Practical Product is the most actionable and practical podcast for B2B and SaaS Product Managers. This show is hosted by Jason Evanish, a Product Manager for over 12 years as a Founder, coach, and early-stage Product Leader. Practical Product will talk about building a great strategy, avoiding pitfalls, balancing the many demands of a career in product management, and so much more. We have many awesome guests lined up, some you've heard of in the Product Management space and some lesser-know ...
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Scaling Software Teams is a weekly podcast to help software leaders navigate fast growth without losing the magic that made that growth possible. Every week, we bring you stories of trials, tribulations, and keys to success from high-growth engineering leaders all around the world. We will learn together about how to scale a world-class engineering organization through hard-won stories about hiring developers, structuring teams, scaling collaboration, and managing managers.
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Chief Product Officer of Quick Left and repeat entrepreneur, Joe Stump, talks about the business of coding in this series of podcasts. Twice monthly, we will feature a new podcast with different industry experts that explore not only the challenges that face the technical side of business, but the business side of technology. Each all-star guest shares their own experience on the technical and nontechnical aspects of running a company and imparts tips, tools and advice for the programmer and ...
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JTBD: Jobs to Be Done - What it is, why it matters, how to use it, and a real life example
1:01:56
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Key Links from this episode: Follow along with the questions Jason asked in his post How to do a Jobs to Be Done interview Links from Ryan's search for a mattress: DreamCloud - The mattress Ryan ultimately bought Wirecutter - A review site Ryan referrenced Sleep Foundation 33 Best Mattresses of 2022 on NYT - A site Ryan referenced in his search On …
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ChatGPT and AI: What it means for PMs, and the future of work w/ Lazar Stojkovic, Co-founder of Serbian Entrepreneurs
1:30:47
1:30:47
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Key Links from this episode: ChatGPT - A chat based system by OpenAI that can provide written answers from a text-based prompt GPT-3 API - An API by OpenAI that allows you to bring GPT into your product or service. Replicate - Open source cloud API for running AI models Lore AI Newsletter - A free newsletter discussing business and creative applica…
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The Harsh Truth of Interviewing & Hiring Product Managers w/ Willis Jackson, Founder of Middle Mile and former 1st PM at Grove Collaborative
1:32:24
1:32:24
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Unfortunately, the product management interview process at most companies is poor. Navigating the interview process, or creating a good one at your company is a tall task. In this wide-ranging interview we cover both perspectives to help you think about both the perspective of the interviewer and the interviewee. For the interviewer: If you know yo…
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How to make Product Specs that Your Teammates and Executives will Actually Want to Read (aka - The Product Thesis)
35:20
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I learned how to make a great product spec from long-time Silicon Valley product leader Josh Elman. He calls it the "Product Thesis" and that's what we cover today. Here's a breakdown of the sections I talk about for The Product Thesis: 1. Why are we working on this next? 2. When and how do people use this feature? (aka - what are the use cases?) 3…
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How Free Tools can Supercharge the Growth of Your Business w/ Michael Novotny of Product & Build Co
1:17:46
1:17:46
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Today we talked about how building free tools (aka - side projects) for your company can help drive major growth. Building these tools helps you a few ways: People who use your free tool may directly sign up for your paid product when they see you made the free tool. People using your free tool may give you their email address, which you can market…
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Keys to Succeeding as a Remote Product Leader w/ Valentina Thörner, Product Advisory at Klaus
1:35:15
1:35:15
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Books and other helpful links from today's episode: Many books and great blog posts were mentioned in this episode. Here's a rundown of the books: Asking good questions and winning negotiations: Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff & Mark Johnson Learn to work with others better with: The 4 Tendencies - Ana…
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Consequences of AI, Understanding our Bundling Phase, & Self-Deprecation in Product Managers
34:32
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This episode is a collection of my thoughts on some trending topics I am seeing in the world of Tech and Product Management. 1. We are in a Bundling Phase: How can we as Product Managers bundle our offerings for consumers who are concerned about economic instability? We need to establish our products as absolute must have's in the eyes of our custo…
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The Curse of the 1st PM - Part 2: The PM View w/ Hostos Monegro, 4-time 1st PM
57:02
57:02
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More on Hostos: Hostos on LinkedIn Learn about The Waterline Principle More on Jason Evanish: Get more product advice on Jason's blog Follow Jason on Twitter Get coaching from Jason or take his course Topics: (0:33) - Introducing Hostos (2:14) - What is it like being a First-PM the 4th time around? (3:19) - What were you looking out for when taking…
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The Curse of the 1st PM - Part 1: The Company View w/ Pulkit Agrawal, Co-Founder of Chameleon
54:19
54:19
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Why do so many 1st PMs end up not working out? What can we learn from these situations, where a founder hires a PM and then things don't work out? In our first of a 2 part series, we interview a founder who knew about the curse of the 1st PM and it still didn't work out. Pulkit Agrawal, co-founder of Chameleon, candidly reflects on lessons learned …
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Jason Cohen - Founder at WPEngine, SmartBear & IT WatchDogs - Breaking down the 4 PM Roles
54:57
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Jason Cohen is a multiple-time founder and Product Leader who joins us as the very first guest on Practical Product to break down his article: The Impossible Product Manager, a.k.a. the "Great" Product Manager. We discuss the 4 key areas of responsibility for a Product Manager, how to align your PM's as a leader, finding the right company to work f…
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Welcome to Practical Product w/ Jason Evanish
7:49
7:49
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Practical Product is the most actionable and practical podcast for B2B and SaaS Product Managers. This show is hosted by Jason Evanish, a Product Manager for over 12 years as a Founder, coach, and early-stage Product Leader. Practical Product will talk about building a great strategy, avoiding pitfalls, balancing the many demands of a career in pro…
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Achieving Gender Parity with Active Allyship with Denise Yu
45:29
45:29
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Denise is a Senior Engineer at GitHub, a prolific speaker, as well as an author and illustrator. In this episode, we dive deep into the role that gender plays in inclusion. What solutions can narrow the gap between men and women on engineering teams? Listen in as Wes and Denise break it down. Wes’ Takeaways: Gendered language matters We have a resp…
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Kevin Stewart is an engineering leader who has worked across multiple company stages such as Fastly, Heptio, Nodesource, and Adobe. Today, he is the VP of Engineering at Harvest. In this episode, we talk about the invisible burden that code-switching puts on underrepresented groups. How can we build D&I initiatives that actually lead to more divers…
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Firing and Getting Fired with Zach Holman
30:38
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Zach Holman was employee number 9 at Github. He was one of their earliest engineers, and he saw the team expand to over 250 employees. Years later, he was fired from his role and has since gone on to start his own companies and advise other startups. In this episode, we talk about a really hard subject… firing and getting fired. We also cover why y…
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Developing Leaders on a Team with Jill Wetzler
48:40
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How do you lead the leaders on your team? Today’s guest has been developing leaders for years, and she’s sharing her insights on this episode of Scaling Software Teams. Jill Wetzler is the Head of Engineering at Pilot. Before her current role, she scaled Lyft’s Infrastructure Engineering organization from a handful of people to over 100 infra engin…
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How do you know if your one-on-ones are effective? In this episode, we’re diving deep into one-on-ones with our guest, Jason Evanish. Jason Evanish is the founder and CEO of GetLighthouse, a company that’s focused on helping develop great leaders by enabling better one-on-ones. Jason is passionate about helping teams build strong relationships, and…
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Cultivating a Highly Performant Remote Engineering Team with Jeremy Wight
26:54
26:54
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These are challenging times, especially for engineering leaders. How do you “engineer” the trust in a distributed team that would occur normally in a localized workforce? Today’s guest is here to show you how. Jeremy Wight is the VP of Product and Engineering at Base. Base raised $2.6M in 2019 to build the first software platform that’s exclusively…
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Becoming A Resilient Manager with Lara Hogan
39:04
39:04
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A resilient manager is the foundation of every successful team. How do you become a more resilient manager? Today’s guest is here to show you how. Lara Hogan is the co-founder of Wherewithall, the former VP of Engineering at Kickstarter, and the former Engineering Director at Etsy. She’s also the author of two books: Resilient Management and Demyst…
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Wes Winham | Scaling Software: What to Expect in Season 2
5:41
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Scaling Software Teams is back for Season 2! Last season we heard stories of triumph and failure from startup and scale-up leaders around the world. For Season 2, we want to do something different – we want to give you an engineering leadership survival guide so you can thrive in the midst of challenging times. This season, we’ll equip you with res…
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Starting Up Your Second Office, With Brian Delahunty
52:26
52:26
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Brian Delahunty is the Head of Reliability at Stripe, and was the Site Lead who helped them open and hire for their Seattle office. Throughout this process, he talked to leaders at over a dozen companies who led an HQ2 effort, and learned what worked and what didn’t. Today, he’s sharing those lessons with us. In this episode, we talk about how he u…
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Liam Martin is the CoFounder of staff.com and timedoctor.com. Combined, they have 40+ employees in 9 different countries and specialize in remote long term employee management. Liam also runs the Running Remote conference, which is the world’s largest remote conference specifically designed for building remote teams. In this episode, we talk about …
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On Startups and Escape Rooms, with Gregory Koberger
39:41
39:41
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Gregory Koberger is the founder of ReadMe, a company that helps dev teams create and manage documentation and monitor APIs. He founded ReadMe after working at several startups in Silicon Valley, including Mozilla, and finding himself writing documentation for all of them. In this episode, we talk about how he uses Challenge Coins to build community…
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Launching a Coding School Without Writing a Single Line of Code, with Ariel Camus
47:20
47:20
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Ariel Camus is the Founder and CEO at Microverse, a YC-backed distributed school for software engineers. They are available anywhere in the world, and they don’t charge students anything until they get hired. In this episode, we talk about why remote workers are so much better at documentation than co-located workers, the practices that help hiring…
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The Three Questions To Ask Every New Manager, Part Two With Doug Gaff
37:12
37:12
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This week, we bring you part two of our conversation with Doug Gaff. Doug is the VP of Engineering at Zapier, the software solution that helps your other software work together more effectively. As the leader of an organization with over 100 engineers, he has learned a lot about effective management and leadership. In this episode, we talk about Do…
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How Zapier Scales Past 100 Engineers, Part One With Doug Gaff
31:36
31:36
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Doug Gaff is the VP of Engineering at Zapier, the software solution that helps your other software work together more effectively. His team recently crossed the 100 engineer threshold and they’re currently going through some exciting transitions as an organization. Their current inflection point has them moving from a functional focus to a vertical…
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Building a World-Class Onboarding Process For Your Software Engineering Team
18:00
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This is the final week of our community questions series, and we saved the best for last. We're not talking about hiring...we're talking about what comes next. How can we build a world-class onboarding process that keeps our new teammates engaged from day number one? In this episode, we chat with folks from large companies who have learned a lot ab…
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What Do The Best Technical Assessments Have In Common?
21:45
21:45
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The most common questions we get are about technical assessments. It's an area of concern for a lot of engineering leaders. Some believe their technical assessment is costing them great-fit candidates. Others believe they're not getting good enough information from their technical screening process. In this episode, we dive deep into actionable ins…
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How Can I Speed Up My Hiring Process Without Sacrificing End Results?
15:21
15:21
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There's a tension in hiring, especially with software developers. If I hire too slow, candidates withdraw. If I hire too fast, I may hire the wrong person. In this episode, we talk to engineering leaders who have threaded that needle to figure out what makes their process work. We'll discover the simple process changes that had the biggest impact o…
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Hunting Hidden Gems - Tricks to Find Great-fit Developers That Other Hiring Managers Miss
34:32
34:32
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Some hiring managers are elite at finding diamonds in the rough. In this episode, we're going to learn why. This week, we talked to hiring managers across the country to learn what they do differently in their hiring process to find great-fit engineers that other leaders miss. We'll also find actionable steps you can take today to find more hidden …
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Hiring Faster By Identifying Our Best-Performing Candidate Sources
17:06
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On this week's episode, we're talking about hiring. More specifically, how do we find the candidate sources that are bringing us the best candidates? If our methodology is flawed here, it could bias our entire hiring process, leading to worse outcomes and more homogeneous teams. In this episode, we're learning the best practices from hiring manager…
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What Changes Our Engineering Team Should Expect After a Major Round of Funding
20:43
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This week, we're talking about the scary side of a really exciting day...the day our startup raises a major round of funding. Unfortunately, more money can mean more problems. The act of raising Venture Capital looks less like receiving a cardboard check from Publisher's Clearing House and more like hiring a new boss. In this episode, we talk to en…
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Answering Your Best Questions With Engineering Leaders Across The World
2:28
2:28
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Usually, we feature interviews with engineering leaders who have experienced high-growth. For the next few weeks, we're changing things up a bit. Our team has talked to hundreds of engineering, HR, and recruiting leaders in the past year. As a result, we’ve heard a lot of the same questions over and over again. We wanted to pose those questions to …
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Changing Your Hiring Process After a Big Round of Funding, with Ryan Carroll
34:33
34:33
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Ryan Carroll is the VP of Engineering at Zylo, a SaaS company that helps you manage your SaaS spend. Last year, Zylo raised a $9M Series A round of funding, and they’ve been on a high-growth path ever since. Ryan has already hired 20 engineers to-date, and has plan of hiring ten more in the next year. In this episode, we discuss why the best teams …
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Building Companies That Are Both Good & Valuable, with David Odmark
37:50
37:50
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David Odmark is the Co-Founder and CTO of Greenlight Guru, a quality management software platform designed for medical devices companies that has undergone a ton of growth in the past year. Today, David oversees an engineering team of about 20, and is planning on ramping up hiring in the year to come. In this episode, we discuss the difference betw…
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Are All Women Engineers Like You?, with Rukmini Reddy
36:04
36:04
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Rukmini Reddy is the VP of Engineering at Abstract, a design management system that centralizes design decisions, feedback, Sketch files, and specs for your team. It’s kind of like Github for design. Abstract has raised over $50M in VC dollars since their founding in 2015. Today, Rukmini oversees their engineering team of about 45, and will be expa…
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Using Checklists For Onboarding Success, with Radoslav Stankov
34:53
34:53
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Radoslav Stankov is the Head of Engineering at Product Hunt. He actually took over the post from our last guest, Andreas Klinger, and Andreas wanted us to follow up with Rado to learn about some of the changes he’s made. In this episode, we dive into the impact that “single-player mode” has on remote work and how Rado uses checklists and clear expe…
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Hiring and Managing World-Class Remote Teams, with Andreas Klinger
47:07
47:07
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Andreas Klinger is the Head of Remote at AngelList, the largest remote hiring job board in the world. After building multiple remote teams at companies like CoinList and Product Hunt, Andreas has become one of the preeminent voices in the remote work movement. In this episode, we discuss how Andreas uses metrics for de-risking instead of politics a…
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Achieving Operational Excellence Through Small Teams, with Melissa Leffler
39:49
39:49
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Melissa Leffler is the VP of Engineering at Drift, a chat software and conversational marketing platform based out of Boston that has grown a ton over the past few years. In the past 5 years, they’ve raised $107M in funding. They have 75 developer on staff and are showing no signs of slowing down in the next few years. In this episode, we discuss h…
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Solving Your Elegant Puzzles, Part 2 with Will Larson
25:29
25:29
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Will Larson is the author of my new favorite engineering management book, An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management, and this week, we’re answering listener questions about real-life situations with him. Will has been an engineering leader and software engineer at technology companies of many shapes and sizes including Digg, Uber, and St…
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