So currently I am a senior, uh, product manager over at Blue Shield of California, and there are a lot of different routes to becoming a product manager. I think this is really evolved over time, but some of the more popular ones when I was entering the industry was through a project management Q and customer service. Eso I definitely took the path less traveled. I graduated during a recession year where many people, you know chose to extend their studies by a year. Um, instead of doing this because I had always wanted to study abroad. Actually took. This is an opportunity to work in Japan for a couple of years in education and this path. Let's trouble gave me a breath of experience to increase my understanding of the different viewpoints that I found very useful my career later on, having said that, I actually ended up working in Japan for a few years coming back, knowing that I really wanted, um, you know, toe work in an industry that had a lot of direct impact but wasn't sure exactly what continued in education for some time before the organization that I work with lost public funding and we'll get into that a little bit later on in terms of career selection, and you know how to align that with what you're looking for. But I think what was really interesting about that was it opened up with a new opportunity for me to work with the startup A Z, a project manager. And that was the path which I mentioned earlier that I took to get into product management.

That's a great question. I think what PM's role is very, quite, very depending on the company, the product and the seniority, which is why it can be so very challenging for both the job secret and an employer to find someone who is the right fit. Now, having said that and directing it to war, the role that I have now is that our organization is actually a very large one, and the business unit that I'm working within is actually a very interesting full stock team. We were, you know, we work on some. I wouldn't call it growth hacking exactly. But we worked on some very blue sky, you know, products, right? And so with every product it tends to ship. Sometimes we're doing some prototyping. Sometimes we're doing some partnerships with external organizations. Um, it quite changes Ah lot. Having said that, e think overall is the PM you want to guide your cross functional team to create a product that achieves product market fit in the minimal amount of time and effort. I think here in the Valley, we're very much interested in sort of agile development, kind of understanding how we can create something that will work azi quickly as possible for our customer base. Right on DSO the top three folks, that you're really interested at the end of the day is your internal. You're sorry you're end customers and then your internal stakeholders and your team. And, um, it's sort of tears itself in the sense that if you don't create a product that satisfies your customers, obviously you're not doing your job. But you also need a lot of trust at the team level as well, um, to convince them that you're doing the right thing because we're all working with capable, intelligent individuals. And at the end of the day, if your engineer doesn't believe in your vision, then you know you'll find it a lot harder to work with your designers and your engineers because everyone will come in with an opinion of what, um, you know, your executed on and your internal stakeholders your just is important to it determines funding. It determines, Um, you know the pace of your work. So all of those things are very important in terms of prioritization, and we clean work hours is a very funny thing. There are some places where you might work 40 hours a week even, you know, at my current location in the beginning, Probably a lot closer to a regular work week. But I did want to stay up until 2 a.m. Prepping for a kick off meeting. I did get scolded by my manager the night the day after thing. Um, you know, this is not what's expected on a day to day basis, but he also understood why I did it, right. It was a level of commitment that I waas, um you know, interesting. Interested in the project. So in choosing your career, this is kind of what I was talking about earlier is you really want to pick one whose benefits in terms of compensation, whether it's hard compensation or soft compensation and expectations, for example, the level of effort, your work hours really aligns with what you want to dio and suppose you are very interested in something. It's some project that I'm sure we've all had these opportunities for. We were like, Hey, I'm really interested in working on the and pursuing this, and no one is telling you to do it. And so you might work, you know, 60 hours on this thing focused on something because you're interested in it versus something that really someone handed you. You know, this task and it might be a very small task, but you might keep putting it off because you're just simply you don't see why it would be compelling to Dio. And so the weekly work hours do very a lot. But it does help if it's something you love, you find yourself stretching toe work longer on something that you're interested in, rather than the mundane task that you were doing simply because it was assigned.

Yeah. So I think the major challenges, um, in the roles in any organization is speed, right? And so, in terms of determining your product roadmap like and what you want to build, there's always, you know, sort of an alignment with a greater organization, right? So when I was in smaller organizations, I've worked or a lot of grassroots started. Sometimes you're looking at funding cycles, and you're saying, What do I need to build from it and customer? But what do I need to build for these internal stakeholders, whether it's a board or, you know, other funding mechanisms that will ensure that they retain trust in you to continue funding your project, right? Um, currently, you know, at an organization that is much, much more like enterprise organized, it's still similar, even though we're not dealing with external funding and the vagaries that continue with that. But there's still challenges with how quickly we have to build. We definitely experienced, um, a ramp up that was pretty steep and very exciting. Um, you know, not not to say that anything about the coronavirus has been really a good thing, But being in health care today, what was exciting was a lot of the things that normally would take. Ah, lot more hoops to jump through and we just move at a slower pace. We were in a good position to say, Hey, this is an opportunity for us to rise to the challenge, to lean in, to really put ourselves to move faster, right? And so I think the challenge was always at that point. How quickly can we move? What is the problem that we need to solve right now and adjusting and not getting white cited with tunnel vision? Right? Andi, I think the purchase effective in overcoming them, were things that, um even prior to business school, I actually, um, connected with the students over UC Berkeley's high school through a company that I was working at. They kind of brought them in to do this, uh, sort of brainstorming session with Azad work. And I think what was interesting about that is realizing that the world of education has really changed. Gone are the days that you know, you're fed sort of this task right, and you're just supposed to work on the task and it's really more about what tools do I have. What are the any tools that I can use to solve this problem? Right. So when your boss says here, here's a problem and here's the framework. Go do it. I think what distinguishes someone who is just sort of straight out of school kind of working toward it and someone who is able to up level that to, like, a more senior level is thinking, If I had no guidance on this and I was able to use any fool, what would I do to solve that? And I think that that is my favorite approach is sort of top down, bottom up as well. Um, to be able to tackle these things right? And a good example of this is where at a start up, you know, we were given a series of tasks and we were building out of road map and then suddenly do defending constraints. We were told when we got in that day by, like 10 a.m. Please produce, like this entire road map that was far more extensive than anything we had been looking at, right? And so, you know, going back Thio rvp at that point and saying, Hey, um can we push out? Maybe a couple of hours. Right? Is there are hard target? Can we do a love? And can we do 12 Getting the team together on brainstorming and saying, How can we divide and conquer? Trying to understand what the level of granularity that we needed to share, Who the target audience was being really focused in producing a best effort. And I think, um, in product management, it's always a lot about, um, what is the appropriate level of effort at that time on drily, Taylor in your approach.