Web Services. It’s been fun to have those “aha!” moments and spend some time sparking the neurons - I highly recommend it!

It’s always hard to find time to beef up your skills. As a PM, I’m always looking for more ways to learn strategy, data analysis, and tech skills. I ended up spending the long weekend doing a course from A Cloud Guru on AWS certification - which I’m proud to say I completed!

I registered for the exam next week, but based on the practice exams I should do fine. Now I feel even more in tune with the conversations the tech team will have around issues or increasing performance. 

Speech #2 in my Toastmasters journey!

Cross posting from Medium as I try a new platform - always be testing!

Do you remember the first time you consulted someone older and wiser for advice? I don’t either, but I think it must have been sometime in middle school when we had to pick electives to enroll in. Luckily, in those days I have adults whose specific job it was to help me navigate the scary waters of 8th grade life. I am so thankful for school counselors!

Since then, I’ve relied on advisers both formal and informal to help me navigate high school, college, post college job hunting, teaching, and now tech product management. Of course I’ve worked hard to get to where I am, but I would not be here without insight and time shared along the way. Because of that, it’s really important for me to give back when and where I can. Don’t worry! I still ask for plenty of advise as I go along as well, sometimes from the same people I give ideas to as well.

Which brings me to the purpose of this blog post. Even with all the resources the internet has brought us in the years since I was in 8th grade (raise your hand if you can hear the dial up noises in your head as I write this!) the one question I hear the most is “How can I find a mentor?” My answer usually is - they are all around you!

In this day and age, and perhaps specifically in the tech industry, employees don’t stay in their jobs for 30-40 years like in previous generations. This usually means good things for pay and skill increases, but one downside is that it leaves us less time to cultivate a dedicated mentor/mentee relationship with someone in our profession (though kudos if your company provides a formal program for this!) But this also means we have a wider range of resources and people to seek wisdom from. So I tell people - while it’s great if you have a dedicated 1:1 relationship with a personal career consultant, it’s easier to get targeted advice from multiple sources. For example, when I was looking to break into product management I consulted many people, including:

Another PM that had reached the position from a customer support background like myself.

The VP of PM at the company I was currently at.

Engineering friends, to understand what they valued in a Product Partner

Women professionals in my network, even if they didn’t work in tech they had valuable advice on how to promote myself when I was brought up to “not brag.”

The additional benefit of the various points of view was that sometimes the advice would be slightly different, and I felt confident taking the action that felt most natural to me so that I made sure I was authentic through the whole process. 

Due to this distribution of mentor networks, I also often find that most of my relationships with those I get advice from are not strictly mentor/mentee. Often times, I’m able to provide advice about another topic to those who have helped me. I’m lucky to be a part of some wonderful Facebook and Slack groups for Women in Tech/Product where it’s easy to share (and receive) guidance. I would encourage you to seek out the same, and to seek out opportunities for you to share your wisdom no matter how early in your career you are! 

From the archives - a explainer video I created for Buddy while I was there, to explain our offerings.

I’ve been on my fair share of interviews, and it’s stressful to study EVERYTHING so you can try to practice what they are going to ask you - and at the truly awful ones, anticipate how they will try to trick/stump you. The worst part is, it’s not indicative of a real like Product Management situation so it’s hard to justify this method as a great way to suss out awesome PMs.

But recently I was invited to interview for a large company and they asked that I prepare a presentation on a product/feature I had implemented as a PM. This was a great opportunity for me to brag highlight my accomplishments with some structure and allowed me the time to make sure I was able to articulate the multiple facets of the project. Plus, I got to practice it as a speech for my Toastmasters club beforehand!

One joy of job hunting is that you get to remember all your past successes (and sometimes failures) and brag about them. But there’s also a lot of brushing up on how to answer questions, definitions, structure, and so on...

Luckily, there are a ton of resources out there (and let’s be honest, a ton of resource round ups as well!) Here are a few of my favorites:

Podcasts

- Clearly Product Book Club, especially the episodes on Winning With Data.

- The book is amazing, but Gayle’s summary on Cracking the PM Interview in the Product School podcast is killer.

- Many to pick from here, but pro tip - find one from the company you’re interviewing for on the Inside Intercom podcast.

Practice Questions

- https://stellarpeers.com/blog/

- https://productmanagementexercises.com/

How Technical of a PM are you?

- 40 key computer science concepts explained

- Getting to good enough

And of course...

The old school version of a podcast... this book is amazing! Cracking the PM Interview

One trait that a good Product Manager should have is the ability to sell their product to anyone - not just customers, but I’m constantly working to prove that it’s worth Inventory Planning for their time to answer my questions about their workflow, or convincing the Product team why we need to work together to release a set of new features. I thrive in doing that for the products I work on, but I’ve realized I need to be better about documenting the challenges and the wins, even if it’s just for my own reflection. 

But, if you know me, you know that I love helping! So here’s to making it public in hopes that someone else can learn as well. And the title of this post is somewhat tongue in cheek - I hope to share challenges and not just brag about all my accomplishments!