Welcome back to another one. If you are new to the channel, I'm Gold Pony out your new car truck SUV reviews on YouTube and today we are in the new 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz courtesy of Jack G Mbalvo Hyundai in York VA for more information on their inventory. Please feel free to check out the link in the description box below. And so super excited to be in this one because this is an all new vehicle from Hyundai for the 2022 model year Hyundai's first truck as well by the way. It's kind of like a unique styling blend of maybe the Hyundai Tucson mixed with some added practicality because of the bed in the back of course which is pretty darn cool but anyways. Of course it also comes with America's best warranty being 5 year 60,000 mile bumper to bumper, 10 year 100,000 miles on the powertrain. You also get 3 years or 36,000 miles of complimentary maintenance. That's a little bit of peace of mind as well you don't have to pay for things like the oil changes, tire rotations for the first 3 years. So that is pretty darn cool. And so in this video I will be testing out and going over everything about the Santa Cruz from acceleration to braking, steering for a ride quality sound system exhaust clip, all that fun stuff. So having said all of that, what do you guys say? Let's just go ahead and jump right into it and as always let's start with pricing. And so as you can imagine there are several different trim levels for the new 2022 Santa Cruz. First one being the SE starting at $23,990, SEL for $27,190, SEL premium for $35,680 and lastly the one we are in today being the limited starting at $39,720 and by the way their first two trim levels was actually a front wheel drive configuration. The other two come with all wheel drive but if you wanted to add all wheel drive to this first two trim simply add $1,500 to those prices. But as you can imagine with all of those different trim levels there are a couple different power plants for the Santa Cruz. First one belonging to those first two trim levels being a 2.5 liter direct injected inline four cylinder putting out 191 horsepower at 6,100 rpm, 181 pound feet of torque coming in at 4,000 rpm power sent to front wheels or all wheels through an eight speed automatic. Zero to 60 time for that one is going to come in at approximately 9.3 seconds. MPG numbers coming in at 21 in the City 26 highway for the front wheel drive, 21 City 27 on the highway for whatever reason for the all wheel drive, towing capacity for that engine configuration comes in at 3,500 pounds. But so then there is that other engine configuration belonging to the SEL premium and limited being the engine that we have today. That one is a 2.5 liter turbocharged inline four cylinder cranking out 281 horsepower 5,800 rpm, 311 pound feet of torque coming in at 1,700 rpm, power sent to all wheels through an eight speed dual clutch with paddle shifters. That's pretty cool and you guys know we will be testing out the paddle shifters here in a little bit. Zero to 60 time coming in at approximately 6.5 seconds with MPG numbers coming in at 19 in the City 27 on the highway towing capacity for this one bumping that up to 5,000 pounds then. But before we do any kind of fun acceleration or paddle shifter test I did want to mention to you guys the drive mode toggle switch located directly behind the shifter that will give you sport, smart, snow and normal. So that's going to be adjusting things like the shift points, the throttle response and the steering sensitivity and the all wheel drive system engagement then as well. So now having got all of that out of the way on this extremely foggy day that we have here. Let's go ahead and put the paddle shifters here to the test. There actually is a full manual shift mode. What you want to do is just simply slide the shifter all the way to the back and to the left. It's actually going to display what gear you were in up on the digital gauges there and I'll get more to those digital gauges later in the video because they are pretty stinking cool. But anyways let's go ahead and put the paddle shifters here to the test. I just want to see how quickly they are going to react worse here. I think they're going to be fine. Reason being is this is a dual clutch but let's go ahead and test them out. All right you guys we are in first gear sitting in a red light here and here we go. It's not bad. To be honest there is a little bit of a delay which kind of surprised me because typically Hyundai's dual clutch transmissions within its sport mode with the paddle shifters are really quite good but I don't know for whatever reason in the Santa Cruz there's a slight delay to the paddle shifter so I did want to mention that but anyways let's not go ahead and give back full control to the Santa Cruz. I'm just going to slide the shifter back to the right and let's do that acceleration test here and let's see how quickly this turbocharged four-cylinder is going to get us up to speed. All right a little bit of a rolling start not much though but here we go. Whoa no slipping and it's wet out today that was impressive. Yeah okay this is plenty of power that was quite nice. You're definitely not going to have any issues in merging onto the highway. Another thing I didn't mention to you guys yet there's actually an all-wheel drive lock button directly behind the shifter as well. I use that a lot in my Hyundai Santa Fe. Reason being is because we get quite a bit of snow here in Pennsylvania in the wintertime so when that happens push that button that's going to lock it into all-wheel drive and it grips incredibly like you go through snow with no problems whatsoever so that's another big bonus here to the Santa Cruz at all-wheel drive lock button but anyways to go along with that excellent acceleration as always breaking is equally important so as I'm pulling up to a red light here up front you're going to find 12.8 inch ventilated front disc in the back 12.8 inch solid rear disc as far as the braking feel goes it's actually perfectly fine as I like I said just pulled up to a red light it's not a soft braking feel it's not a firm braking feel either I would actually say it's just right so definitely no issues when it comes to the braking feel in the Santa Cruz then touching on suspension and handling up front you're going to get a McPherson strut front suspension in the back independent multi-link rear suspension front and rear stabilizer bars as far as ride quality goes as we are kind of avoiding this uh accident here it is perfectly fine I've had no issues with ride quality so definitely absorbing Pennsylvania's road imperfections quite nicely as far as cabin noise goes I will say as I was getting higher up in speed maybe 50-55 miles per hour there was a little bit of wind noise coming in from the driver's side that doesn't always happen with Hyundai but they are kind of known for that so I was kind of curious if the Santa Cruz was going to have that and it does unfortunately it's not bad it's not something that bothers me because I actually have a Sonata with the same thing so it doesn't bother me on a regular basis but it is there so I did want to mention that as far as steering feel goes that actually kind of impressed me when I first started driving this thing without it in sport driving mode it was kind of normal which which I didn't expect because typically with Hyundai they have looser steering feels and then when you put it in sport driving mode it gets an even heavier steering feel which I personally prefer so definitely digging the steering feel in the Santa Cruz so Hyundai definitely did a very good job when it comes to that and this thing as far as visibility goes I will say it's not the biggest rear window there when it comes to trucks but having said that it's really not all that bad I can't see perfectly fine out the back and it's definitely something I'm sure you get used to but if you're comparing this to other pickup trucks out there I will say the other trucks of course have a larger rear window for a little better visibility but again it's not bad this isn't a big truck so you're not going to have any issues there dude also want to mention though there is a blind spot view monitor that comes with our limited trim level that we have here today essentially what that is is when you put on the turn signal it's going to display what is in your blind spot up on the digital gauges up front here which is one of the coolest systems out there right now I got to say so definitely a huge fan of that as well but that pretty much rounds out the performance segment of this review guys let's now go ahead take a look at the exterior of our brand new 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz all right so here she is you guys the new 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz I believe finished in Hampton Gray from seeing it on other Hyundai's out there although there's no window sticker anymore because it's actually one of the employees that works at jack to you in Volvo Hyundai so didn't want to mention that but anyways let's go ahead and start up front on this one a very Hyundai Tucson looking front end which looks dang good because in that front grille they have incorporated the daytime running lights which you don't see on any other vehicle out there right now I think it's one of the coolest looks it's very creative by Hyundai and it definitely makes a statement and it's now instantly recognizable as either the Santa Cruz or the Tucson at this point so definitely a big fan of that I actually think that the next redesign for the Palisade they plan on doing the same thing with that as well so definitely a cool look I dig it but anyways in case you were curious by the way that daytime running lights being in the front grille like I said the headlights are going to be down below and speaking of LED headlights do come standard for every single trim level across the board love that automatic feature coming with that meaning when it starts to get dark at night those headlights will turn on automatically for you then again LED daytime running lights you actually have your adaptive cruise control sensor located down below at the bottom portion of that grille there there is front skid plates actually down below as well and in this particular circumstance a lot of dark chrome which looks dang good on this thing so very very nice looking front end very different very unique so I'm a huge fan of the front end of the Santa Cruz to say the least but anyways let's not go ahead and make our way to the side of this one all right so now since we are around to the side of this one roof rails do come standard for all trim levels across the board you guys can see that there's also a floating roof line you guys can see just after that rear window there rear privacy glass does come standard for all trim levels in case you guys were curious yes the owner of this particular Santa Cruz did tint the front windows as well that does not come standard but the back ones do come standard tinted so they call that rear privacy glass but anyways when it comes to the side mirrors body color power adjustable side mirrors coming standard across the board heated with LED integrated turd signals for the SEL trim level and up guys can see then looking down there is a matte black side skirt which ties in with the front bumper there's a little bit of matte cladding on the front bumper as well but the coolest part about that matte black side skirt is it continues just above the fender wells here and there is actually a little picture of a Santa Cruz come on focus there it is there's a little picture of the Santa Cruz within that matte cladding as well so I thought that was pretty cool so I wanted to mention it to you guys zooming back out taking a look at the wheel configuration 20 inch alloy wheels actually do come standard for all trim levels across the board and they definitely look good it's kind of a silver or a machine finish slash gloss black finish combination so big fan of them but anyways let's now go ahead and make our way to the back of this one all right so now since we are around back of the Santa Cruz all the way to the top you guys can probably see there is a gloss black shark fin antenna just below that incorporated brake light on the top there there is a little bit of a rear spoiler of course just above that brake light you got the rear window we'll touch on that more when we get to the interior of this thing but on that back tailgate there you do have led tail lights coming standard for all trim levels across the board you actually have the Hyundai lettering kind of etched into that handle to open that rear tailgate and then you got Santa Cruz just below that on the tailgate that's pretty cool age track found next to the 2.5t age track meaning Hyundai's all-wheel drive system essentially because every manufacturer has to name their all-wheel drive system of course you do have some steps to actually get into the rear tailgate and I'll show you guys that in a little bit here but that is pretty cool as well and just below it all there actually is a single exhaust outlet kind of tucked away so having said that I do believe you guys know what we have to do next as always here is that exhaust clip aren't you guys and so now since we are around back of the Santa Cruz when it comes to opening that rear tailgate there of course is a handle on the tailgate itself that is one way there's actually a button on the key fob then as well it's yet another way you can kind of unlock it there but once opened up when it comes to that bed size it's going to come in at 48 inches also known as four feet it's going to be a composite molded bed which is definitely a very high-end bed because a lot of times with pickup trucks especially it's just going to come with a steel bed and then you can add either a drop-in bed liner or a composite bed liner which is what I would prefer like the Santa Cruz comes with so I'm a big fan of that when it comes to payload capacity it's going to range dependent upon the engine configuration you're either going to get 1579 pounds or 1906 pounds for that turbocharged four cylinder and it is a hydraulic tailgate release by the way so it's not going to just completely drop out on you so it's pretty cool you do have cargo lighting back there in our case LED cargo lighting which I found was pretty nice tonneau cover actually comes standard and there's a cool thing about this tonneau cover I'm going to show it to you guys here so you actually just press this handle kind of push it towards the back end of the Santa Cruz and it's going to slide out there halfway down or all the way down so you have the ability to adjust how much you want to actually open up that tonneau cover and then there is a string attached to it when you want to close it you just simply out what I do is I go around to the side and then I pull it because it's kind of a reach for you to reach it because of the four foot bed from the back but it is super easy to use I will say that so I was definitely a big fan of that tonneau cover there's actually cup holders on the tailgate I found as well which was pretty cool and there is storage within the side of the bed times two so that is pretty cool I'm going to show that to you guys real quick so if you wanted to conceal some things back there you do have the ability to do that there's a 115 volt power outlet back there there's plenty of tie down cleats but one of my favorite things just like the Honda Ridgeline actually there is some in-floor storage with a drain that drains out onto the ground so if you wanted to kind of use this as a tailgate vehicle you could put some ice back there put some drinks back there go to the Ravens or Eagles game whichever you prefer here in Pennsylvania I'm a Ravens fan but I know there's an Eagles plate on this particular Santa Cruz but either one is fine but either way you're pretty much set to go with this in bed storage and then once the ice melts again there's a drain within that so it's just gonna fall back down to the ground so that is pretty darn cool I love that and again to get up into that tailgate there's actually steps like I was telling you guys so it was very easy to get into there so definitely a big fan of that but now let's go ahead and make our way to the rear legroom that is going to come in at 36.5 inches so for reference I mean even six feet tall this is actually me sitting behind my own driving position so I don't know I think it could have been a little bit more wouldn't have minded if they made it a little bit bigger but it's not bad it'll get the job done rear ventilation does come standard there are two usb charging ports back there as well and there is a manual rear sliding window of course in typical pickup fashion for those rear passengers or if you wanted to put an extra long maybe two by four in there as well so center armrest with cup holders does not exist unfortunately on this Santa Cruz but now let's go ahead and make our way up to the front seats eight-way power driver seat with power lumbar coming with the SEL trim level and up there will be heated front seats again for the SEL trim level and up leather seating with the limited trim level only and ventilated front seats for the limited trim level only as well and by the way all of those buttons for the heated ventilated seats are located just in front of the center armrest here they're kind of on the center armrest really so didn't want to mention that but overall seating was incredibly comfortable I will say that definitely surprised me I don't know why I always expect pickup chucks not to have comfortable seating but the Santa Cruz definitely has very comfortable seating so I'll say that anyways now let's go ahead and make our way to the steering wheel it is tilt and telescoping it is leather wrapped for the SEL premium and limited trim levels only and then heated for the limited trim level only and by the way that heated steering wheel is located in the middle of those heated and ventilated seat buttons in case you were curious where that was located but steering will tend to grips though are perfectly fine as well definitely on the thicker side of things which I like but anyways now let's go ahead and make our way to the startup let me first start by showing you guys the key you do have your Hyundai logo on the one side then when you flip it over lock unlock that button to pop the rear tailgate and the circular button that says hold that is going to be your remote start and by the way the remote start and push button start does come with the SEL trim level and up so I wouldn't mention that and you actually do get a Hyundai digital key if you go with the SEL premium trim level and up and simply with that is I have it on my sonata you just download the Hyundai app and then you have the ability to lock and unlock your vehicle with your phone as well as start it up by simply placing it on the wireless phone charger them as well so you never actually need your key so that is pretty cool but anyways now making our way to the gauge cluster it's actually a 10 and a quarter inch digital gauge cluster if you go with the SEL premium or limited that's going to be optional on the SEL but we do have it today so I wouldn't mention it otherwise you're going to get the traditional analog gauges for that bottom trim level but this thing is pretty cool because when you change the drive modes that's my favorite part when you put in the sport it's going to do this kind of like explosion kind of graphic and then it's going to give you carbon fiber and red hues which I think is pretty darn cool and then if you put it back to all the other driving modes essentially look the same which is a very nice looking kind of white and black look but it is digital like I said and there are steering wheel mounted controls found on the right side of the steering wheel which allow you toggle between different things like a digital speedometer there is a compass up there your tire pressure information different safety features when you need your next oil change the list goes on so outside temperature how many miles you have left until you hit empty but definitely a very nice looking digital gauge cluster and I've seen these before in other Hyundai's but definitely a big fan of that anyways let's now go ahead and make our way to overall interior quality there is a power sunroof that's available it doesn't come standard but we do have that so a big fan of that auto dimming rear view mirror with homely controls for up to three different garage doors found in the SEL premium trim level and up dual zoom climate control again for the SEL premium trim level and up leather wrapped shifter for the SEL premium trim level and up that's really the sweet spot I think the SEL premium or the limited of course but a lot of extra features coming with those I like the design to the air vents as well because it kind of ties together with each other kind of follows this line on the doors and then it continues onto the air vents and it really continues all the way around the driver and passenger so I think that's a pretty cool look you have this nice kind of cloth feel kind of texturized cloth feel just above the passenger side glove box that continues onto the doors a lot of soft touch leather in this thing so both my left and right elbow were extremely comfortable I was just cruising on the road there because it is such as soft touch leather on the doors here there's tons of gloss black accents as well found around the shifter as well as around the infotainment screen which we'll get to in a second anyways just in front of the shifter you'll find that wireless phone charger found on the right and there is a little bit of rubberized storage then on your left there's a 12-volt power outlet dual USB charging ports to the right of the shifter you're going to have dual cup holders which is pretty cool and a lecture mechanical parking brake as well and within the center armrest you were going to find a decent amount of storage it looks like and they heck of a lot of change in this case anyways I actually love the interior quality of this like I said a lot of soft touch a lot of high-end materials even with the little knobs for the air vents it has a nice little silver finish on the tips to it so it's pretty darn cold but let's now go ahead and make our way to the infotainment screen because it keeps getting better eight inch color touch screen display coming with the s e s e l and s e l premium but with our limited trim that we have today you were looking at a 10 and a quarter inch color touch screen display 10 and a quarter inch of course to match the digital gauge cluster that makes sense but bluetooth and audio streaming do come standard wireless android auto apple car play here's the kicker for the eight inch screen only you actually have to plug it in still for the 10 and a quarter inch screen for whatever reason but I thought that was pretty cool though factory navigation system coming with the limited trim level only can of course adjust your climate control settings up there as well there is also a quiet mode which actually eliminates the speakers in the rear if you have your kids sleeping possibly and I believe the limit is like seven a volume of seven in the front so it keeps it low in the front as well completely shuts off the speakers in the back to keep your kids asleep I think that's pretty cool but one of my favorite parts about this thing is the ambient lighting you can adjust through this infotainment screen and so if you go to settings and then you go to vehicle then you go to lights and then you go to ambient lights you got to follow a little bit of a trail there wouldn't have minded if they gave the ambient lighting maybe its own widget on that main screen I think that would be pretty cool but you can adjust the brightness you can adjust the colors there is a set custom color option that's how you get your 64 different colors of ambient lighting so definitely a heck of a lot of options there right now it's set on orchid green which is pretty cool but yeah tons of different colors there and that's one of my favorite parts the ambient lighting in this thing but anyways you do also have a voice memo system so you can record your voice maybe if you don't want to forget something then play it back at a later date that's also very nice and your radio information is up there as well and by the way when it comes to the sound systems six speakers coming with the SESEL and SEL premium but you actually do get a Bose sound system if you go with the limited term level that we have today so having said that what do you guys say let's go ahead and turn on the radio see what we got playing today and let's test out the clarity of this one definitely a good bit of bass with that sound system I will say that you could tell it's a Bose sound system and I've had Bose sound systems in my cars before they've never failed me never broken or anything like that but that is a heck of a sound system for the Santa Cruz the only constructive criticism I have with that sound system is that there's no circular dial to maybe turn up and down the volume I don't mind adjusting the station with the infotainment screen the actual touchscreen itself because you don't adjust the station all that much and you can set your presets but with the volume I wouldn't mind if there was an adjustment kind of knob although you kind of adjust it with the steering wheel mild to controls the knob I think is still necessary maybe it's just maybe anyways last thing I wanted to mention to you guys on the infotainment screen is when you do put the Santa Cruz in reverse you will find an extremely high definition rear view camera that's a heck of a lot better than my Santa Fe I'll say that but my Santa Fe is a little older but anyways it's also a 360 degree monitor I'm looking at as well which is pretty darn cold with the picture of the Santa Cruz letting you know what is completely all around you which is always is going to lead us into safety and so to start front side side curtain airbags do come standard in the back you're going to have latch aka lower anchors to have their children for the very car seats rear child door locks tire pressure monitoring system but also coming standard for all trim levels will be forward collision avoidance assist with pedestrian and cyclist detection lane keep assist and a driver attention warning system as well and then if you were to go with the SEL trim level enough you will also find a blind spot collision avoidance assist system and again like I said with the limited also have that blind spot camera found on the digital gauges then as well so overall when it comes to my final thoughts here of the Santa Cruz I actually I'm digging this thing to me it's essentially like an SUV like the Hyundai Tucson but with the practicality of a truck if you're somebody that's into landscaping you constantly are buying bags of mulch or maybe you have some woods in the backyard and you're chopping down limbs or branches are falling down and you want to take them to the dump that's the kind of thing you don't want to put in an SUV because maybe the spiders are the bugs on the actual branches but you have no problem putting them in the bed of a truck so definitely a big fan for that particular reason excellent tech on this thing as well with the digital gauges with this massive 10 and a quarter inch infotainment screen with ambient lighting with wireless android auto apple carplay usually don't get on other manufacturers out there right now great interior quality great exterior styling it's different it's different exterior styling it's probably gonna be hit and miss with people but I actually like it because it's different it looks like nothing else on the road room for improvement as far as that goes the base engine from what I remember from driving it in other vehicles is kind of slow but this engine is freaking awesome there's no volume knob I wouldn't have minded that back to the plus side you do also get America's best warranty which means you get that 10 year powertrain warranty which is insane and you get three years of free maintenance as well which is going to save you some money so let me know what you guys think of the Santa Cruz in the comments section below I love reading your comments on these things that is about it for this one you guys thank you so much for watching feel free to follow me on social media at the bottom that's great if you want to see what's coming next on the channel before it actually gets to youtube be sure to hit the subscribe and the bell notification button if you're in a new car reviews that is what we do here on this channel after all do appreciate you guys watching more than you know and I will see you guys all in the next video stay gold


Hi, everybody. Welcome to what makes open source communities thrive remotely. My name is Eva Black. My pronouns are they and them. I'm currently the open source program manager for Azure Confidential Compute. I work with the Confidential Meeting Consortium, it's a Linux Foundation project. I also work in Kubernetes and some of you might have known me when I worked on OpenStack, or before that, my SQL. Well, today I'm going to share with you some of the things I've learned and some of the things that this community has taught me about how open source communities thrive and how that knowledge can be taken back into our companies, our day jobs, or even our social groups and help us survive this new, very, very distributed world that we live in today. Before I jump into open source, though I want to talk a little bit about the very first company I ever worked in back in 1999. First I had to call it, I joined a little gaming startup, mostly devs, no managers. Most of us didn't know what we were really doing. And I committed a lot to go down to Santa Monica once in a while, once or twice a week. We were all gamers. And so we'd all just kind of hang out after hours together in EverQuest, before World of Warcraft. And we worked long hours, sometimes random hours. We rarely had team meetings of the sort of like sit around an office or a whiteboard. And I've wondered, as I prepared for this talk, why did that seem to work so well? What have I implicitly recreated in other teams I've managed since then? And what stands out as I look back is that we bonded through a shared distributed experience, that after hours gaming, occasional dinners or happy hours, but a lot of the online interactions we had were connective in ways that a pure work environment might not be because we're all gamers. And we relied for work very heavily on asynchronous communications, chat systems which were normal for us as gamers, file shares, file drops, Wikis, again, things that we all had prior experience with as gamers back then. We also use the same tools for work. And we would schedule office time if we needed to solve something more challenging, needed a high ban on communication, if there was an HR issue, if there was a team, you know, big disagreement, we'd get on the phone or we'd all just drive into the office and schedule a Friday. And I didn't wanna just talk about my experience with that company or what I learned in open source. I wanted to bring in other perspectives, so I did the only sensible thing I tweeted and I asked for my friends, people that I'd met through open source to share their experience with me. And in total, I had almost 20 people reply and some of these spun off into further conversations. Folks that have been, you know, just joined open source in the past couple of years do some folks who've been doing open source for more than 40 years now before the term was even coined. Company founders, doc writers, people from a whole bunch of different communities all responded to me. And I do wanna call out a gap here in the sort of the virtual dataset that I collected. My Twitter following and my open source community doesn't reach that well into East Asia and not at all into Africa. And so I don't have any data for the ways in which people from those parts of the world or cultural backgrounds really connect in. That's unfortunate. And if anyone after this talk has those connections or insight there and wants to reach out, I would be so grateful to learn. So from all that data, three common principles emerged. That individual work is more challenging if you're coming from a traditional office environment into a distributed environment or an open source team, that is a barrier to entry that is a hurdle that we could work to get over. That in a decentralized team where you're not seeing each other, you don't have social grooming, your team cohesion degrades over time. And I'll come back to define that term that I just dropped, social grooming. It has a sociology context that I'll bring up in a bit. And then really that every person, every individual, every circumstance is unique. And so flexibility is key, both from your manager and flexibility and empathy with yourself is also key. So I'll talk for a few minutes about individual adaptation and techniques that have helped me and have helped friends and peers of mine that can be done by anybody who is moving into a distributed or decentralized work environment. The first and perhaps most important individual thing is to do everything you can to maintain a work-life balance that suits you and your needs. I've found having a separate office space with a door at some points in my life to be incredibly valuable. That is one of the most consistent pieces of feedback that I got. Being able to go to work while you're at home but still close that are behind you. And not everybody has the privilege to have that much space at home. But if you do, it's really great. What I've done for myself right now is I bought a 400 bucks, I bought a divider, a little four piece partition that folds up. And that can partition off part of one room. So there's just a visual barrier from the social part of the room to, okay, I walk around that, I sit down, I'm at my desk, I don't see my bed or a couch anymore. I'm just at work. And when I leave that, I walk around the partition and now I don't see my desk anymore. And related to that, several folks said, yeah, don't take your laptop to bed. And like, who can say we never do that? Come on. But I try not to. And I've gotten pretty good. I don't think I've brought my laptop to bed in at least a month now. Now for folks who are accustomed to commuting to work, a lot of folks said they used to have a ritual for this. Might listen to a podcast or having a phone call with a friend. And while we're all working from home, those are gone. But plenty of folks in open source and in my open source community said they have rituals that they have still created for themselves, which might be go for a jog, run around the block, do a little bit of exercise. And there's still a window to listen to that podcast if you wanted to. Find ways to recreate whatever your sense of normal was pre-COVID or in an office. If you're moving into a work from home distributed team, those rituals are still core to your mental health. Find ways to maintain them. And account for your own variations, both within a team, you're managing a team, everybody has their own schedule or for yourself as your life changes and your life circumstances change. Those variations come and go and you need to be able to adapt to them and have the right social supports to adapt to coffee break in the afternoons. And that might be when you normally see people, try to recreate that in your distributed environment. And accessibility is key. An office functions to normalize, that is to make standard and consistent the work space that everybody has. And if you have an accessibility need, different type of desk or keyboard, well, hopefully HRs are to give that to you. And if you're working from home, hopefully they're still able to get that to you. This is one of those areas where distributed and open source community is I've seen often struggle. Oh, we sent you a laptop, isn't that enough? And for a lot of people know, we also need a monitor that's elevated or wider and ergonomic keyboard, things like that. So it's very important to be able to provide that. And what about accessibility in terms of recreating our socially connective spaces? Could we do that through VR? Maybe, I haven't seen it work yet, but I'm hopeful, it'll be fine if it works. But this doesn't solve everything. Again, there's so much individual variance here. I can't talk through everything on this slide, but being able to and supported as we create accessible, workable environments in our work from home space, especially challenging if we are working from home with kids, I myself am not, I can't speak to that, but plenty of respondents shared their suggestions and a common, a really common theme from folks who are working from home with kids is, again, have the dedicated office space, have a co-parent or someone else who can help, if you need to record something for a conference or jump on a meeting, have the social supports to be able to do that that are so essential. And now I'm gonna spend a while talking about organizational adaptation. And this is really for if you are taking a team that is accustomed to being in an office culture and moving to a decentralized culture, whether that's because of COVID or you're changing your team structure anyway, this is where you can hopefully learn a lot from open source communities. And I'm gonna start with this theory that an anthropologist named Robin Dunbar came up with in about the mid-90s, that the amount of, he was studying premise, I should say, the amount of time available for social grooming between primates determined the size of the primate group and that a higher investment of time between members resulted in a tighter bond to move towards these inner circles. And that the maximum tribal unit was 150 to 300 people and we see that in open source communities all the time. OpenStack went through that evolutionary tipping point. Kubernetes has gone through that. Ubuntu went through that before. MySQL even before that. This is very consistent. The same thing happens also in company organizations. At about 100, 150 people, it's too large for most members of the group to know each other anymore and have the familiarity to know what someone else is working on to recognize them in a crowd. And we work best with people in these smaller groups where we know each other better. We know that we're working towards the common goals and have the same language to describe them. And in every open source group I've ever been in, teams have experimented with this balance of how often do we meet and how large are our organizational groups. And what we found consistently is that we need face-to-face meetings about every six months. That has been true both in distributed companies I've worked in, there were two of those that had no central office and three different open source communities. And the only exception to this that I've ever found has been in online gamer communities. Going back to that first company I worked at and ever since then, my hypothesis is that game communities have through practice and immersion in a virtual world, a game world, they've recreated social grooming in that context. Whether it's gifts of fresh baked pies in your game or whatever it might be, these little social kindnesses maintain those bonds in ways that we could do if we were in the office together taking each other out for lunch or having coffee in the afternoon that we cannot do just automatically in a decentralized environment. And another aspect of this as well is that a flat org and many decentralized groups try to become a flat org has a communication tax. Any team above about six people becomes unmanageable. This tax becomes unmanageable and eats away at productivity. And I have seen myself and I've tried different approaches to solve this, different hierarchies. None of them really work that well. And part of the reason has been that unintended clicks form in decentralized teams and that affects everybody. Any imbalance in communication bandwidth prioritizes and benefits some people that have higher bandwidth over those who do not. So imagine, if you will, there's a team of eight and six people live and work in the same time zone and two people work five time zones away. Well, if people are using synchronous communication Zoom calls, phone calls, instant message like Slack and they're just chatting all day long. The people who are five time zones away effectively only have three hours of overlap assuming that they work the same hours in the local time zone. And that means they are at about a 60% disadvantage to sharing knowledge, both giving and receiving. It's not their fault that they're going to suffer, but they will. And this has to be addressed at the hiring level at the organization level, the management level by balancing the bandwidth. And I have found two approaches that have worked. You either mandate the use of shared communication systems whatever the least common denominator is. If it is an actual bandwidth issue which could be accessibility, it could be, for example there, imagine those five people are in a conference room and two people are working from home over a bad intercom link. They will not be able to hear and participate in conversations as well because of the technology barrier. I've seen this solved by telling everybody, go work from home or go work from your desk with a headset. This has now created a common communication bandwidth that everybody's on the same equal footing. Solve that problem. Another way is to organize teams so that it balances the communication time. If nobody is sharing the same time zone, there's no click, there's no nexus of a majority of people in one time zone, then everybody learns the right tools to be disaggregated, to be asynchronous. Whether it's email or documentation, I'll get to that in a minute. Now there could be other solutions out there to balance the bandwidth. But these are the only two that I've seen actually work. Excuse me. Now for the rest of this talk, I'm gonna talk about some real challenges in organizational adaptation. How do we actually reduce that communication tax through documentation? Document everything. Anticipate that documents will age out. Use a standard template that specifies the doc owner, the creation date, the change date, the change history. If you need sign-offs when those sign-offs were required, document your plans, document your architecture, document your reasoning for decisions, document every meeting you have. It sounds tedious. It is critical. Cannot be overstated. And I have no suggestion as far as what technology to use a plain text file, Google Docs, whatever works for your team. But organizationally, you need to internalize the documentation is how you parallelize the effort of knowledge distribution. It's not one-on-one. It's not a live meeting where one third of your team doesn't get to attend. It is by writing it down and sharing that that other people are able to learn at their own pace on their own time, in their own time zone. And if you do need to have a meeting to solve something at high bandwidth, write the doc ahead of time and set aside the first 15 minutes of that meeting so that everybody can read it. Because there is no point in having the meeting where only half the people have read the document and only half the people can participate. If the other half, if their opinions aren't needed, they shouldn't be in the meeting. And if their opinions are needed, show them the grace of giving them time to read the document when we're all busy. One final note on documentation and meetings. I know some work like to record their meetings and think that that's enough. It's not. Recording is not searchable, indexable in the same way that a document is, nor is it versionable. So once again, please, documentation is the solution to scaling out and scaling out a decentralized team. It follows from this that people who write good documentation are force multipliers for your team, whatever your team is, whether it's an open source project or your company's product. And this work must be valued. It must be rewarded for it to happen. We get what we incentivize. We get what we measure. So if you do not measure and reward documentation and specifically hire for that skill, you will struggle to scale out a decentralized team. As open source product leads, I will say that we need to value that documentation, that contribution we need to reward it on the same and equal footing as the code in our open source communities. I hope that is not a controversial opinion anymore. And to support people in a decentralized environment, this is something that open source communities have some done well, some not so much, but it is especially critical now when we're not able to meet every six months. Project leads should be prioritizing contributor wellbeing through a variety of tools. We'll get to that in a second. And managers, you should also be organizing your teams to support that cohesion, giving them time, creating spaces for them, for your employees to come together socially and a time with you if they need anything. Now, what could this look like? What avenues do we have to bring our whole self, whether to work in a company or in an open source community? It's things like a video on happy hour or a tea time or a coffee chat in the mornings. Have a consistent, friendly face there that welcomes people in, makes them feel included in the space. It is that sense of belonging and safety that we need more than ever today. This could be a game night, trivia, scrabble, I don't know, whatever you like. It could be a book club. And if you do choose to do a book club in your company, like rotate around, who gets to pick the book and the topic? Whatever works for you and your group, community or team to support a decentralized community, especially when we cannot meet face to face every few months, make time for the same connections that we have lost. And these days, our chat is our culture that is nowhere more true than an open source community that lives on a mailing list or on IRC or on Slack. But it is especially true for all of us nowadays. And we should encourage the use of public channels, right?   So team leads, it's up to you to make these public spaces inclusive, welcoming and warm and help people overcome their tendency to revert to one-on-one private conversations. That is a huge part of our social cohesion today. And encourage natural chat styles, maybe in the main channel, maybe a separate channel, share cat pics, I don't know, whatever works, be human, show each other who you are and connect as humans. Lastly, I just really wanna bring this point home. Making our spaces inclusive so that people have the confidence to feel safe, being visible as who they are, their whole self. That isn't just about finding a few people from different demographics and bringing them in, that's diversity. Inclusivity is then having them stay and feel welcome and included and safe. I mentioned this quote here from a recent report on decrypting diversity in Infosack. Probably applies, a lot of the same things would apply to any community in tech these days. There's some really good information in there, you can just Google search for that report. And from the community folks who had reached out to me, I do want to say a special thank you to a bunch of them for their time and their input in this talk and for all the writing that they've done on the same topic. So if you wanna go do any further reading on this, there's some great resources there. Thank you all so much. Find the online questions, I'll be here for Alfred Chat. Bye.


Everybody forced here rip in 2022 and see football hobby four bucks full case number 116 pick your team style. Thank you all very much for filling this breakup. I hope we hit I hope we have an insane case right here. Just a ridiculously awesome case Barry with the Steelers last team mojo. Thank you, Barry Brandon W Broncos Brian D. Bengals Cowboys Brian P with the Eagles and Chargers Charlie with the Packers Chris B Bucks and Pats Dan F. Bills Harper with Washington Jabari with the Panthers James G. St. Geoffrey H. Colts Jets Jeffrey S. Chiefs John H. Seattle Kyle M. Niners and Giants Sorry, Kyle H. is the Giants. Kyle M. does have the Niners though Michael S. Cardinals bears and Browns as well as the Rams Michael F with the Falcons Michael T with the Ravens and the Jags Sean P. Lyons Stefan L. Vikings Terry R Texans Thomas B. Raiders and dolphins and then there's a Tom B with the Titans so Thomas Raiders dolphins Tom Titans. That's how the names were typed in right there And it's PYT. So you guys know who you bought. All right Okay, okay Let's go What she'll be pulling What shield we hit cuss out your daughter what that's pretty wild Not good. All right, here we go. Here we go. All right, here we go. Here we go. Here we go You've got thickies Montana 99 Joe Montaña San Francisco Midnights Brian Burns to 20 for Carolina Burns the 18 of 20 to burns in Carolina now hurricanes and Panthers Jersey card Raiders Darren Waller to 25 Brian Burns feature lion Patch card to 49 Ezekiel Elliott Cowboys Is that because Jack Campbell wasn't a good pick? Zeke to 49 for Cowboys there to 49 we have a Shaquille Leonard to 49 for the Colts Shaquille Leonard You've got a one of one Dual Nike swoosh laundry tag some college team mates here Desmond Ritter Alec Pierce Falcons and Colts rookies That will be a random at the end There you go. Good luck Falcons and Colts that's Falcons Jersey autograph Matt Ryan to 49 sweet hit for the Falcons Falcons potentially big really big break here Awesome Maddie ice on card as well. That's pretty nice Patriots autograph 90 of 99 drew blood. So yeah, Spencer for sure. I haven't seen him in a while Probably a couple weeks or so and even then he only stopped in for like patch auto 10 of 10 Joe Namath that's pretty sick 10 of 10 for the Jets That'll make its way to a mag. That's Jeffrey H for the Jets Broadway Broadway right there And for Seattle, we've got a crossover RPA to 25 of Tariq woolen John with Seattle go one of the last teams taken. Yeah, pretty pretty good overall first box there man Some really nice veteran quarterback Jersey autos and Namath and Ryan. We had the one-of-one woolen crossover All right, let's build on that. Let's build on that. Let's keep it going Eagles out of 49 to 50 to 50 is the modern Masters of Hertz Another midnight this time is to a that's sick 9 of 20 dolphins to a midnight Back-to-back great 2020 quarterbacks right there Game here Jersey and Juan Bolden for Baltimore. That'll be a game used Jersey to 99 heirlooms patch for the Broncos Jake plumber to 25 Denver Rashad Bateman patch card at 25 Ravens as well Nameplate player worn could be RO from rookie premier Jersey still maybe this chat is out out of control Jersey to 49 Trevor Lawrence Jags Hope he's okay, man. I really hope it's just like a sprain or something. I don't know who I don't think will be but rookie autograph Cowboys Cavante Turpin in 99 Giants autograph out of 99 gonna be Jason Seahorn Seahorn That is from the previous year It's a Jacob Harris or commit serial signatures to 87 Rams 2021 NT Jersey never parallel and Rick and material signatures commanders Brian Robinson jr. 26 of 99 Still limping base still right now doing it That was the longest tunnel why did they just get him from punches or something?  Hey, that's the Jags that might have said he wanted to walk off. It's also your job as Professional trainers of medical sassy like nope. No get off it There we go number to 56 Aaron Donald Super Bowl immortality Number 56 because that was Super Bowl they played in the one they won There you go Rams nice Donald there. That's to 25 tractor seat though modern masters Titans Niners Jersey to 99 Brandon I you Yeah, dude, let's walk half a mile to the to the back Framed fabric Jersey to 49 is gonna be jets Elijah Moore. 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Honestly, they never lose They're like they're like built to play there rookie autograph Dolphins 10 of 10 is gonna be Channing Tyndall It's a cool one Dude, what an auto Billy White shoes He signed it Billy White shoes Johnson the whole thing with the Personalized treasures to 49 Oilers go to the Titans Same franchise One of one NFL gear dual Nike swoosh laundry tag rookie autograph Raiders Xamir whites another one of one dual swoosh Vegas baby Viva that's a Thomas B Thomas be with the Xamir white And a true RPA of Johan Dotson 98 of 99 for Washington Harper with the commanders Yeah, I'm wearing nothing Nike very nice J. Dahl. We'll get that magged as well Right last box. Let's see you show me.  Thank God Vaughan Dude, I swear if they mess around to beat the Steelers, I'll be very upset Dawson isn't right. Yeah, that's definitely Okay, we've got Giants to 99 save on Barkley 26 Jersey number of 99. All right, that boosts it up a little bit there base modern masters out of 25 Randy soda Jersey Rams the 49 Cooper Cup. It really is Vaughan I keep wanting the Panthers to win so bad and they literally just cannot do it It's very frustrating Dual Jersey at 25 is Ed Reid for the Ravens. I'm almost mad the Patriots were kind of decent the first few weeks Like they were capable and certain aspects It's kind of annoying that they did that Ed Reid Ravens dual Jersey. That's very nice player worn At the end dual Jersey Jags out of 99. He's a baller though Dude Vaughan for real Like yeah, it's funny. They beat the bills. Ha ha ha, but come on now to powerhouse teams at it Yeah, everyone's super excited to watch Not only the Steelers, but the Trubisky Steelers Whoever the Pats are trotting out there dual Jersey fields to 99 Bears autograph to 99 rookie for the Rams Kyren Williams Monster here. Come on It's a 99 Packers autograph Lynn Dickey over runners 30 and a half under under It's Thursday night and like the Pats aren't just not first of all Pats can't score But they're also not allowing like any points right now. I don't think so either Lane I think it's gonna be under 20 RPA purple Jalen Tolbert out of 49 Dallas Like that's the lowest under I've seen in so long and I would bet the under we've got Commander Sam Howell rookie jumbo prime signatures book out of 99 commanders and really well You're actually hitter Robinson a J. Dot true and then a Howell book Overall they hit several times 92 and 99 for Harper there pretty decent random to do here Falcons Colts a dual tag here I'll do $20 bad beat forever. There's not get this one in the random Pierce and Ritter college teammates there three times two and one or some top gets it one two and Three as Falcons up top Colts. I'm gonna send $20 bad be credit to your account Let's go ahead and do a recap. All right, we got relics of fields Etienne that's at Reed Cooper Cup Sam Howell Tana Hill and Henry Elijah Moore Brendan. I you Trevor Lawrence. That's Rashad Bateman Jake Plummer and Quan Bolden Shaquille Leonard Ezekiel Elliott's and Darren Waller RPA purple of Tolbert That's Lynn Dickey Kyren Williams Billy White shoes Johnson Chanting Channing Tyndall Brian Robinson, Jr. Jacob Harris Jason Seahorn Kavante Turpin That's Tariq wool and crossover RPA True blood. So Matt Ryan Jersey auto Sam Howell RPA book for the commanders Do a laundry tag Ritter and Pierce Falcons Colts went to the Falcons in the random Colts giving you some bad beat credit true RPA J. Dot for the commanders And I felt gear dual Nike swoosh laundry tag autos in mirror white Raiders and patch auto Joe name a 10 to 10 for the Jets All right, that is gonna do it. Thanks. Get everybody moving on now to personals. I guess for the time being


All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Product School, and today's topic is tips and tricks for breaking into product management. I'm Arjun Lalani. I will be moderating your session today and also answering some of the questions here. And I'm joined by some amazing guest speakers we have on the panel. So why don't we start off with some intros? Olivia, you want to kick us off? Sure. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Olivia. I'm a product manager on the Alexa Kitchen team at Alexa within Amazon. I've been a product manager now for about five years, have worked at Netflix, Stitch Fix, and now Alexa. And I'm figuring out Alexa in this new LLM universe. So happy to be here and talk about product. Amazing. Jake. Hey, folks. Thanks, Arjun. Thanks, Olivia. Nice to meet you guys. My name is Jake Perring. I'm a senior PM at LinkedIn, where I've been for about the last six months. Prior to that, worked as a PM in the startup world of AdTech, which was fun, and then at Intuit on TurboTax for a couple of years. So jumping all over the place. Currently at LinkedIn, I work on our business productivity platform, which is essentially how can we use AI to make it easier to do business in and with LinkedIn. And excited to be here to talk about breaking into product management. I love the topic. So thanks for having us and excited to hand it over to you, Michelle. Thank you, Jake. Hello, everyone. My name is Michelle. I'm currently a product manager at Grammarly. I've been a product manager for almost three years now. I'm currently on our enterprise team, where I look at expansion. So taking our current self-serve accounts and thinking how we can grow and expand their seats and account value. Awesome. And I'm Arjun. I'm a product manager at YouTube. I work on the e-commerce side of things. So we're trying to make shopping happen on YouTube. And before that, I was working on hotels and so doing a little bit of like Google travel when you search hotels near me. Okay. With that, I will kick it off. I have some questions lined up for our panel here, and we'll also take some questions from the audience as there are any follow-ups. So, Olivia, let's start with you. Can you share what are ways people can start demonstrating their ability to be a product manager before they have the formal title of a PM? Yeah. I think something that has come up a lot in conversations with folks who want to become product managers is just how difficult it is to get the title of product management. There's this cache around it. And a lot of jobs have product management aspects to them. And so something that I always recommend is hone those skills and demonstrate that ability to be able to show the team that you want to work with or maybe you want to transition into a formal PM role. Demonstrate that you've done it and you can actually articulate here are the ways that I did that. I think the core way to do that is really just like understanding who is your customer and always grounding yourself in the customer problem. And that can be whether you're working on enterprise product or working on an actual end user problem. Just being really thoughtful about spending your time on synthesizing what is a customer issue and staying close to that and then making sure that whatever you're doing is addressing those needs. I think the best way to possibly get into product management if you're already doing things that sort of feel like product management is to find mentorship within the product community that you work with. So if you're in biz ops or product marketing, partner closely with PMs and provide insights and inputs to them and kind of try to be their buddy. And then you can demonstrate your value in a lot of the things that they're working on. And that's I think a more seamless way to then transition into that role because the elusive title sometimes is hard to come by. But I've definitely seen people convert roles and change job titles based on the scope of the work that they're doing. So it takes a little bit of your own gumption and effort to structure that. But it definitely can be done. Awesome. And anyone else want to add anything to that? I think that's very valuable piece of advice. Yeah, those are great points, Olivia. Maybe the only other thing that I would add is in addition to spending a lot of times with PMs and learning to think the way they do, ask a lot of questions like a PM might, questions that are, you know, more forward to hear their opportunities for me to assist as a product analyst or help drive something on the roadmap or be a part of making some of these database decisions or pull metrics that might assist. And I think by doing that, you'll get to do two things. You'll demonstrate ability and interest for the role. And then you also get to learn if it's actually a good fit for you, which I think is one of the biggest other things before, you know, you break into any field. You have this idea in your mind, or you know, someone who works as a PM or a software engineer or doing something and it sounds cool, but how do you get to experience that and see if it's something that'll be fulfilling or exciting, keeping engaged day after day? Pretty cool as well. Awesome. Jake, while I have you, do you find that MBAs have a better shot getting an interview? Can you debug that for us? And how do they do SPMs if they come in with like a little tech technical experience and not a bunch of computer science background? Great question. So yeah, it sounds like the question is, how does an MBA Master of Business Administration fit into the mix of breaking into product management or is it recommended? I think the unfortunate answer is that it varies pretty widely. MBA internships can be really helpful for folks who can land a couple of months trial run at big company, a tech company of any sort to act as a PM intern. Maybe one reason I like talking about this topic is because my personal experience was that I got an online MBA while working full-time from a much smaller school and it certainly helped get my foot in the door for some interviews, but the reality is that many successful PMs break in without that sort of degree on their resume. And so did it help me? Did it not help me? Probably survivorship bias? I'm not really sure. So my recommendation for friends or family members who think about that is if pursuing an MBA is something that fits into your overall love for learning or desire to network or feels like a good career break for you to refocus on some things, then by all means I would recommend it. And it realistically probably opens some doors maybe at any role to get in the interview position. But whether or not you need one to become a successful PM, I'm not totally sure. What are the rest of you folks think? I also have an MBA, so I can provide a bit of my take on that. I don't know that an MBA is necessary for the product job. Some folks I've talked to are currently product managers and they're like, oh, I'm considering getting my MBA. And when I ask what do you want to do after, they're like, oh, I want to stay in product. I'm like, you already have a job. It's a very expensive commitment. It has a lot of pros, but it's also opportunity cost of time out of work and of course the actual dollar cost of going. I will say, though, that what I think the MBA affords is like a point in time to pivot. So if you're pivoting careers or you're going from like, I have plenty of colleagues who used to be teachers or worked in like an operations capacity or something totally different from like a more technical big tech role, the internship opportunity really does give you that time and companies are recruiting folks that they know or maybe in between different opportunities. So it does give you that option to test something out and being an intern is a more risk-free hire for a company. So I think they're willing to take a bet. Something that you could also do if you're not pursuing an MBA is reaching out to companies and doing some product management work on the side in the form of like a consultant. I've seen folks do that too where they say for, let's say you have some friends who work at some startups and startups are always looking for for free help, reaching out and saying, hey, I'm willing to do some help provide feedback on your onboarding flow or whatever your skill set might be or what your interest is. So that could be an opportunity also. But yeah, the MBA, I wouldn't say it's required because there's so many folks who can get into product without it. But yeah, I think to Jake your point like it does, it gives you a skill set that if that's valuable to the company you're interviewing with, then you can lean into, but it's not required. Yeah, and I can give like my take on this. I came in without an MBA into Google and all my managers have an MBA. So the existential crisis always is like, do I need to get an MBA to get to where you are? And their short answer has always been like, no, not at Google. So I know it does not apply here. But if it's a place that I would want to go network and have some fun, they always say like, go do it. Because there's like a great experience for them. So that's been like the two cents. Okay, there's a question from the audience. We want to be able to take all of them. So I'll just pick one or two at random. But Paloma asks, what does a day to day look like for a PM? So Michelle, you want to, you want to give us a day to day? Yeah, I feel like I'm going to give the most canned answer. It varies. I think, you know, someday, so I'm a growth PM, which is a subfield of product management. Some PMs are more front end, some are more features, more infrastructure. So on my day to day, it can vary. Like, I definitely have frequent check ins with my engineering team, because in growth, the cadence is so much faster, we can maybe ship experiments and under like a few weeks, two weeks. So having a close cadence standups, they're called with my engineering team is something that happens several times per week. You know, I could also be spending my days, like writing product specs requirements or meeting with cross functional stakeholders to make sure that they're okay with the scope and the complexity and the timeline we have for a feature or an experiment.  So we conduct usability tests and synthesizing those with our product marketer or user researcher is something that I also do. So I'm sorry, the can responses, it does vary. But I think if you think of the stereotypical skill sets that PM has around cross functional coordination, cross functional coordination, writing products, specs, kind of execution, user research, those all happen in different days. Yeah, totally agree with all of that. That seems like a difficult day for me. Okay, Jake, tell us about big tech courses, startups, where do you think one could go to demonstrate that their interest in the PM craft, like what is easier, what is the difference and maybe walk us through some of your experience there? Yeah, definitely. And it's a good question. I would say, generally speaking, breaking into big tech as a PM is going to be a more difficult path. So many big tech companies like LinkedIn or Intuit where I work previously have a fairly hard requirement that you need to have worked as a product manager for about five years to be hired as an experience hire. There are other avenues which are June, you could probably tell us about through the PM internship, or you kind of came up as a PM, which is awesome. But I think for many folks, if you're looking to break into PM and you're not currently an undergrad or pursuing maybe the MBA route, which we talked about before, one of the better opportunities is going to be to find a role within a startup or a smaller company, whether as a pure product manager or a product owner is some time a role embedded within a scrum team that works closely with engineers to prioritize features or build a roadmap. And I think the beauty of that is, well, first of all, there's a lower barrier to entry. So if you have an inclination towards strategy, communication skills, working well at an executive level, and really good collaboration, I think there are ways to break into that even with relatively little product experience. And then you'll also get really deep exposure to a lot of different parts of the product management craft. And so that can be a cool experience as well. Thinking about, you know, as Michelle mentioned, am I more interested in building really delightful customer experiences on the front end or data structures or growth or different things like that? Big tech product management is definitely a more unique adventure. You're collaborating with dozens, if not literally hundreds of individuals to try to build into a complex roadmap because you're part of a massive company that has shifting goals, as we've all seen in recent years. So there's a lot of compelling things about big tech, but that's been my experience overall so far in the smaller company versus larger. We'd love to hear from some of you other folks on the panel. What do you think? Yeah, I can go. I mean, I've had only the big tech experience I've spent most like after college, most of my career is Google. And it has become a lot more like coordinating headwinds, right? Like it is, I started off with a simple project and doing simple things. And now it's a lot more complex where I'm working with at least like 15, 20 p.m. at any given moment, trying to get things on roadmaps and coordinate. And I think the clear advantage there is just that you have access to so many customers, right? And that's amazing. And distribution is like an inbuilt advantage for us. And getting the right thing out can sometimes take a lot of iteration for us. So I think there are like the trade-offs where you probably don't need a ton of marketing to get things out, but you do need to think about the experience end-to-end and nothing can be like an incomplete journey. And so we spend a lot of time refining and perfecting things. And sometimes that can take us a while to like get to launch because we're like perfecting a lot of stuff and making it fit in like a coherent timeline. So I think there are like the trade-offs that come that do come with it. Okay, I will turn to Michelle on the next question here. So how do you track your personal and career growth in the p.m. role? And after that, I'll take an audience question. Yeah, great question. I think when I first transitioned into a p.m., I was just trying to get my bearings. So I think for people who are interested in transitioning to become a p.m., I think I spent my first year just focused on execution, like just not taking maybe an open end. The problem itself was defined, but the solution was open-ended. And so that was kind of where my skill set was and where my competency was. And I was just focused on like how do we create the best solution possible for this already defined problem. So it was much more concrete that way. And so I feel like I measured my own personal career, like career growth just on getting the lay of the land of what a p.m. is. But I think as I become more senior, I have started to tackle more ambiguous problems. So things that aren't clearly defined where I have to interview users to find the problems, set our goals, so for growth, a lot of it is based on revenue or bookings, and then build out a roadmap based on that ambiguous business problem. So I think at a high level, that's kind of how you think about, like as a p.m., it's like you start off more junior and you're just focused on execution. And I think this can apply to any role, even outside of product, but as you get more senior, the work you do, especially on the IC track is much more ambiguous. So I know there's a lot of great frameworks out there, like Reforge has a really good one. I think there's like 12 dimensions and competencies. And definitely I think I look at those, but I think if I just take a step back and summarize it, it's like every year, are there problems I'm tackling more ambiguous, more open-ended? And how do I build the skillsets? And also get the buy-in, because I think the more ambiguous it is, the more up for debate things are. So then you have to really flex your soft skills and negotiate and compromise or just get to the best optimal solution with the stakeholders involved. So that's like at a high level, how I track it. Awesome. I am seeing a lot of questions around certification. So maybe we can take this one by Sophia, who's echoing other questions here, but her question is, are certifications such as Scrum Master or Scrum Order actually useful in order to land the first product roll, especially for industry hires who are not new grants? I can take a stab at this one. I've worked with folks before who had this distinction. I would say do this if you think it will help you and you're interested in it. Like I wouldn't do a program just for like, oh, my expectation is out of this, I'm going to get a fancy new job. If you can find a program that has a recruiting or networking component where as part of your certification or program you get access to companies or job fairs, I think that would be worthwhile. So I would like temper your expectations. I think in all of the rules that I've had, no one talks about certifications or like college or business school or anything like none of us talk about it because it's just like what work do you do. So that is at times like hopefully comforting, but also a bummer if you've spent a lot of money on getting fancy degrees and certifications. But yeah, so I would say like consider for yourself like how much you want to participate in a program like that and then try to find ones that have added value services for the people who partake in it. So if they offer recruiting and career support too, that would be a good opportunity. Awesome. And my common piece of advice on this, which a lot of students come to me and like, hey, how do I break into like product or other folks that advice? My usual answer, which can seem a little high effort, is try to start something and try to grow it and try to get people to like basically be a PM without needing to be an official title given to you. And so for example, I have friends who like sell cupcakes and I'm like, cool, like you make good cupcakes, just sell it, like try to get customers, try to grow that business. You don't need to make it like massively successful. But if you can do something that just creates a product and you can get people to buy it and grow that like marginally, you will start thinking like a PM and that experience will be actually really valuable. Does not matter if it's like a software product or hardware product or like something as simple as like t-shirts or whatever, right? And then just try it. And that is like probably the best way I have seen people build the mindset. And then you will start learning that, okay, like user research is important. I need to know what customers want. And you're defined success metrics to grow this. I need to like work with a talented team, blah, blah, blah. It's more of a CEO mindset, but I think that's okay. Cool. Let's go. Can I jump in with one here, Arjun? Because I think the question that a lot of folks are asking in the comments is, hey, I've decided that I'm interested. Maybe I have a certification. Maybe I don't. I think the question that I might have would be, okay, if I'm Arjun and I've worked for five years and I sell insurance, but I decide I want to pivot into product management, literally, what would you go do today? What would be your next steps for how to get in front of a company smaller big? Would you get certifications? How would your network, would you cold apply some of those like kind of really practical tips that hopefully can help some of the folks have tangible next steps? And Michelle, Olivia, would love to hear from you guys as well. How would you literally today try to break into product management if you didn't already work in the role? Yeah, I feel like maybe I can maybe comment on a similar experience I had. And hopefully that's hopeful. I think if I had no idea, I would first reach out to my network on LinkedIn or my own personal contacts just to understand what the role is like for other product managers to see if it's something I'm interested in. So I think that's the first step, just understanding what a PM is. There's also a really good book by Melissa Perry, The Escaping the Bill Trap, that I read. It's pretty short. So it's actually a very good book. It has examples and case studies of what PMs do, good and bad practices. So I actually read that it was very helpful and enlightening just to understand what PMs do. And I think from that point on, it's like, I think talking to people in that book gives you an idea of what the competency areas are for a PM. And you can try and get those a internally for your company, like there's a product functioning your company, saying, hey, I'm interested, meet with a manager in that work, try to see if you can craft out a project to do that kind of test if you like being a PM. I think internal transfers are easier because you may not have the PM skill set, but you already know the company. So the hiring managers may be more likely to do that trade-off. It's like, I don't have to onboard them about company practices. And if they're smart and they're hardworking, I think they can pick up some of the PM crafts. I think that's at least was my experience. I was in BizOps before and I happened to work with the head of growth product on some projects. And we clicked. We worked well together. When the role came up, he offered it to me because he knew I expressed interest and I networked and reached out to him about me, the interest at MPM opportunities. That being said, if that's not available to you, I would go with what Arjun is saying, like with there's so many tools out there now to build your own idea, like no code stuff. And also with chat GPT, those LLMs, it's so easy. The barrier has never been lower to build your own website or product with no code or low code solutions. And I will say there's also pretty good books out there. So if you want to know, how do you identify a problem? How do you interview customers? The mom test is really good. Continuous discovery habits by Teresa Torres is also good. I think I read those too to teach myself how to properly interview customers because as a growth team, I don't do that as much, but I really wanted that discovery customer problem interview skill set. So there's a lot of resources out there too. If you wanted to self teach yourself how to do some of the PM skill sets, if you don't get that at work. Yeah, I think just going back to something I mentioned a few minutes ago, I think the sort of volunteering to take on product type roles or projects rather, that's not your day job. So in Jake's example, you sell insurance, you want to become a product manager, what can you do to support your own product experience building and portfolio? Think of it like building a portfolio and becoming a product consultant of sorts. So reaching out to maybe it's like insure tech companies and saying, hey, I'm like really good at insurance. I know the product super well. It's very technical and like very nuanced. I would love to give you some product feedback on your website or something about their customer experience. I think that is always like really welcome, like everyone loves to get some free advice and free help. And that way you can start building out those experiences and having things to point to so that when you do interview, you can say, I've consulted on these product areas, I've provided guidance on like building out a mini roadmap for a team or providing a prioritization of the next five things that they should do to improve some metric. So I think that is a good way to demonstrate and like if anyone here like one of my I like have very strong bias for action. So if it's frustrating for anyone else to be like, oh, I have to like take a class or do this thing like to just start doing things like that is a good way to just start figuring out like a if you like it and be just to grow your your portfolio is reaching out to places and providing your your input and guidance as well. Totally. Yeah, I echo with all those points and something that helped me as well when I was trying to get into PM was I just did a lot of coffee chance with like, I was interning a bunch of companies and I was like, hey, PM's like, I'd like to just get get coffee with you and talk to you about your role and understand it and see what you do what projects you have and if you haven't like and if I can work on something you have don't have bandwidth, like, I would love to help right and most cases they're like, okay, here's like something you can pick up and if it went well, there was a cool line to come back as a product intern next summer. Okay, that sounds good.  Maybe something similar if you could take on and be usually joked that it's like 120% because you're doing 100% of your work plus the 20% it's never 80 20. So kind of if you can flex your like, work week a little bit and take on some product work like that will definitely help.


Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was up there for a minute, like I said, man, he threw a good ball. You know, the hand is a jack-of-all-trades, so like I said, man, he threw a good ball and went up and go get it. What'd you say? I'm sorry. You guys kind of threw the kitchen sink out of your mouth, man.  Yeah, I mean, kind of did. But, you know, that's our style of play. You know what we wanted to do when we came in here? We hit our keys and we got the win. That was huge.  You know, they couldn't turn over for us. We got to make it happen and try to get some points up on the board. And that's what we did today. Defensive, a phenomenal job of, you know, holding that offense. That was a great offense. So, uh-oh, we were real happy with this win. Yeah, that's the type of players we got in this room. Real relentless, resilient players. I'm proud of each and every one of these boys. And I love going to war with them. What's up? Oh, yeah, I'm tuned in. I'm tuned in all day. No doubt, man.


Previously, we have talked a lot about our social issues and the causes of those issues that why we are facing such issues. But in this module, we are going to talk about a way forward. It means that how we would be able to solve or resolve those issues of Pakistani society which are not only affecting the culture as well as the structure of society but also the lives of people. So let's first talk about the economic solutions because economy is pretty much contributed to the other problems as well. The generation of job opportunities would be a way forward because modern society is pretty much service oriented. Those statistics reveal that the most advanced countries are having a larger share of service sector as compared to the other sectors. So we need to enhance our service as well as industrial sector in order to produce a lot of job opportunities. The provision of quality education is another important aspect we should not merely rely on the quantity that how much students we are producing and also how much grades they are seeking but rather our focus should be more on quality education. In other words, we need to be focused less on academic ritualism and more on the goals of education. My goals of education means that our focus should be more on the task oriented education that what this education is going to achieve rather than merely following the existing rules and merely following the rituals of this education system. The provision of more technical education should be required because this period of modernization or this period of postmodern society, this period of pretty much global society requires more and more professionals, more and more specialized people, more and more technical people. We need to produce more technical people who should be oriented towards the practical problem solving kind of education instead of merely focusing on the theoretical aspects of education. And controlling overpopulation has two diversified views. One of the views is that Pakistan has a greater chunk of the young population which can be used as the largest potential, largest productive population of the whole world. So it means that we are fortunate enough to have a relatively larger chunk of younger population as compared to other societies which can be used as a resource rather than as a burden. However, for that we need to have adequate proper population planning which should focus more on the activities that can surround the lives of young people, how we can make them more vibrant, how we can make them more productive and how we can meaningfully engage them in the whole structure of the society. Education of the agriculture is another aspect because agricultural products are pretty much mandatory, pretty much required to survive because our survival is dependent on the agriculture. We get food from that agricultural product so agriculture needs to be given much more attention not only by the government but by the non-governmental organizations. And also equal access to the market should also be prioritized in a way that poor people have less opportunities to access the international markets. For example, maybe since this is the globalized era and we are much more shifted rather pretty much shifted on the online markets as compared to the real life markets. So we can develop a lot of mechanisms where even the poor vendors or the working class can also be directly linked with their customers through the online mechanisms and such policies needs to be implemented on the grass root level. And increasing the individual income it means that the focus should not be more on those who own the means of production, who own the resources and who are on the powerful who are already on the powerful position but the economic policies should be diverted to those who are on the marginalized position and who are the real working class. They are the real contributors of the economy. So the focus of the policies should be individual, those individuals rather than those few collectivities who are already on the powerful position. And similarly important aspect is the creation of safe working environment for both genders especially for the female because almost 50% of our population is female and interestingly there are more females who are getting higher education in Pakistan as compared to the males. So we need to produce a pretty much safe and reliable working environment by keeping in view our cultural ideologies and our religious ideologies so that the female could feel comfortable in the working environment. When we have the political solutions it means the formulation of a pretty much vibrant public policy and elimination of terrorism is a must because if we do not have the safe working environment here we would be losing the potential of investors. The sufficient allocation of funds to the education and health is a must because these two are consequentially interrelated not only interrelated but are also related to producing the other problems poor health and poor education would ultimately produce the citizens who would be unable to work and who would be unable to be productive. And eradication of corruption must be prioritized why because it discourages those who are having talent in your society and talented hardworking intelligent people would lose faith on the system if they find that the merits are not taken care of so they would tend to be fleeing out of the country which means that it would create the brain drain. Your best brains would be going out of your country and in order to preserve those brains in order to keep them keep them here in the country we need to produce a reliable environment which could be trusted by the people which should ensure the merit in the country. The establishment of training and technical skill centers should also be prioritized because today's era is more based on the practical knowledge which should generate more economic solutions as compared to what we are seeing that more theoretical knowledge had been available in the books that was considered pretty much useless by the students and they often got alienated from that knowledge because it had little practical utility in their everyday lives and encouragement of multinational companies should also be prioritized in a way that they should be given incentives for investing in Pakistan and eradication of energy crisis is a must because if there is no energy available if there is no electricity we won't be able to run our industry and consequently would fail to meet the desired quality and quantity standards of global international markets. If we talk about the social remedies it means the establishment of more and more schools in the rural areas and raising awareness about education also raising awareness about water safety arrangements of seminars for making people conformist to the social policies betterment in the school infrastructure and free and compulsory education should also be encouraged and social campaigns against the illiteracy and other social manners should also be launched religious solutions means that to promote interfaith harmony abolishment of hate literature taking madrasa under the direct government control formulation of strict policy about the hate speech and indoctrination of the true spirit of Islam among people and elimination of extremism and banning the terrorist outfits should be priority and finally if we talk about the educational solutions it means that the adequate allocation of GDP to the education mobilization of community for and role and rolling their children to the school improving the infrastructure of education imparting professional training among teachers and the establishment of a uniform education system which should not be based on the public private but on the one syllabus education system.


So there are two Merlin Trolls in the South Seabog area and today guys I'll guide you through both. Now to start the Merlin Trolls you need those mellow sweet leaves. Here I recommend you do grow these yourself within the room of requirement. You can purchase the seeds from the Magic Neat vendor in the Hogsmeade.  You're going to need so many for the Merlin Trolls in this game. So definitely recommend buying the seeds and growing these plants yourself. Okay so there are two Merlin Trolls within this area and today I'm going to guide you through both. Okay so the first one can be found right here on the map and this one requires the spell of Lumos. So here guys start the trial then use the Lumos to attract the butterflies to the pillars as I do one screen now. Okay so this next Merlin Troll can be seen located right here on the map. This one requires a basic spell. So start the trial guys and then destroy the Nine Orbs as you see me do on screen now and you'll get this one done. And there we have it guys both Merlin Trolls within the South Sea Bug area.  So if you do want to check them out just click on my channel name. Guys if you enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps out if you like what you see and want to see more Hogwarts. Be sure to subscribe and hopefully guys I will see you on that next. One.