What it takes to become a top 1% PM | Ian McAllister (Uber, Amazon, Airbnb)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2022

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ian McAllister is the Senior Director of Product for Vehicles at Uber. Before moving to Uber, Ian spent over a decade directing teams at Amazon, where he created and led Amazon Smile. He was also Director of Product Management at Airbnb, where I was lucky enough to have worked alongside him. In today’s episode, we discuss Ian’s famous document about the essential attributes of the top 1% of product managers. Ian outlines the most important skills to focus on for entry-level PMs and how to broaden your experience and diversify skills as you move up the ladder. He also shares what he learned working with Jeff Wilke, Jeff Bezos, and other leaders at Amazon, and goes in depth on Amazon’s working-backwards framework.

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Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/what-it-takes-to-become-a-top-1-pm-ian-mcallister-uber-amazon-airbnb/#transcript

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Where to find Ian McAllister:

• Newsletter: https://ianmcallister.substack.com/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ianmcall

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianmcallister/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/startups

• Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lenny

• AssemblyAI: https://www.assemblyai.com/?utm_source=lennyspodcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=nov20

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Referenced:

• What distinguishes the top 1% of product managers from the top 10%, on Substack: https://ianmcallister.substack.com/p/what-distinguishes-the-top-1-of-product

• What distinguishes the top 1% of product managers from the top 10%, on Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-distinguishes-the-Top-1-of-product-managers-from-the-Top-10

• Amazon’s working-backwards method: https://www.productplan.com/glossary/working-backward-amazon-method/

• Jeff Wilke on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffawilke

• Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Real-Smarter-Successful-Application/dp/0578012812

• Wool (Wool trilogy #1): https://www.amazon.com/Wool-Trilogy-Howey-25-Apr-2013-Paperback/dp/B011T7ACU0/

• Energy and Civilization: A History: https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Civilization-History-MIT-Press/dp/0262035774

• How I Built This podcast: https://www.npr.org/series/490248027/how-i-built-this

• EV News Daily podcast: https://www.evnewsdaily.com/

• Yellowstone on Peacock: https://www.peacocktv.com/stream-tv/yellowstone

• Everything Everywhere All at Once on Showtime: https://www.sho.com/titles/3493875/everything-everywhere-all-at-once

• Gibson Biddle’s website: https://www.gibsonbiddle.com/

• Gibson Biddle on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/gibson-biddle-on-his-dhm-product-strategy-framework-gem-roadmap-prioritization-framework-5-netflix-strategy-mini-case-studies-building-a-personal-board-of-directors-and-much-more/

• Gibson Biddle’s Ask Gib newsletter: https://askgib.substack.com/

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In this episode, we cover:

(03:54) What Ian expected from his initial post on product management

(05:30) How the post impacted Ian’s career

(07:06) How writing can help you crystallize your thoughts

(08:26) Ian’s background

(10:57) Attributes of the top 1% of PMs

(14:32) The top three skills for new PMs to perfect

(20:32) Tips on strengthening communication and prioritization

(23:06) How to level up as a PM

(26:37) What kind of impact should new PMs expect to make?

(29:36) How to broaden your view and think big

(33:06) How to earn the trust of others

(34:30) How Ian could have done more to earn trust at Airbnb

(37:27) Why people tend to stick around Amazon for a while

(39:53) What Ian learned from Bezos and Wilke

(46:38) How teams get working backwards wrong

(53:51) The two parts of working backwards and how Ian utilizes it at Uber

(58:57) Lightning round

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	If you forget about politics, forget about promotion or having more bigger org or whatever,
0:07.3	if you simply wake up every day trying to have the biggest impact you can, or if you're a leader trying to use your team
0:14.6	to have the biggest impact you can in the company,
0:17.2	how you do every part of your day.
0:18.5	That's a really good guiding light.
0:20.3	Welcome to Lenny's podcast. I'm Lenny and my goal here is to help you get better the craft of building and growing products.
0:29.0	Today my guest is Ian McAllister.
0:31.0	Ian is the author of one of the most classic post-on-product management, what separates a top 1%
0:37.0	PM from a top 10% PM.
0:39.0	Amongst many other pieces of writing that he shared online,
0:42.0	Ian has managed over 100 product managers in his career.
0:45.0	He spent 12 years at Amazon, where he built Amazon's smile,
0:49.0	and led the team responsible for growing Alexa internationally.
0:52.0	He also worked at Airbnb with me and now he's at
0:55.1	Uber leading global product for the vehicle's platform which includes making
0:58.7	Uber's fleet increasingly electric and autonomous. In our conversation we focus primarily on two topics.
1:05.0	What separates a top 1% p.m. from everyone else?
1:08.0	Specifically for new p.m. and also for senior p.m.
1:12.0	and we also dig deep into the working backwards process we get into how you can
1:16.6	implement the process on your team and how you might be doing it wrong. There's also
1:20.9	a bunch of links to templates and guides in the show notes, so if you want to follow along definitely check those out.
1:27.0	With that I bring you, Ian McAllister.
	...

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