#Build 9: Product Managers: Want To Work Better With Engineers? Here's The Secret.

Seeking Wisdom with David Cancel

Molly Sloan

Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2018

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s a special episode of #Build. Host Maggie Crowley is joined by members of Drift’s Product and Engineering teams. Meet Alexa Nguyen, Senior Product Manager, Trevor Rundell, Director of Engineering, and Peter Karl II, Lead, Product Efficiency. The group chats through how product and engineering can work together most efficiently. That means breaking through the perception that engineers should be wholly removed from the customer. To tackle this problem at Drift, tech leads here are directly responsible for the outcomes of the products they’re working on (where at most organizations, that’s the Product Manager’s responsibility). This gives engineering more context around the products they're building. And empowers them. They’re expected to be on the front lines answering questions from customers. Because at Drift, it’s all about putting the customer first. Learn more about story time and how to get your engineering and products teams better aligned in today’s episode of #Build. Before you go leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and share the pod with your friends! Be sure to check out more insights on the Drift blog at drift.com/blog and find us on Twitter @maggiecrowley, @drift and @seekingwisdomio. In This Episode 0:37 - Introductions of Alexa, Trevor, and Peter 1:44 - Tech Leads vs. Product Managers 3:48 - Creating a space of forward-thinking work called “Story Time” 5:50 - When to bring an engineer into a project 6:30 - Starting Story Time with a well-defined problem 7:44 - What does the customer want? 8:36 - The team discusses their first Story Time. 10:24 - Pencils Not Pixels 11:04 - How to communicate this idea with new engineers 12:00 - What is the role of conflict/disagreement? 12:34 - Do not mistake feedback for criticism. 14:00 - How to disagree with respect 14:36 - One-on-one meetings explained 16:19 - The best PM to work with 17:18 - Practice at work 18:12 - Experience working with Drift’s co-founder 20:26 - Advice to the listeners

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, welcome to build on seeking wisdom. This is Maggie in the flesh this time,
0:18.6	actually on camera. We have a special episode today because we have these three all- Maggie in the Flesh this time, actually on camera.
0:25.3	We have a special episode today because we have these three all-stars in the room,
0:27.0	All-Stars of Drift.
0:30.8	And what we're going to tackle today is how do you actually work with engineers,
0:34.9	a topic that as a PM I hear about constantly from other people in the product community.
0:37.2	So before we get started, just introduce yourselves.
0:38.3	Hi, I'm Alexa. I'm a senior product manager here at Drift,
0:40.3	and I've had the pleasure of working closely
0:42.3	with Trevor and Pete.
0:43.3	I'm Trevor, aka T-run, I'm Director of Engineering here at Drift.
0:48.3	I'm Pete Carl II.
0:50.3	Some call me PK2.
0:51.3	I'm the lead for product efficiency at drift.
0:54.9	All right.
0:55.9	So the question that I want to talk about is how I've heard so many times in basically
1:01.8	every product event I've ever been to that the question of how does one work with engineers?
1:07.2	And I feel like everyone always talks about it as if you're this weird species that we need to approach. I don't actually believe that that's true. No, we seriously are a different species. We're trained by the industry to think of ourselves as a different species, which is kind of funny. And how does that, like, how does that show up in our work? At Drift, we untrain that. We like teach engineers, some of them, right, who are like hardcore about this other species thing, how to be real human beings again. And I think we work because we don't differentiate. We're just like, hey, you, hey, adult person, do the thing, right? So what, like, how do you guys to new engineers that join the team, how do you describe the role of engineering here versus product?
1:44.6	Well, I think one of the things that we do a little bit different than some other companies
1:47.3	is kind of the responsibilities that tech leads have versus product managers. So specifically,
1:53.1	tech leads are the DRIs for the actual outcomes of the product at the end of the day,
1:58.9	be it the actual usage of the feature, the
	...

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