Pod 14: Casey Winters (Challenge Day 14)

Many directions I can go with the reflection on Casey Winters’s interview with Lenny. The most present and relevant direction for me right now is Casey’s advice on interviewing. I have been in the interview game for about a year now. I like to think I have heard it all. But Casey gives some amazing feedback for product manager interviews specifically.

I think that I have ultimately experienced this but more in the realm of a case study.

Casey calls out this…

“You ask them to solve a problem and they’d say things like, “I can’t even begin to come up with solutions until I see all the data and talk to customers.” I’m like, “Yeah, I get that’s something you would normally do if you took the job, but you don’t have the data. You can’t talk to customers. Make a decision now. What would you do? I want to see how creative you are. I want to see how much you’re intuiting about the real problem and solution,” and they can’t really answer.”

And what this got me thinking about it how PMs are like envelopes. Once you seal the envelope at one company, when you rip it back open part of the envelop stays on either side. If you are a seasoned PM you pick up rituals, habits and ways of working that stick with you. For example, 2 companies ago we had analysts embedded on our teams. I could shoot out a quick query to my analyst and pretty much have an immediate response. At the next company, they were just implementing GA4 and not using data at all to make decisions. So I am jaded. I know my preference but you do not go into every interview having a clear sight on if there are analysts on the team or not.

Do not get my wrong I like Casey’s way of thinking. It can indicate if someone is scrappy and will get it done without depenending on another human. But I am not sure that always is what someone is looking for in their next candidate. Maybe they do have a focus on research and validation before shipping. Maybe the cost risk is too high to ship before validating.

I think what I take away from this one is that trying to anticipate what they hiring manager and or business is looking for before going into the interview is the way to go. And also if you get immediate feedback that your response was not the one they were looking for be prepared to validate that you do have the scrappy skill set they may be looking for.

So much more juicy content on this one…you will walk away feeling challenged!

Where to Listen: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-sell-your-ideas-and-rise-within

Where to find Casey Winters:
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/onecaseman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseywinters/