Beta-Talk is an interview series I planned with outstanding employees from different departments. It was recorded at Beta Coffee, hence the name. For various reasons, we only recorded two episodes. This is the first: a conversation with our CRM product manager
Role
Mainly designing cloud products, customer management for internal business systems, and designing user-related systems
How Did You Get into Product Management?
I started as an intern doing customer service and operations for games. I loved reading tech sites and playing with new apps, and since I also love making things, product management felt like a great fit.
If you want something, work for it
The Role of a Product Manager
"A product manager is like a pig farmer: you raise the pig, and once it's grown, selling it is the job of sales and marketing." The product's floor is the product manager's responsibility, while its ceiling, if things go well, depends on the whole team's collective effort. The product manager is more of a glue that drives the product to completion: finding problems, solving them, and executing the agreed product strategy throughout the process.
Product and Engineering
Product managers usually like engineers who take initiative, think like product people, communicate proactively, and have their own ideas about the product, but who don't get hung up on the overall direction and execute well.
Product managers usually dislike engineers who try to fool them, deliberately inflate how hard a task is, or pad their time estimates. When that happens, the product manager should break the task down into smaller pieces and make its difficulty as measurable as possible. When an engineer says something can't be done, you can ask another engineer to confirm.
Prioritizing Requirements
I use a "requirements quadrant": based on importance, urgency, and development difficulty, I assess each requirement's impact and whether it's a feature most users need or a special request. When a requirement comes from the boss, if there's room for discussion, I'll argue my case and share my own view. If it's already decided and can't be changed, I'll carry it out without objection. Requirements will always change; product work means dealing with constant change, and you have to accept that.
Products Are Ultimately for People
Whether a service is B2B or B2C, the people using the product are ultimately people. Until you have enough users, there's no point talking about user experience. The most basic job of a good product is to solve users' problems and pain points. Companies that claim they don't care about profit simply haven't found a good business model. A product that doesn't make money definitely isn't a successful product.
Weak Spots in the Current Product
We don't have enough people, so everyone has a heavy workload. We need to hire more, especially highly capable people. In any team, 80% of the value is created by 20% of the people. A company's greatest asset is its team.
Prospects and Value of Product People
A product manager's value depends on what they do, and you judge it by the projects they've worked on. You need to be smart, responsible, logical, and fairly optimistic.
Hopes for the Product's Future
Connect the separate systems, automate and streamline systems and operations, and save time for sales and managers across departments.
Advice for New Product Managers
"Slow people shouldn't do product, and stubborn people shouldn't do product." I'm more in favor of moving into product from engineering or operations, and I don't recommend new grads go straight into product. At big companies, product work may be split into very narrow modules, while at startups you're responsible for many. Doing more gives you "exposure," not necessarily experience.
Summary
In our conversation, Jiwei repeatedly emphasized one point: to do product well, you have to be smart, logical, flexible, and communicate proactively. Understand your role on the team, be its glue, and drive the whole project forward. Build great products for users and create value for the company. That's a product manager's biggest responsibility.