Category: Product Management
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Meeting People
Over my career, I’ve joined several new teams and orgs — I’m on my 5th team at Meta alone. When you start a new team, investing time in meeting your direct counterparts and your broader cross-functional partners is critical to long-term success — there’s no short cut to building the relationships that you’ll need to […]
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The Perfect Chart
As a PM, I spend a lot of time looking at charts. Data is how we understand what’s going on day to day and how we track progress towards goals over time. The choices we make in how to present data are powerful levers for driving a team’s performance toward a goal. Bad charts can […]
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A short story about craft
You may have heard about Steve Jobs’ obsession for design details – and I wanted to share a short story of my own. Back in 2006-2010 I worked at the BBC. I was on what was called the “Radio & Music” side of the organisation, helping to build the websites for all the BBC Radio […]
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Four things every Product Manager does
Recently I was chatting with a new PM who’d just joined my Facebook. Six weeks in, she felt she was struggling. PM at FB isn’t like PM at some other companies. We don’t fully ‘own’ the roadmap (in the sense of having fiat control over it). We don’t always run planning sessions and retrospectives (tech […]
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The Product Manager’s Essential Reading List for 2018
Two years ago, around the birth of my first daughter, I published a list of books that I’d planned to read while bonding with her during Facebook’s generous four-month paternity leave. That list got a lot more interest than I’d imagined — and garnered enough additional suggestions for me to publish an addendum. It’s two years later, and […]
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Home Smart Home: A Primer on the Internet of Things for the Smart Home
I’m about to move to a new house. I’m the kind of guy who, rather than thinking deeply about wallpaper patterns or which Crate & Barrel table to get, spends his time thinking about the optimal setup of the TV and speakers in the living room, how to ensure wall-to-wall WiFi coverage, or how to […]
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Living with (and building for) the Amazon Echo
We’ve had our Amazon Echo for just 15 days but it feels like we’ve jumped 15 years into the future. Voice interfaces have been steadily improving for years — Siri being the mainstream’s first taste — but having an always-on, ambient, personal assistant around the house totally transforms their usefulness. For those who’re yet to […]
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Part 2: The Product Manager’s Essential Reading List for 2016
At the end of 2015, I published a list of 26 books that the PM corps at Facebook recommended for other PMs to read — specifically for me to read while I’m on paternity leave. The response was beyond incredible. Over 28k views and over 1000 recommendations; more tweets and Facebook re-shares than for anything else I’ve […]
Simon Cross 