New notes from Aakash Gupta, Gergely Orosz, Reid DeRamus, Aakash Gupta, Aakash Gupta, and Aakash Gupta

Notes for Friday, April 5

͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­

Friday, April 5 ∙ Open in app Recent notes from people you follow on Substack Aakash Gupta 2d What are the (subtle) signs you (might) work in a feature factory? Sometimes, it’s dead-clear that you’re in a feature factory. That's when you’re: Handed solutions, not problems Delivery-focused, with very little discovery work HiPPO’s (highest paid person’s opinion) drive the roadmap But sometimes, you can sign up for an empowered environment. And then, 9 months later... You wake up and find yourself in a covert… 38 3 3 Gergely Orosz 2d What are GenZ software engineers like at the workplace? Based on input from more than 60 “older” tech professionals, three interesting observations: #1: Higher expectations for salary, promotions and benefits Some respondents say younger colleagues don’t appear to offer as much in return, such as shouldering higher expectations, or taking on extra responsibilities. To be fair, this sounds like fairly typical… 38 6 3 Reid DeRamus 17h Some publications are starting to make meaningful revenue from sponsorships. These are often directly-sold, tailored sponsorship products, not programmatic ads from Google or other ad networks. We wrote about the basics of of these types of sponsorships and some of the tradeoffs that come with them. Directly-sold, tailored sponsorship are much more lucrative than relying on ad platforms or sponsors looking for cheap cost-per-click ads. BUT, there’s a catch: they require a lot…” — Reid DeRamus 2 Aakash Gupta 3d "I'm in a feature factory. It sucks and I want to quit." Before you do that… Realize that this is the fate of many a PM. You're not alone. And many have parlayed the experience into promotions and better jobs down the line. Here's how they do it: 1: Surrender to the Factory At first: accept your fate, instead of trying to transform Recognize that the empowered world has problems too The exception is GPM+, in which… 20 1 Aakash Gupta 6d Remember the days of unlimited music skips on Spotify's free tier? It was a golden age for music lovers. → But, for Spotify, there was less gold than they hoped. → So in 2014, Spotify limited skips on the free tier to six per hour. The headlines were: "Spotify’s free tier just got worse" "I’m quitting Spotify" But 6 months later, Spotify saw a 25% increase in paid subscribers. (That's huge!) And, the cherry on top… 37 1 3 Aakash Gupta 7d All 30 companies I researched ask PM case questions—from Google to OLA. (Save this post to be ready for your next PM interview.) Here's what they're most likely to ask: 1: Product Execution: 29% Debugging: Discord comments are down 15% in the last week. What happened? Goals/ Metrics: How would you measure success for X Premium? Root Cause Analysis: New Notion Docs created are down 5%. How would you identify the root… 39 3 1 See what else you missed © 2024 Substack Inc. 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe 678