October 2022 Summaries

Kirk Fernandes, founder of Merit, a platform providing tech mentorship for under-networked individuals, discusses his approach to productivity and work as a startup CEO. He emphasizes the importance of asking "How will this increase the odds of success?" when evaluating ideas, and relies on tools like Grain and Journey to streamline processes. His daily routine involves scheduling tasks and meetings, using Google Calendar to manage reminders and tasks, and minimizing notifications. Fernandes values being present in the moment, finding happiness in work, and prioritizing transparency in his team's workflow. He uses Notion for project management, shares calendars with his team, and employs email templates to manage messages efficiently. Despite struggling with tracking DMs, he advocates for using tools to streamline communication. As a founder, Fernandes values having a good desk setup with plenty of light and space to think, and recommends reading narratives and stories about innovative companies like Masters of Doom and Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

It's really important on any team to use tools, processes and workflows that unblock developers and help boost their productivity. There are some great tools out there who help solve pieces of the developer productivity puzzle, such as Code Climate, which provides a dashboard for tracking ongoing efforts and data insights to improve engineering team practices. LaunchDarkly is another tool that helps de-risk changes by shipping small changes frequently, while Contentful enables teams to make copy changes without developer involvement. Sourcegraph offers powerful search capabilities for large codebases, saving developers time in refactors and testing phases. Lattice provides a platform for managers to give and track feedback across their teams, improving team culture and productivity. Lastly, Jam is a tool that has saved hundreds of thousands of minutes of debugging by providing a format for bug reports that developers actually want to receive.

Managing high-functioning teams requires a thoughtful approach to collaboration, trust-building, and empathy. Director of Product Design at Justworks, Tom Takigayama, shares his expertise on how to create learning environments, share work early and often, and balance the three-legged stool of product design, product management, and engineering. By applying principles from parenting books like "Peaceful Parenting" and being intentional with every decision, managers can foster a culture of experimentation, iteration, and continuous improvement. Tom advises aspiring designers to focus on empathy, understanding user needs, and balancing business and technical perspectives to create a harmonious collaboration between design, product management, and engineering.

Philina Fan, a Product Design Manager at Handshake, shares her journey from being a fashion designer to a digital product designer. She attributes her transition to marrying her husband, who was studying information systems at UC Berkeley, and following him to the West Coast. Initially, she explored interaction design boot camps, including General Assembly, where she discovered her natural aptitude for systems thinking and product design. Her first job was as a contractor at Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending company, which eventually led to her role at Cloudflare. Philina emphasizes the importance of tapping into one's network, being vulnerable, and asking questions to learn and grow. She recommends books like "Playing Big" by Tara Brach and "Designing Your Life" by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Her interests include podcasts like "How I Built This," "The Daily," and "99% Invisible." Philina's background is rooted in manufacturing and real estate, thanks to her grandfather's entrepreneurial spirit. She advises product managers to work closely with designers from the beginning, fostering a collaborative environment where design is integral to the product strategy.

Diego Zaks, the Head of Design at Ramp, shares his journey and experiences as a designer. He emphasizes the importance of building trust with others to become a better designer. To get started in design, Diego suggests embracing what you don't know and asking for help from people who are more experienced. For designers looking to level up, he recommends learning graphic design fundamentals, connecting ideas between projects, and scaling oneself by investing time in tools and processes that improve efficiency. Diego also highlights the importance of trust between product managers, engineers, and designers, encouraging them to work together as partners to solve business problems quickly.

Every startup needs to know what makes a user stick. Figuring this out helped us make key decisions to grow our business, such as identifying a product adoption indicator that measures the number of core actions users take inside the product that indicate they will build a habit and continue to use it in the long run. The goal is to find a magic number, also known as a product adoption indicator, for your product by analyzing user behavior and retention rates. This involves selecting a core action, setting a table with different numbers of workflows created during the first week, doing math to identify users who create at least that many workflows, filling out a table with percentages of overlap between these groups, and finding the largest overlap number. It's essential to consider time-bound core actions, be ready to adapt as the business grows or changes, and revisit this process every 3 months to ensure the magic number remains accurate.

Omar Morales, the Founding Engineering Manager at Chessly, a highly anticipated new chess learning platform, has an interesting story of how he and his friend Levy created their website gotham-chess.com. Omar initially thought they could improve the process by building a website that hosted all video files instead of having people download them manually. The idea evolved into taking things to the next level and creating Chessly, which aims to make chess learning more interactive and engaging. Building a chess learning site is important to Omar because he believes it helps people think critically and applies to life, much like a chess board. He has adapted to his managerial role by adapting to new challenges and emphasizes quality in engineering, encouraging team members to voice their opinions. Omar recommends exercising daily as a habit that has changed his productivity and work-life for the better. A simple setup of an environment can encourage more activity, and he swears by using one monitor, which helps him focus on the task at hand. Jira is his go-to tool in his work as an engineering leader, providing visibility into team activities and helping plan out days, weeks, and months.

To capture a HAR file, navigate to the webpage where you saw the bug, open Developer Tools in your browser, switch to the Network tab, check "Preserve log", and click the red button to start recording. Recreate the bug and stop recording when done, then export the HAR file by clicking the down arrow button. Alternatively, use Jam, a free tool that automatically captures HAR file data with just three steps: installing the extension, choosing between screenshot or video capture, and clicking "Create" to generate a link to your bug report.

As a Senior Product Manager at Procore, Tom Jodeit is responsible for improving the lives of construction professionals through the company's all-in-one construction management software. He relies on various tools such as Slack for communication, Jira for issue tracking, and Tableau for data visualization. Recently, he discovered Marvin, an iPhone app that allows him to read books by scrolling through a feed, helping him manage his self-consciousness about screen time with family members. Tom is currently reading "Good strategy/Bad strategy" by Richard P. Rumelt, which helps him cultivate strategic thinking and productivity. He emphasizes the importance of writing down ideas to take on a new life as others read them and provides feedback. Tom's desk setup includes a sit/stand desk, multiple monitors, allowing him to efficiently cross-reference information. His work can be followed on LinkedIn.