Austin VOP 2021 Wrap up: Top 3 Interviews and My 2022 Goals
Austin Voice of Product - One more year of inspiring the next generation of Product leaders
Austin Voice of Product - Highlights and Top 3
I am four and a half years into building our product community and inspiring the next generation of product leaders. With every conversation, I am amazed by the diversity and talent we have in Austin. I am also reminded of what makes Austin different than other tech centers - we are such an open and generous community - willing to hop on a call to help one another and grow better together. 💪
Highlights
I interviewed 17 Austin product leaders (15 in 2021).
My newsletter subscribers grew by 39% (up from 33% in 2021).
The average open rate for the newsletter remains high at 42% (down from 48% in 2021).
I have been on Substack for over a year and loving it!
Top 3 Interviews
We have a veteran product leader - Suhas - with the top interview, followed by two up and coming women product leaders - Ariel and Lauren. In fact, both Ariel and Lauren moved into Director roles this year! It is great to see them take a step forward in their product leadership journey. 👏
Suhas Kelkar - Product Managers Must Understand Human Behavior and Psychology
Ariel Katen - Product Managers Are Not The Smartest In The Room
Lauren Dycus - Product Managers Invest in Others to Develop Themselves
My 2022 Goals
My stint at Solarwinds came to an end in August and I started a new job as Principal Product Manager at Procore. I am four months in and super happy that I was intentional in my job search to work at a more product-centric company.
I set three broad goals at the start of 2021 and feel like I did well on most of them. I made great progress on product discovery skills these past two years - big thanks to Teresa Torres - her courses and book have been amazing.
My 2022 goals build on ones in 2021.
Product discovery using analytics: We use Amplitude for product analytics at Procore and I am excited to dig in and become adept at using quantitative insights on user behavior to complement the qualitative insights I gain from product discovery user interviews.
PM coaching/mentoring: I coached two women new to product leadership last year and had mentoring calls with over two dozen folks in the community. It is my way of making a small dent in helping build a more diverse next generation of product leaders. I grow and learn too when I help others and it reinforced why I want to continue to spend my time doing this in 2022.
Peer coaching: I did a short stint with a product coach last year but it did not click. What did work was finding a couple of peers at the same stage in their career and coaching one another. I highly recommend it. Reach out if you are curious to learn more.
Austin VOP: I plan to publish fewer articles in 2022 - once a month instead of approximately every two or three weeks. I want to balance my time on the goals above and build on the thought leadership I did in 2021 (see below).
Three words to live and work by: Curiosity, Imagination & Humility
2021 Thought Leadership Highlights
How Do You Identify a Product-centric Company: Patterns and Anti-patterns: I wrote an article to crystallize my thinking as I searched for a new role. A lot of this learning came from being in companies that were less product-centric and talking to others about what better looks like.
Demystifying AI - Products That Count Podcast: I had a great conversation with Neha Shah about AI and building AI products based on my experince building a ML platform at SolarWinds.
Collaboration, Curiosity & Customer value - Path Into Product Podcast: Aaron Airmet and Ashley Roberts interviewed me (thanks Trevor Bruner for the intro!) about how I got into Product Management and the three principles I follow - which ended up being the title of the podcast.
Learnings From 8 Years in Product - Propel AMA: I did a Slack AMA for the Propel founder community (thanks Julie Varghese for the intro!) which was summarized into this blog post.
Austin Product Events
January 10 — The Product League
Career Conversations: Alex Boase, Product Lead at Sparrho
More events on the Austin Product Events page.
In The Community
Sarah King was promoted to Chief Operating Officer at Molecula - wowzer! 🚀
Daniel Wu joined Closedloop.ai, a healthcare data science startup in Austin! 🙌
Austin Product Positions
I share product positions posted by product leaders I know. Feel free to reach out to me for an intro or share with others.
Housecall Pro is hiring a Senior Product Manager for their Revenue Enablement team
Sailpoint is hiring a Product Manager for their SaaS management team
Amazon Kindle is hiring a Senior Product Manager for their Kindle Book Delivery team
data.world is looking for a Product Manager for their data catalog and governance platform
Yours in product,
Reza