Top Hacks from a PM Behind Two of Tech's Hottest Products

http://firstround.com/article/Top-Hacks-from-a-PM-Behind-Two-of-Techs-Hottest-Products

by ca98am79 • 13 years ago

135 41 13 years ago

mdkess2• 13 years ago

"Compliments should always go to the team. Credit should be handed out freely and generously. Success belongs to the team but failures belong to you."

This is a distinguishing trait of every great manager that I've worked with.

yesimahuman• 13 years ago

It's not always so simple. Taking blame of others' mistakes can come across like regret for hiring or trusting that person. Sometimes part of giving people responsibility is letting them deal with the mistakes they make.

joshyeager• 13 years ago

In this framework, you don't take the blame for others' mistakes. You take the blame for your team's mistakes, and take responsibility for fixing them. You explicitly do not place blame on the person who actually made the mistake, nor do you imply that you should not have hired or trusted them.

Obviously, all this assumes that it actually was a valid mistake. In the rare case where the failure was caused by gross negligence or intentional misconduct, then you should take responsibility for hiring and trusting them, and then you should fire them.

mdkess2• 13 years ago

Within the team, I think that is entirely appropriate. People thrive on, and should be given responsibility. Individuals should be rewarded or disciplined appropriately. That is part of the manager's job.

Outside of the team, ultimately the manager is responsible for delivering. That is their job, and with a good manager, the buck stops at them - without exception. If they don't deliver, it is their failure - even if that failure is a result of their reports failing to deliver, or unrealistic requirements from their superiors. Perhaps the appropriate internal action for that failure is to discipline their reports, but ultimately they are the captain of their ship, and should be the first one on and the last one off.

incision• 13 years ago

"This is a distinguishing trait of every great manager that I've worked with."

If it's genuine, or at least convincing, I would agree.

I've witnessed a few attempts at this which clearly didn't meet that criteria and it was nearly the most off-putting managerial song and dance I've ever witnessed.

I get the impression there's a certain group of people who read lists like these online or in a book somewhere and go about mimicking them without understanding the underlying prerequisites.

Eating the failure and giving the success necessarily requires a total understanding of the actual successes and failures.

Without that, the selfless routine is doing everyone a disservice by hiding the actual problems and quashing further discussion that might reveal them.

shrikant• 13 years ago

I get the impression there's a certain group of people who read lists like these online or in a book somewhere and go about mimicking them without understanding the underlying prerequisites.

As a somewhat of an aside, I notice this disturbing tendency a lot in rookie salespeople. One of the bits of sales advice everyone appears to have read in some list somewhere is something about mirroring and first names.

It would creep me out (and trip the "douchebag alert!" signal) every time I spoke to a salesperson who would poorly imitate my mannerisms and keep jamming in my first name between their words.

donaq• 13 years ago

It depends on the execution, I think. http://thecodelesscode.com/case/106

lazyant• 13 years ago

This is the standard for (good) coaches too regarding teams winning or losing.

jansen• 13 years ago

Todd is awesome, really glad to have him as an investor!

sailfast• 13 years ago

These are some great points and I would say they apply to general management as much as they do to technology and product management. Sounds like a great person to work with - trust, empathy, and transparency tend to make everything smoother and more productive.

brianpgordon• 13 years ago

Larry suggested we go way beyond this. His idea was to ‘just OCR’ the entire computer screen continuously so that you could easily search and find anything you had ever seen on your computer.

This guy founded Google? I wish I could have seen the horrified look on the engineers' faces when they heard this idea.

nostrademons2• 13 years ago

Larry is legendary for absolutely crazy ideas. One of his other ones was to remove all the buttons from the Google home page:

http://skrubu.net/2009/10/07/the-day-google-was-blank/

I think this goes to show that the secret to having better ideas is to have more ideas, and nobody cares about the million that suck, they care about the one that makes you a million.

lifeisstillgood3• 13 years ago

but you cannot work on a million ideas - you have to pick the few that are actually good. Having a million ideas clearly makes it more likely you have the Big One, but I am interested in the mental process in picking and in committing.

or has Mr Page done a ridiculous amount of crazy that will never work things?

ArbitraryLimits• 13 years ago

Also writing "Google" on the moon with a laser.

seiji• 13 years ago

It's not that crazy of an idea. He's not talking about holding up a scanner to your screen, scanning it, then OCR'ing a big tiff. He's probably talking about something that takes screen shots every few seconds, OCR's that, then indexes the contents based on what's on your screen, your current URLs, etc.

"Computer, search for every time I saw the words 'crazy idea' in the past six months and include how my workspace looked at each occurrence."

gojomo2• 13 years ago

I'd go beyond "not that crazy" to say this idea is inevitable once compute power and storage become cheap enough.

nl2• 13 years ago

It's the opposite of a stupid idea.

The one problem with it is that it isn't ambitious enough - it only is helpful with remembering stuff you saw on your computer screen.

If only there was a way to OCR everything you saw, index it all and allow you to search for it again in the future.

Imagine if I could wear some glasses or something, and then they had an app that could do OCR or everything I saw! That would accomplish the "OCR the screen" thing, but expand the scope to things off the computer screen too!

Oh. Wait. http://www.google.com/glass/start/

Damn Larry Page.

001sky• 13 years ago

If only I had a map at 1:1 scale...!

Never get lost =s

ojbyrne2• 13 years ago

The words "hack" and "hackers" are rapidly becoming meaningless marketing buzzwords.

vezzy-fnord• 13 years ago

Not really. They're just very misunderstood words and have been used to refer to contradictory concepts.

ojbyrne2• 13 years ago

That's ancient history. We now have:

Typing Hackers (people who type fast): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6659161

Growth Hackers (Marketers): http://growthhackersconference.com/

and with this story, Project Management Hackers (which is a pretty good oxymoron).

I'm sure there's plenty more instances of it being used as a meaningless buzzword.

joshdance• 13 years ago

Love the article, but I don't think the tactics and suggests are hacks?

lifeisstillgood3• 13 years ago

this sounds like the epitome of a balanced hard working manager / team leader. It's just that it is a lot of work - and so much of it is based around keeping everyone onside, talking and not taking their ball home with them.

but am I getting too old ? I prefer people learning to take no for an answer and still knuckling down to work, knowing there will be a yes around the corner. this gets more often and so easier the faster you go.

tiptoeing round Larry Page is clearly good for your career and future prospects, but few of us will work in an office with such personal power differentials. most bosses of us are the same peons as we are - so honesty should have little opportunity cost.

in short, conflict well handled is a good thing.

andyl• 13 years ago

I'm not impressed - this is leadership 101.

jasonshen• 13 years ago

And yet it is rarely done. So we need to keep advocating for it.

gabemart• 13 years ago

This is a very small niggle, but I've noticed at least one other website that invites me to tweet select quotes from the article. I find this invitation obnoxious and smug. It suggests (incorrectly, I'm sure) that the author is a little too pleased with their own profundity.

polskibus• 13 years ago

I read that as project manager not product. I'm glad it turned out not to be about project management, tracking people, managing budget and schedule.

exo_duz• 13 years ago

This article is really good and it gives a lot of information about how Todd Jackson is a good PM. A lot of what is written can be used in one's own daily experience as a PM and startup owner.

Looking forward to using some of the points mentioned to work. :)

jasonwatkinspdx• 13 years ago

This is also the logic behind ‘Eating Your Own Dogfood’ as Google has monikered it.

facepalm

How has tech media gotten so myopic to any history or context outside it? Hell, even within tech Microsoft and Oracle have used that phrase for decades before google was a big deal.

poissonpie• 13 years ago

Don't know why but I read "be a shit umbrella..." as "don't be a good umbrella" and really had to do a double take on that sentence before I realised what he actually meant.

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