Steve Jobs, the man, died a few days ago. Steve Jobs the symbol and the icon in all likelihood lives on for a long time. In this status he is joined perhaps only by one other man: Bill Gates (whether people agree or disagree with his business tactics, feel that MSFT produced low quality or hard to use software... no one can deny the fact that he was one of the first few who realized that software would be the key to pervasive computing, co-founded the first real software company and put software engineering as a profession on the map).
That is why I was so excited to watch them being interviewed on the same stage and at the same time @ D5 in 2007. When the news of Steve Jobs passing came out, I went back and watched it again and this time I found it simply fascinating - the session is about 1.5 hours, an hour the interview and 30 minutes Q&A.
It is long, but it is well worth the time.
After about 4.5 years, and with hindsight, it is so amazing to see Steve Jobs explaining his vision about "Post-PC" era and superiority of native applications, merits of integration of hardware and software, and in general, what we can only now recognize as a general description of iPad. (with the notable absence of any reference to App Store)
Interestingly, Bill Gates, in response to what he sees as post PC era, talks, spot on, about tablet computing, significance of touch and the "convergence device". Keep in mind that MSFT had been doing basic research in this field for a long time.
In my view, both men shared the same over all knowledge of trends and technologies in 2007, both knew that a device that is basically touch enabled and connected will dominate the future. Then why Apple was able to come up with iPad and MSFT ended up with a few tablet from bunch of manufacturers that only a few ever saw live in action, let alone use.
Amazingly, Bill Gates answers this question himself - in what I think is the most interesting exchange of the interview: a member of audience (a woman @ about 1:22 into the video) asks both Jobs and Gates "...What did you learn about running your own business that you wished you had thought of sooner or first by watching the other guy". Bill Gates volunteers an answer first and says:
"...he (Steve) has an intuitive taste for product and people, we sat in Mac product reviews and question would come up that I would view it as engineering question b/c that is how my mind works and I'd see Steve make a decision based on a sense of people and product that is even hard for me to explain, the way he does things are just different and I think it is magical and in that case WOW" (he never mentions what that case was)
There, ladies and gentlemen, you have it! This is why MSFT and Bill Gates, as great as he is, with all the knowledge of trends, technologies could never quiet come up with that "convergence device". They (or any one else) did not have that magical "intuitive taste for product and technology". As Bill Gates said it, it is even hard for him to explain let alone replicate that intuition.
A lot of things have been said and written about Steve Jobs greatness, but none captures and express the essence of what Jobs did better than the description given by the only other icon of modern computing Bill Gates: intuition vs.solution , soul vs. mechanics, empathy vs. sympathy ..Magic vs. Engineering.
Showing posts with label People. Show all posts
Showing posts with label People. Show all posts
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Interviewing @ eBay Part IV - Product Management Interview
First let’s review, very briefly, what product managers are expected to do – I also highly recommend you read the following Q&A from Quora contributors:
In my view the core of product management role is to understand firm’s resources and capabilities, existing products and markets, customer needs and wants, existing and adjacent market dynamics and economics and use the intersection of these four factors to conceive of and design new products or improve and evolve the existing ones in a manner that is profitable for the firm - i.e. reduces costs or increases revenue.
That is indeed a tall order, and rarely can be performed by one person – it is a role – but an individual product manager should perform any part of this role.
(Notice that we are not talking about product marketing manager, project manager or program manager, the focus is only product management as it is defined above)
In addition to – or to accomplish - this core function– product managers at eBay work closely with business to understand the markets and trends, participate in conception of ideas, communicate and get buy-in from all stake holder (formal, actual or both), help marshal resources and come up with execution planning and ensure the success roll out – and post roll and operations out activities.
To me, the core traits of a product manager are clear and analytical thinking ability, communication and influence and discipline (in capturing assumptions, solutions, exemptions, follow ups, coordination as required by the breadth of activities above etc.)
In a typical interview (45 min) you can expect 4,5 questions from below list:
- Technical questions:
Most eBay products are either technology-based or have a strong technology component to them, so you have to understand technology (as in software engineering, operations, statistics …) also you need to build credibility with engineers, for these two reasons expect a few technical questions, I don’t personally ask you to code, unless you volunteer to (a plus) or you state on your resume that you are “fluent in Java”, then I consider it a fair game. By the way if you are applying for a “Technical PM” please read the “architect” interview post. These two jobs are almost the same at eBay.
o What is the general architecture of a web application, how about a mobile application?
o Your product has to use service of a service provider – the service is available online – what are the list of question you would like to know about this service provider?
- Analytical ability
o What is BMW’s revenue (do not look it up, I actually change the company randomly)
o In a marketplace the actual instance of fraud is decreasing, but the perception of fraud is increasing, what is going on?
o What data/information you’d like to know in order to estimate eBay revenue
- Business and Strategy
o Typical management consultant questions on strategy, competition, profitability, new markets etc.
o How do you grow eBay revenue by 20% in one year?
o What adjacent markets eBay should consider entering?
o Should eBay expand into Japan?
o Should eBay buy ETSY?
o Should eBay buy Yelp?
- Product Design
o How do you improve eBay buying experience, how about selling experience?
o Should eBay accept Facebook Identity, if so, what are the considerations?
o What do you think about “Social Commerce”, hype or real?
o How do you incentivize excellent selling behavior on eBay?
o How would you plan the launch of a product? Say fashion vault in Germany or integration of a new shipping carrier into the system.
o How should eBay verify and confirms the identities of all sellers and buyers?
o How best you think eBay can combine e-commerce and offline commerce?
o What are the risks an electronic marketplace faces?
o How should eBay implement “calendar of event” feature for sellers?
o How do you improve eBay feedback system?
o You are asked to improve eBay registration performance, what would you do?
o What set of metrics would you use to measure the health of a marketplace?
- Awareness of markets and trends
o Which companies eBay marketplaces should acquire
o What are the eBay main competitors and why?
o What trends (technology, consumers, economical, social etc.) will impact eBay business and how
o Describe the economy of electronic payment industry
o
o What is the biggest product blunder in your mind and why
o Which web sites do you visit regularly?
- E-Commerce and Payment
o How do you design a multi-merchant shopping cart
o What is the “e-commerce funnel” – how do you optimize it.
o How should “best match” algorithm be designed?
o What are the risks an electronic marketplace faces?
o You meet an eBay seller that complains about low sales volume, what would recommend him to do?
o How do you measure the success of a shopping cart?
o How can you use one's FB and Twitter accounts to improve searches on eBay?
o How would you design an effective refund experience, how do you measure its effectiveness?
- Personal qualities and fit
o How do you influence people?
o What is leadership to you? Give me an example where you demonstrated leadership
o Tell me about the most interesting project you worked on in your career
o Suppose a technical leader is telling you that your product requirements is not implementable, what do you do?
o How do you ensure that your product idea/project get priority over competing ideas/products?
Of course, the list of question changes from time to time and you may not get the same exact
question, but this is the general flavor of your interview. Again, if you happen to see this post
before you interview, please let me know.
question, but this is the general flavor of your interview. Again, if you happen to see this post
before you interview, please let me know.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Interviewing @ eBay, Part I - The basics
When someone interviews with eBay, s/he is given an interview schedule with the name and title of all interviewers, the natural expectation (at least mine) is that s/he searches for the name of all those people as part of the pre-interview preparation. I view this as minimum due diligence that a candidate should do 11 years into the 21st century. So I hope whoever interview with me at eBay finds and reads this post (if you do, please let me know)
Now that you found this, I will give you a leg up over other candidates: in the series of four posts, I tell you what questions I would be asking in my interviews for four positions:
- - Software engineer
- - Product Managers
- - Software Architects
- - Engineering Managers (Sr. Managers, Director, Sr. Director and VPs)
Before we start with specific position, let me first cover the common questions and aspects for all interviews.
I look for the following “necessary” – but not sufficient - qualities that make a candidate productive. In a nutshell, person should be smart, know his field, willing to work hard, willing to compromise and get things done and get along with people under a range of circumstances.
Smart: I am not talking about genius, or someone that can solve puzzles in 10 seconds, but some one that is generally sharp, can think on his/her feet and is solve problems. One of the clearest indication of it is whether someone listens to question, asks follow up questions to clarify what is being asked and then clearly and directly answers that question and then stop. No rambling, no answering other questions and no circular, perpendicular or random answers!
Knowledgeable: Candidate must have proficient level of knowledge in his/her domain, this is separate from being smart, each field requires certain level of experience and formal education – I expand on this with specific question in each of the fields above.
Work ethics: Regardless of how smart and knowledgeable one may be, s/he has to be focused and will to work hard. Real engineering tasks are 10-20% about great ideas, and 80% about grunt work, boring details, dealing with plumbing, debug, re-build, fine tune etc. If you are not willing to do that, you won’t be successful.
Pragmatic: You must be willing to compromise, change course, give up credit, change your familiar and favorite terminology etc. to get things done. All the smarts, knowledge, hard work often is wasted if you cannot get it done and out at the end. I ask what you are willing and what you are not willing to compromise on for a given project and why, what you would do if you feel a wrong decision was made…
Culture fit: The last of the “necessary qualities” is the ability to get along with others under all sorts of circumstances: uncertain and insufficient data, deadline pressures, failures, inter personal and inter group rivalries … under all those conditions, you should be able to maintain your relationships and get along with others. One of the greatest indicators of whether someone can do it by the way, is sense of humor.
Next post: my list of questions for Software Engineering positions.
