Jerry Chong

I wrote Hiring Product Managers to show that hiring can be an agent of change. We need to stop thinking of hiring as simply 'ticking a box' - approaching hiring in a meaningful way can have a great impact on our personal growth, team dynamics & the shaping of our organisational culture. Get your copy!

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Product Rockstars in tech....It's not about strategy. It's not about frameworks. To play big...it's about the soft skills. Yep....your EQ is critical to level up and lead. You need to master the human side of work.  Treating people with respect Understanding how to communicate Executive presence Managing politics (yep...,I said it) Treating people as human beings To level up in the world of tech....it's about the human game. #productmanagement #techleaders #womenintech Are you ready to level up into leadership? Are you ready to learn how to play the human game? Respond with 'yes' and I'll send you my E-Book on The Next Generation of Leadership in Product

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I often find myself trying to communicate how the depth, breadth and nuance of thoughtful, contextualized product design can create systemic ripples across the landscape of society, culture, and economy. The principle of larger effects and systems seems rather timely given the impacts and implications of the work we find ourselves in the weeds. What might mindful, thoughtful innovation look like? If we are disruptive, working from a place of care and positive intent, are we still able to see the larger picture and the possible ripples from decisions? There is a power differential in recognizing the effects on systems. We often hear things like “technology is not neutral” or “the victors write the history”. This may mean there are far-reaching implications of decisions and systemic impacts without the realization of unintended consequences. If we are seeking to consider equity within a product we must increase our awareness and research, design, develop and execute from a space of curiosity without weaponizing approaches based on moral codes, personal beliefs and misaligned values. What does “for good” look like in practice, and to whom is it good for? We are often reliant on dominant narratives and frame things as edge cases. Those on the “edges” are often perceived as more work than necessary, less important, or statistically insignificant. This leads whole human identities to be framed as outliers.   These focused threads demonstrate how a product can drive change by reshaping perceptions and practices at both individual behaviours, choices, industry standards and cultural narratives. It’s about initiating change that can be sustained, leading to a reimagining of systems that have gone unchallenged. This guides us to examine the influence on social structures, economies, and ethical frameworks. A decolonization perspective asks us to critically examine how historical contexts have shaped products. Dismantling the inequities that are embedded within current systems, our journey begins in a world saturated with products designed without the richness of human difference in mind. The one-size-fits-all mentality prevails. Systems innovation would mean designing products that do not perpetuate colonial legacies but instead respect and uplift local knowledge, traditions, and needs. Who benefits from these innovations? Are these technologies accessible to all, or do they widen the digital divide? Do these innovations respect locality, or data sovereignty? Product equity must address global complexities, considering how a product fits into various cultural contexts and the impact on different communities. It's not just about doing no harm but actively doing good. Understanding balance—the need for steady iteration and the courage for radical change. We can build currents strong enough to redefine systems, rewrite narratives, and reshape these ecosystems. #ProductEquity #PrinciplesOfEquity #SystemsInnovation #SystemsThinking #Decolonization

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The perfect idea doesn't exist. No idea turns out exactly how you expect it to when it confronts reality. As Naval shares, quality products come out of confronting reality 100x by putting something in the hands of customers and continually tinkering with it. 📌 I shared 9 more tips to elevate product quality here: https://lnkd.in/gRzMGmNE

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"What is the best way to network to help advance my career in product management?" Networking is a foundational skill every PM needs for long-term success. Today, I share some of my thoughts around the subject. If you have a question about product management, shoot me a DM. ✉️ I'm here to help! #productmanagement #productmanagers #careeradvice #askaquestion #askmeanything

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It's been a month since Write the Docs, and I can't stop thinking about this illuminating talk. As tech writers, we all intuitively know that organized, clear, and accurate docs are essential to a successful product but I loved seeing the data to support this! #writethedocs #technicalwriting

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As a product leader, navigating change is inevitable, especially in these uncertain times. That's why I am offering 1:1 coaching that will equip you with the resilience and adaptability needed to lead through uncertainty and drive positive outcomes. As product people, we can't always know what lurks behind each corner, but as leaders, we can prepare and build on our skills to face any challenges. My coaching methodology is high-touch, with generous ongoing support between sessions. If you're interested, DM me and tell me about yourself and what brings you to coaching. We’ll find a time to schedule an introductory call and go from there. I've also added a link to find out more in the comments.

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The more senior you are, the less likely you are to attend professional events. So where do senior tech professionals find community? I was sad to learn about #IxDA's shutdown. IxDA was a big part of my professional identity as a junior- to mid-level UX researcher. At the same time, it’s also been 8 years since I attended an Interaction-style conference, and nearly a decade since I attended an official IxDA event. There’s been a lot of talk lately about how #UX as a discipline has changed. But I’ve found myself thinking more about professional community, and how the needs of senior practitioners are so different from when we are earlier in our career. Way back in 2011 and 2012, Vitorio Miliano and I collaborated on large-scale surveys of the Austin UX community, and we noticed this trend: the more senior you are, the less likely you are to attend professional events. This is not because senior practitioners don’t need community, but because the kind of community you need is so much harder to get. When I was a junior researcher, IxDA gave me two things I needed: 🤝 Professional connections 📈 New professional skills Senior professionals need these things too, but as you become more experienced, the bar gets higher: 🤝 You have less time and more people wanting it, so it’s more important for each new connection to be meaningful. 📈 When you’ve been working in industry for years, it gets harder to find skills training at your level (or that is even relevant when you’re no longer executing, but directing). It’s an interesting coincidence, then, that IxDA is folding at a time when the original audience it served in 2005 is now in senior roles, with needs that are much harder to address. But the need for professional community is still there; senior professionals just have to address it in different ways. I’ll talk more about what the research says about this in a future post, but for now, I’d love to hear your thoughts.  If you’ve been in the tech industry for 10+ years: ❓ What human connections do you value most at this point in your career? ❓ Are there professional organizations you’re still active in? ❓ Where do you turn for help and support?

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So here in the UK it is election time. What if our new PM was a Product Manager? I have been exploring how to manage the most complex product organisations like a country or a big company. I would love to hear your thoughts. #Election #Elected #ProductManagement #PM

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A lot of folks in product management are curious (at best) and worried (at worst) regarding the impact that GenAI is going to have on the Product Management function and their roles.   A simple analogy that I give to everyone is to think of the advent of Gen AI as that of computers back in the day when they were first introduced at scale. Most of us did not need to know HOW exactly they worked, but WHAT they could help us achieve. And more importantly, knowing what their limitations were.   For this, one only needs to understand the capability of the tool or technology (computers, cloud, AI etc) and be able to think of possible scenarios where it can be applied so it helps one solve customer and/or business problems.    With this mental model, things become relatively easier.   Of course, this is not to say that going few levels deeper & learning any tech (GenAI) will be useless. As always, learning any new tech or skill will always be beneficial in the long run and will help one get better in what they do.   Lastly, just like how computers did not take away all jobs but they transformed the entire industry and created so many new jobs & roles, AI/GAI will do the same.   Happy learning! :-) #AI #GenAI

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I just LOVE this kind of writing that explains specialized concepts in simple language. Read to learn how large language models are evaluated - and why: https://lnkd.in/g8vZy9DE

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We've had an EM role open on our team for several months. This is a post about everything we learned from why we haven't filled it yet. I'd love to get your help in filling it! 🤝 The role: - EM for our 0-to-1 team within Postman, with the goal of defining and winning our category for a new kind of API-level monitoring/observability tool. Our team came into Postman through an acquisition and we're now building the Postman version of our product, using the same tech. - Help scale our product and team from alpha into beta. We are a department with six engineers and approved headcount to grow a lot more in the next year. - The role is 60% prioritization/roadmap management, 40% building the team. The current team members are high-ownership, independent, founding engineer types. 🤔 Misconceptions, miscalibrations, and lessons: - Initially, the role was called "Senior Engineering Manager, Observability." Instead of getting the product engineering managers we were looking for, we primarily got interest from platform/infra EMs. We got thousands of inbound applications and spent months zeroing that out. 🙀 - Previously, our recruiters were sourcing a lot of folks with observability backgrounds. We've learned that since we're actually building a new kind of observability product, much more focused on UX, the profile we're looking for is product-focused rather than tech-focused. No observability experience required. - When people think Postman, they often think of our core product: the API client. So we were getting more interest from folks looking to scale a product, rather than 0-to-1 "I want to build a team and product" types. Postman actually has several other products, for instance testing and Flows, our no-code tool. There is a lot of interesting 0-to-1 work on our way to growing as a multi-product platform! - Some people have the perception that Postman isn't one of the high-growth companies because they're not seeing lots of their friends joining Postman. Postman has quadrupled since 2020, BUT a lot of the engineering growth has been in India. (Postman is the biggest SaaS company to come out of India!) Our team is part of a recent change to grow our US engineering presence. Many of us leaders across the company are looking for folks to join early cohorts of US-based product engineering and platform teams. 💡 What we've changed on our end: - We've deemphasized the "observability" part of the job and emphasized the "new product" and "product engineering" parts of the job. - We've also switched our own reachouts to look for people with product engineering experience at SaaS companies with product-led growth. 👩‍🚀 Help us find our EM! We now have a solid pipeline, but haven't yet made a hire. We'd love to hear from you if: - You have thoughts about how to improve our EM search. - You know someone we should meet. - You're a scrappy EM looking for an opportunity to build a new product while growing a team. Look forward to hearing from you!

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I just read Atlassian’s ‘State of Teams’ report. Eye-opening stuff. But, I don’t agree with the proposed solutions. If you haven’t read it, the report tackles the staggering loss of 25 billion work hours each year due to poor collaboration. It paints a picture of teams running hard but not getting very far—busy yet unproductive—and a widespread disconnect from mission-critical work. From my own research I concur with these findings. But here’s where I pause: Atlassian leans heavily on tool-driven solutions. And of course they will, that’s their game. Their tools have their place, but they can’t fix everything. If they’re not aimed at the real issues, they’re just more noise, more mess. For me, the underlying issues are cultural and behavioural. Tackling them is more delicate than just adding more tools to the fire. To move forward with sustainable solutions, try our Readiness Assessment. By answering 16 yes-or-no questions, you will get a clear snapshot of your organisation's standing and what you need to fill your work-hour deficit. https://lnkd.in/ehqiYtts

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One of the things I ❤️ about my job is being able to walk to work on our days in the office. Trivial? If you've ever commuted a long distance, you may agree walking as your commute is appealing, and can play a role in overall job satisfaction and mental health. The choice of #Oakland HQ was the decision of Everlaw CEO & Founder AJ Shankar who years ago identified a tech talent pool that prefers the East Bay over Silicon Valley. An unorthodox approach like that can bring great rewards. AJ has thought through many decisions with a strategy that often bucks a trend to deliver long-term and deeper value both to our employees and customers. One of those decisions -- perhaps the biggest for the company -- is how we develop software. In his new byline in The New Stack, AJ reveals for the first time his unorthodox approach. He argues that sprinting slows you down in software development. He shares Everlaw's way in hopes that other companies might adopt this methodology. The company manifesto says, “Our long-term philosophy impacts many aspects of how we do business: how we market, how we sell, how we close deals, how we support our clients, and more. Perhaps the largest impact is in how we develop the Everlaw platform...” A core reason I enjoy my work at Everlaw is its focus on long-term excellence and its deeply held values that play out in myriad of ways. The nice part is I get to think about this and more on my walk to work 😎 #Grateful #Buildforthelongterm #Leadership

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I like some early adoption as much as the next millennial. But the opt-in by default strategy of AI features is freakin out of control. I can appreciate that many tech vendors are offering the capability with privacy and trust as first-class considerations. Many more haven’t even a Trust page to speak of. But the decision of whether or not to use AI-enabled features should absolutely remain with businesses and individual consumers assuming the risk of its adoption, not the product managers or GMs of platform vendors who are KPI’d on product uptake. Everyone’s haste to shove AI down our collective throats is creating a 💩-tonne of policy and due diligence work that has to be done reactively instead of thoughtfully, every time a new feature is released, on every platform we use. My ask is a simple, earnest one. Can you not?

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🔥Hot Take for PMs: Please don't hand me a solution to a problem. Instead, focus on detailing the problem and help me understand the why. We will ideate and find a solution together. Next week, in our first episode of ⚫️Bounce, Claire and I continue to unpack the PD + PM working relationship. Buckle up. Subscribe today - links in comments 👇

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How much does industry experience matter in Product Management? I'm hearing from a lot of folks who I mentor that they are getting great feedback through the interview process only to learn in the end that they didn't have enough industry experience to be hired. I take issue with two things here: 1. You can tell if someone has industry experience by their resume. If it's that important, then don't interview them. 2. I don't think industry experience is that important for most product manager jobs. If you are a talented product manager who has skills for discovery, developing strategy, and engaging stakeholders, then you are miles ahead of most product managers. This individual should be able to ramp within 3 months. By the way, if this is you, keep a look out for when I have roles available. But if you hire an industry expert who is lacking in product thinking, they will take much longer to learn the skills of the field. In the meantime, they are going to do a lot of damage as they do things like: - Trust their own opinion over seeking learnings in the market. - Build to please senior stakeholders. - Alienate the engineering team and lose their trust. I'd love to hear the thoughts of others on this topic.

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