So, is it true? Leah's voice carried to me over my shoulder. As I headed out the door of the lecture hall, backpack slung across one shoulder and a half-eaten apple in my hand. Dread filled me, as I stopped with my back to her and my mouth full, trying to figure out how to answer. I knew what it was, even though Leah hadn't specified. It was the same it as always. It wasn't that the question itself was so bad, or even the answer. It was that it always led to more questions. The same questions, all ending with the one they had really wanted to ask from the start. And that was the question I was dreading as she caught up to me, all smiling blue eyes and bouncing red curls. I swallowed the half-chewed apple, feeling it stick uncomfortably in my throat as it went. Is what true? I stalled, beginning to walk towards the main door of the building. Leah fell into step beside me, and we joined the herd of students moving out to the courtyard. She grinned, a look of excitement on her pretty face. Is your grandpa really Jack Forrester? I sighed internally. Truthfully, I had been expecting her to ask for weeks now, ever since I went over to her apartment to study for our philosophy midterm, and found a shelf lined with grandpa's albums. He was a local legend, and most of my family was very active in the town's musical community, so she was bound to find out we were related sooner or later. Not seeing any way to avoid it, I answered her. Yes, it's really true. She immediately began squealing with excitement, and I took advantage of the pause to finish my apple. Oh my god, I have so many questions. You probably don't know this, but he is one of my favorite musicians. I have every single one of his albums. It must have been so amazing to have such an incredible musical influence. Leah trailed off as she took in my expression. She frowned, her mood immediately dampened, and I felt guilty for squashing her excitement. I'm sorry. I sighed, tossing my apple core into a trash can as we pass through the first set of doors to outside. It's not that I don't love him or want to talk about him, it's just not that good of a story. What does that mean? Leah watched me curiously as we stepped out into the afternoon sun. The courtyard was bright and open with a large lawn in the center, ringed with flagstone and dotted with benches and picnic tables. The pack of students exiting the building began to disperse and we followed the crowd, keeping left towards the main bus stop. I contemplated running through all the usual questions with her, but decided that I would skip right to the part she really wanted to know. Grandpa Jack doesn't play anymore. She gaped at me, as expected. Never? Not even just for himself? I shook my head at her question. Not even for himself.  I've only heard him in recordings. My mom heard him in person a few times, but she was so young she says it's hard to remember. A crease appeared between Leah's brows as she absorbed my words. But why? He was so talented, they said he was one of the best of the best to ever play that his music could make you feel things like no one else's. Even the recordings are amazing. I can't imagine how incredible it would be to hear live. They say he never played the same song twice. To think it hasn't existed in almost 60 years is heartbreaking. I nodded, sympathizing with her reaction. It was the same response for anyone who had heard Grandpa's music. There was something about it that moved you in such a unique and inexplicable way that it made you immediately hungry for more. Like the sound was a drug delivering concentrated emotion directly to your soul. To find out that the supply was limited, never to be expanded or renewed, brought a sense of desperate loss to most of his fans. It was probably why the legend of the tapes had remained such a stubborn presence in the history of my grandfather's musical career. Hell, even I had felt the same way once, before I had asked him myself and seen the pain in his eyes. I don't really know. No one does. My mom says it's heartbreak. After his wife died, the part of him that made that music died too. My uncle says it was just the stress of raising two kids alone while still mourning, that he just didn't have the time and eventually he lost the taste for it. I shrugged, head down as I dug in my pocket for my bus pass. I felt a twinge of sadness as I thought about how my grandfather must have felt after receiving the news that his wife had been killed in a fatal car accident. Seeing him the single father of a six-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son, what do you think? Leah's voice was soft, her expression curious. I thought back to when I was nine, watching grandpa lean over Lyric, helping to place her tiny fingers on the piano keys. My sister's legs swung from the bench, sparkly blue eyes catching the sunlight. I sat on the couch opposite them, a juice box in one hand, and a dark green pencil in the other. Unlike my mother and sister, I had no interest in music. I took more after my father and preferred to draw rather than play.  I was released from the hated lessons, and now I got to eat snacks and draw instead of suffering through scales and songs. Grandpa, why don't you play music anymore? I regretted the question immediately as I watched a flicker of pain pass over grandpa's face. He was silent for a moment, seeming to consider my question. Lyric and I were quiet too, waiting for him to speak. I loved playing very much, but it took me away from things, and it took me away from me. When your grandma died, I realized that it took too much, so now I teach. I pass on my knowledge so that something pure and new can be born. Now I give something without losing something. I blinked and turned my eyes back to Leah, standing next to her under the shelter. The bus stop was crowded, students pushing against each other to get into already packed buses, the smell of exhaust heavy in the air. I shrugged and she leaned in to hear me over the cacophony of the platform. I think that after his wife died, he decided to go in a different direction. We won't push him on it out of respect, but I can guarantee you there's no secret tapes, no extra recordings or unreleased songs. If you want to hear his music, it's going to be through other people. Leah's disappointment was palpable as I destroyed the last of her hopes in the rumors that circulated online. The secret tapes of Jack Forester was a cult legend that insisted my grandfather had continued recording music all these years but no longer released it to the public. It was the most long-lived but far from the only rumor about him. Some believed he had never really played to begin with and the refusal was just a way to protect his scam. After Swore, he had sold his soul to the devil to learn how to play and had stopped to keep the beast at bay. That was the problem with a local musical icon suddenly and mysteriously vowing never to play again. People talked until gossip became legend. And now in the age of the internet, they share their crazy theory online. I sighed, running my hand through my hair as I looked down at Leah. Look, I'm sorry to dash your hopes like that, but the truth is that despite what you may have read online, he's just a sweet old man who likes to teach music and leave the past where it lies. He used to be Jack Forester, but that was a long time ago. Now he's just a composer and a grandpa of three. I smiled roofily at her and she returned it, though it was nowhere near as bright as when we began our walk. It's okay. I probably shouldn't have jumped down your throat like that. I was just so excited. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable or sad.  She smiled at me, then leaned out of the shelter, scanning the line of buses pulling in. Well, that's me, number 77, I'll see you tomorrow. I nodded and offered her a wave as she pushed out of the shelter. Elbowing her way across the platform, she scrambled up into the bus just as the door shut. I stared out into the road, long after it pulled away. My mind on my grandfather and his infamous past. I was so distracted that I missed my bus pulling into the station and had to run and flag them down before they left without me. Panting slightly, I picked a seat in the middle of the bus and dropped down next to the window backpack flopped across my lap. The bus ride home was uneventful and 15 minutes later I was walking into the kitchen of my grandfather's house. The narrow two story had stood there for almost 100 years and my grandfather had been there for more than half of them. Even though my mother lived 20 minutes away and visited three times a week, she worried about grandpa being alone in the house. So after my acceptance to our local college, I had moved in with him. I hadn't complained, grandpa's house was way closer to school and far quieter. Plus, I loved him. As the only male grandchild in the family, grandpa and I had always shared a special bond. I was as happy to be there as he was to have me. Grandpa, I'm home. I called out as I dropped my backpack down on the kitchen table. Grandpa's steaming mug sat at his favorite spot, completely forgotten and rapidly cooling. I grinned and rolled my eyes, grabbing the drink and heading down to his music room where I knew he would be. He stood with his back to the door, rifling through an ancient music book. Its pages were yellowed with age and wear, infused with years of loving use. He hummed softly under his breath, the closest he ever came to singing nowadays. He looked up when he heard me knock against the door frame, pushing his glasses up his nose. Koda, I didn't hear you come in. How was class? He beamed at me from across the study in motion for me to give him his mug. I rolled my eyes again and laughed, handing it over to him. He was always leaving his coffee cup in strange places. I would have worried if it hadn't been happening for as long as I could remember. Relaxing, I dropped down out of the weathered couch and lost myself in the familiar safety of Grandpa's house. A few weeks later, I woke up thirsty and too hot, my clothes sticking to me uncomfortably. It was dark out and a quick glance at my phone confirmed it was 1 a.m. I needed water desperately like I'd eaten a whole bag of chips in my sleep. Happy to feel the cool air on my skin, I kicked off the covers and stood up unsteadily, lumbering towards the hall. I opened my bedroom door and turned right, headed down the narrow staircase. The house was dark and still, I'd heard Grandpa go to bed when I was still studying and knew he wouldn't be up for hours. It was around the bottom step when I suddenly heard it, a soft, gentle sound with a distinct melody. I stopped in my tracks, thirst, forgotten, and focused all my attention on listening. After a moment, I realized it was a piano coming from Grandpa's music room. In disbelief, I began to walk towards the sound. It was no song I'd ever heard before and it was beautiful. As I got closer and the song became clearer, I felt a warmness within and my heart was filled with calm. The song made me think of a beach and I felt as relaxed as if I'd sat next to the ocean all day. By the time I got to the doorway, I swore I could feel sand under my feet, a soft breeze on my face. Just when I saw the impossible, Grandpa, sitting in his piano in the dimly lit room, his eyes were closed and an expression of bittersweet joy painted his face. He swayed in time with the music, his fingers hitting the keys without hesitation, despite years of disuse. This close to the music, to its source, my mind was filled with thoughts of a sunset on a tropical beach, the wind warm and the air salty. It felt strangely familiar to me like a place I had been to with my family when I was 12. We had visited Mexico for a family reunion and had stood on the beach to watch the sunset together. The first night we arrived, the music reminded me of that memory, filling me with love and warmth even as I stared at my grandfather in shock. This wasn't one of his old songs, this was something new, something I'd never heard before, something no one had ever heard before. As the final notes of the song drifted off into the night, I stood rooted to the spot unable to speak. Grandpa opened his eyes and his gaze found mine. He didn't seem surprised or embarrassed to see me. He simply watched me with an unreadable expression in his ancient eyes. At length, he sighed and motioned me into the room as he had done a thousand times before. Come in, Koda. We need to talk. My movements felt stiff and jerky as I came to sit on the couch across from the piano in the same spot I always chose. As I had every time before, I ran my hand over the warm cloth, feeling the softness under my palm. It brought back memories of years past, replaying in my mind as I waited to hear what he'd say. Grandpa stared down at the piano keys, his fingers brushing the smooth surface as gently as you'd stroke a beloved pet. His face was etched with sadness, his eyes lost to the past. For a moment, I wasn't sure he would say anything, but then he spoke. Do you remember when you were a kid, how I told you that playing music took something from me? I nodded, the echo of his voice whispering to me from long ago. He sighed. Well, I meant that literally. Sixty-two years ago, I was a young man with a pregnant wife, no steady job, barely making ends meet. I could play music, but while I was good, I had no prospects. I was playing gigs every night I could. I had the soul, the desire, but lacked that crucial last step between good and great. I wanted to provide for your grandmother and our unborn daughter, your mother, but we could barely afford food as it was, let alone with another mouth to feed. I was desperate and sad, filled with a crushing despair that I was failing the ones I loved most. Grandpa sighed again, running his hand over what was left of his hair. He took a sip from a tumbler I hadn't noticed before, crystal filled with amber liquid. Another unusual move, Grandpa didn't drink anymore. He said it reminded him of bad decisions from long ago. I was drinking, trying to numb the panic, the choking desperation, the pressure of failure that accompanied my every waking moment. One night, after a particularly nasty fight with your grandma, I took a walk down by the river and found myself following an old road. It was overgrown and hidden behind shrubbery, almost fully reclaimed by nature. I don't know how long I walked, but suddenly I became aware that it was quiet, too quiet the way it gets when a predator passes by. When all of nature holds its breath and waits for the scary thing to go away, and then I saw him, leaning against a fence at the crossroads, smoking a cigarette. He was handsome, though it's hard to recall his face. In the moment it was clear, but the memory has always been hazy. His eyes, though, those have haunted me since that night. They were a deep red orange, that I knew was inhuman the moment I saw it. Another pause, another sip of whiskey as grandpa collected his thoughts. Mine, on the other hand, were scattered beyond collection. What was he saying? The setup was too perfect, a tale as old as time. Was he trying to tell me the legend really was true? When had his mental health taken such a sudden turn? I know what you're thinking, he said, his fingers idly playing notes on the piano. You think I'm senile now, that I'm confused about the past, but it's the truth. His eyes raised to mine, steady and lucid, as I'd ever seen them. I made a deal with the devil, though I knew it was a mistake even as I made it. Grandpa's confession hung in the air as I grasped futilely for something to say. So what? The stories are true, you sold your soul for fame. I laughed weakly, hoping to hear him say something, anything that made sense to my relief. He shook his head. It was short lived, though, as he corrected me. Not my soul, something infinitely more precious and utterly irreplaceable. He said as much when he made me the offer. He promised my soul would remain intact and that I would live to see myself successful, my wife and daughter cared for, and a son to carry on my name. And in exchange, something that I would not miss, something of my choosing, precious and irreplaceable, but infinite in source. In aura of bitter regret filled the air around him as he recounted the devil's offer. I knew it was too good to be true, but I was drunk and desperate and more than half mad and I said yes. The next thing I knew, I was in my own bed.  I accepted, of course, though I was filled with fear that I would fail. I didn't feel any different since the deal had been struck and I had myself convinced it had all been just a dream. Grandpa's head lifted his eyes distant as he remembered that night long ago. There was an almost wistful look on his face now, though it was still tinged with the sadness that suffused the room. But it wasn't a dream, and when I sat down that night to play, I looked out into the crowd and saw a woman with eyes like those of my first love, and in that moment as I remembered all the heartbreak that gaze had brought me, I felt a song growing in my soul. Though I had never written anything down, never composed the melody, never penned the words, I began to play. And as I did, I felt those memories of that first heartbreak flowing through me, becoming the music in a way I'd always strived for but could never reach before. I felt her presence enter the room, brought to life through the keys of the piano, the tenor of my voice, so vibrant, so alive, so real. And as those last notes faded away, the memory of her did too. I felt our last moments together, slipping away, taking with it the heartbreak that had been so palpable only moments ago. It was only then that I understood the price of the devil's bargain. I could finally play the way I wanted to, to make people feel with my art the way I had always ached to, but at the price of my memory that birthed the music. Noah lifted his whiskey to his lips as an expression of self loathing crossed his wisened features. But Lord, the applause was thunderous, and the recognition was instant. From that night on, I never struggled to pay the pills again. I turned down more gigs than I'd ever dreamed of, and like a fool, I convinced myself I didn't need those memories anyway. After all, what was the memory of an old flame in exchange for greatness? He laughed bitterly, chasing it with another swallow of whiskey. I sat frozen on the couch, wanting to deny his story, but already have convinced, having heard his music in person, it held a ring of truth that couldn't be denied. He looked up at me and smiled sadly. You felt it. You know it's true. That song I was just playing, it was the family trip to Mexico. That sunset on the first night you remember. The effect is even stronger when you share the memories too. I was speechless, unable to make a single sound. But grandpa either didn't notice or didn't care. He went on with his story, as if now that he had begun to tell it, he couldn't stop. I had to make some adjustments to my act of course. I never played the same songs twice. I did more recordings and fewer live performances. But the restrictions only added to my appeal, my intrigue. People lapped it up and my eccentricities became associated with my genius and my fame grew and grew. Like the devil had said, I was able to provide for your grandmother and mother, but my art was a greedy mistress. My memories were many, but the ones I was willing to lose were a much smaller number. I knew that even careful use couldn't sustain my music forever. Slowly, I lost all of my past flames, my old loves and heartbreaks, my childhood memories, first kisses and sneaking out to meet girlfriends. Fights and friendships lost, guilt, from mistakes long past, all of it went into my music, drained from me, lost to me, only the emotion of the memory left behind as a song. Over time, I got better at using them, at drawing the sentiment out and ringing the memory dry so I could make the most of what I was sacrificing. Even still, by the time your grandma got pregnant with your uncle, I had nothing left, only memories I wanted to keep. But there was another life on the way, relying on me, and I couldn't walk away. So I started chipping away at those memories too.   Eventually, more important memories began to creep in. Birthdays, dinners with friends or family members, I'll keep the really important ones I thought. After all, you want to remember your first kiss, maybe even your second or third, but do you really need the thirteenth? Do you really need the fourteenth date you went on or the one dinner you had with your wife's second cousin? Slowly, I began to forget things, things that your grandma remembered. He paused to take a sip of his drink, staring down into the liquid pensively. I was quiet, held prisoner by his tail. After a moment, he spoke again, his voice rough with emotion. I was drinking heavily by then. The stress of the curse, my family, my fame, and it was also overwhelming. And when I drank, I wasn't so careful with my precious memories. It's hard to learn from mistakes you don't remember. In a way, it's worse. I wonder what memories I may have drained away in my reckless, inebriated state. But I'll never know, they're forever lost to me. His sadness was a tangible presence in the room. And I felt choked by it. My throat tight with sorrow to see someone I loved in so much pain. Your grandma, she was worried about me. I'd never been able to bring myself to tell her about the deal. And I fought her on seeing the doctors and resting more. We would argue before performances, and I would leave angry and anxious, straight to the bar to drink and play those memories away. A vicious, bitter cycle. And then one morning, I was woken up by banging on the front door. I stumbled down, still half drunk, yelling at them to quiet down. It was the police. They had come to tell me that your grandma had been in an accident. She was stopped in her car and someone hit her from behind, going far too fast. She was thrown free of the driver's seat, right through the windshield. No seatbelts back then. She died on impact. Massive head trauma. At least it was quick. Just like that. The woman I loved was gone, and I had traded away most of my memories of her. Grandpa was crying freely now, tears rolling down his face to land on the ivory of the piano in the amber of his whiskey. I vowed that day that I would never play again. The price was too high. My memories too precious. Like a miser, I have hoarded them all these years, refusing to use my gift and wishing desperately that I had been a smarter man in my youth. But now I'm ready to play again. What changed your mind? The sound of my own voice, strangled with sadness, seemed too loud in the quiet of the room. After the story he had just told me, I couldn't shake the terrible feeling that I knew what he would say. Grandpa's gaze met mine, sadness and love radiating from the watery depths. I'm dying, Kota. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week or next month. But soon I'm old, and I have lived a long, full life. Now it's almost over, and I want to share it with people like I did long ago, before I'm too far gone to play anymore. I tried to protest to tell him that he had many good years left. He waved me off, clearly in no mood for my objections. That brings me to the reason for this talk. I want you to help me. I want to record my songs, my memories help me distribute them, share them with people. I don't know how much time I have, but I want to make it count. I swallowed past the lump in my throat, tears streaked my face as I absorbed my grandfather's request. But, will you forget me, or Lyric, or Mom? My voice shook, tears salty in my mouth, no, never.  Those are just for me to carry me to the Lord, but I have a lifetime of experience to share in a gift that has been a curse for far too long. I was silent as I sat and processed what he was saying, the task he was asking of me. And I knew that I could never refuse. It was his dying wish, and after hearing his story, kept secret for all these years, it was clear that he needed it. Wiping my tears away on my sleeve, I nodded to him. Okay, Grandpa, I'll help you. I would be honored too. The last few months of Jack Forrester's life were spent in his home with his family. A few nights every week, we would go to his music room and record his songs, each one unique and perfect on the first try. I had tried to convince him to go to his studio, but he insisted he would play in his room, in his house, where the memories lived. So we invested in some fairly high-end recording equipment, and barely a week after his late night confession, he was playing once again. I sat with him through it all, experiencing memories that span the range of human emotion, the product of a life well-lived, anger, joy, love, fear, wonder, grief. All of it went into the music, and away from the man who had spawned it. It's hard to explain how valuable it was for me to soak up that lifetime of knowledge to hear and experience his memories. I learned more from those last few months than any education could ever give me. Because the memories left him, so too did the vibrancy and vitality his form had once held. What he had said was true, he was dying, but he kept his promise and even at the very end he held my hand and called me by name, and in his eyes I saw the same love and familiarity that had always been there. Now he has been gone for months, and at last I have completed his final wish. All his memories recorded and uploaded where people will be able to hear them, the emotions of a lifetime free to experience. That's why I've written this story to spread the word. The secret tapes of Jack Forrester are real, and he would want you to listen to them.


Hey everyone. Thank you for joining today. Super excited to have you all and have this conversation over the next 30 minutes. I'm just going to do a quick introduction for myself and then maybe for if you want to do a short introduction and then we can get started. So my name is Parth. I have been in product management career for close to a decade. Most of my career I've been product manager for e-commerce space, etc. But more recently I spent about a year and a half doing product management for Alexa and their smart home experience. And then more recently I've been working on AWS for a few of their AI and computer vision products. I'm based out of Austin, Texas. It's pretty sunny out right here. So that kind of summarizes me.  I can start. My name is Victoria. I'm from Brazil and I'm working for a company that's also based in Brazil. But since we get to work remotely I have moved to France. So now I live in Bordeaux in France. And I started doing product manager for one and a half years. And I feel like it's going to be a really good opportunity to learn how to actually structure process better and understand how to actually roll more into this position. Yeah, sounds good. Lila? Hello. I most recently have been a group product manager at EdTech startup called Career Karma. And I've been in digital products and growth for over 16 years now. I've been working across a lot of different environments and different capacities. I didn't start off in product management. I've been in digital marketing, SEO, consulting as an analyst, as an engagement manager. So I've operated across marketing, product consulting during that time and B2B, B2C. And as I am joining today, I'm really looking to learn from you, Parth, about your own career journey. I mean, everybody's journey is different. There's no right way. But I'm very interested in learning about your experiences and how you evolved over time. Like the lessons you've learned over time. Okay. Manohar? Yes, great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My name is Manohar Kamath. I'm based in San Francisco Bay Area. My background basically is in engineering. I have had about at least a quarter century in engineering. I have co-founded two companies. So I have developed mobile products. The reason I'm here is basically I want to understand from Parth about product management. I have done product management about 10 years ago. The reason I'm here is I want to understand how I can come back into the industry and go into product management and what are some of the things that new things I need to learn. So that's why I'm here. Sounds good. Hopefully, I will also learn a little bit from your founder journey. Okay, great. Priyanshu? Hi, this is Priyanshu. I'm based out of Australia. Currently, it's quite night over here, 1 a.m. I have walked into the product management space into the payment office for around two years. But later on, I have moved into the business manager's side. Now, I would like to go back into the product management side. That's why I'm over here to basically learn and how to jump over to the product management side. As well as I would like to know more about the product strategy that I believe I'm a little bit weak on that side. So I want to make that point stronger or at the full part of my skill. Okay. That's pretty good. Okay. All right. Let's get started then. Just FYI, we're going to make this chat very conversational back and forth. Feel free to interrupt the ideas to make it very informal. So with that said, we can get started and we can probably go top to bottom. But as I said, when questions are asked or I'm sharing my experiences, et cetera, feel free to chime in and ask your questions. Or if you have any experiences to share with the group, that's also fine. So yeah, we'll try and make it as informal as possible. So with that said, I'm just going to go top to bottom as to what I'm seeing on the panel. So Manohar, if you want to go first, you can kick us off with what you may want to talk about. Yeah. So I want to understand from product management, I'm trying to basically get back into the corporate world. So the challenges that I have is getting traction. So I don't know, I have created a resume. Sometimes I don't get traction. So I'm trying to understand what I'm doing wrong. Do they see me too much overqualified or whatever it is that I'm applying for? And also at the same time, I want to understand what are some of the new technologies or the new tools that product managers use these days in order to manage products. As I said, I co-founded two companies, both were mobile products. I have done basically everything from scratch.  So I want to understand some new things that I need to do. Yeah. So let's unpack on both of those questions. Like first part was more about breaking into product management with your specific set of experiences, etc. Of course, like how Leila was saying, everyone has their own product management journey, breaking into product management and growing in their roles and all. But there are two ways I look at it. One is if you come with very specific set of experiences around certain domain, you can absolutely leverage on it. For example, let's say you have a ton of experience in 5G or telecommunications, etc. It would make absolute sense for you to go after those kind of roles and those kind of companies that can see more value in your prior experiences, either as a founder or engineer, etc. So that's one way to look at it. You go towards specialized product management. A second one where you may or may not be getting traction is possibly when you go after generalized product management. Like hey, with the experience that you have had, you most likely feel like you can do product management for almost any kind of product, a B2B product, B2C product, AI product, etc. But I think when it does come to breaking into product management with the kind of experience that you have, it's possible you'd be better off capitalizing on domain and specific skill set that you have gained over recent past. As far as your resume is concerned, you can try and see if product school has any mechanisms or sessions for resume reviewing, etc. And then we can leverage some of those conversations as well. So that's the first part of your question. The second was, remind me what was the second question that you had? What do people basically do these tools and things like that? Any specific things that people use to manage products? Yeah, on this question, I think I'll let both Victor and Leela to also chime in because my experience has been throughout different teams or orgs or companies that have worked in product roles. Each team or org have their own way of operating things, doing things. You sometimes have to come up with your own processes and tools. But what matters the most in product role is you ensuring your engineers have what they need. If they come and say, hey, I'm more comfortable looking at a Word doc with a set of requirements. So be it, you help them with that. If they say, I want to use Jira or Asana or Kanban or Agile. Of course, you do want to look at your priorities and make sure you are picking the right techniques and tools. But what matters the most is you serving your engineers in being unblocked and really delivering value for your customers and innovating on behalf of customers. Now, that's just about core product role in helping your engineers achieve what they need to. You may also then end up having to think about, okay, what about my UX counterpart or designers? And again, in product role, you do want to be able to sort of adjust into whatever tool set the rest of the team or org is comfortable leveraging while, of course, being critical and influential towards what does make sense, what doesn't in long term. So that's kind of long-winded answer to say, like, of course, there are tools right now in market that most of product managers use. But what really matters the most is you ensuring all the counterparts and stakeholders that you are working with, they are bought into whatever tools and processes that you use. And again, as I said, Victoria, Leila, like, you also come with some product management experience, like you can also share, like, what tools, et cetera, use and how much flexibility you end up incorporating in deciding your tools and processes. For us, since we're struggling to find the proper monetization process, we don't have a lot of budget to use with tools. So we've been trying to make the best we can with the free tools that we find available right now. And it was a bit hard to actually encounter the perfect tool and process. But finally, we've reached a point that we are very comfortable with what we are using. Usually we use the Google Docs to share documents between the whole company. So we are writing specs on Google Docs and all of the documents that need to be shared. Also the Excel sheets, the spreadsheets from Google Docs. And for our design and engineering, we are using Trello. So that's where we are organizing our structure. And for myself, I like to use Notion to organize my own work there, my own product, specifically product things. But when we are talking to developers or design, it's in Trello. So, yeah, like, you can probably try and find out what works best for you, what works best for your team and organization. You find not being set to any external standards. Thank you. Cool. All right. We can go to Victoria down the panel. Yes. So we built and started from scratch. And in the beginning, it was a very chaotic environment, because we were trying to find product marketing, trying to find exactly what we should build and trying all of these new ideas. And so, yeah, it was very chaotic. We're always doing different things. And now we've reached a point that we are very comfortable with the products that we have right now. So we are focusing on enhancing the core product and also finish building the ones we have already started. So we are switching now from these very, doing a lot of different things at the same time and trying a lot of different things to actually having more process and routine. And sometimes I struggle a little bit into understanding that this is the moment now and finding some routine and structure inside the whole product routine, especially because now we have other product managers as well handling specific products, whereas I'm handling the whole product as a whole. So I would like to know, in bigger companies and companies that are more structured, how exactly is your week, for example? What are the rituals and the routine that you always follow and how do you structure exactly your work? Yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong, Victoria. I'm seeing two questions. One is operating in product role while you have multiple different product people managing different smaller components of a product while you are trying to operate at scale. The second question is what does a day-to-day operation look like for a product person in a larger org? Those are the two questions. Okay, we'll tackle the second one first because I can just talk about my day. That's easier to talk about. So the short answer is it depends. But long answer is given Amazon is fairly document-driven place, a lot of my personal time goes into different kind of docs and ensuring I have mechanisms on my calendar to meet whatever needs I have and the org that the product has. And generally what it looks like is, okay, if you need to arrive up on a decision, that looks like one kind of talk. If there's a product idea, then you may have heard of six pages or PRFAQ. If there is a conflict resolution or prioritization conversation, those kind of documents look very different than the others that I talked about. So usually during a week, I sort of know what kind of decisions or conversations are pending and what to go after. You see part of my calendar is blocked for some kind of writing and some kind of doc that I am pursuing. And at the time, I would have a few docs in progress. And just to double-click on that, you may hear a lot about the six pages or PRFAQs. But these are long processes. A good PRFAQ does take sometimes months as it goes through several revisions and approvals and investment cycles, et cetera. So that's what most of my day goes into. But other than that, it really revolves around, in a specific week, what do my stakeholders need? What does the product need? What do the engineers need or UX person needs? And really structuring a week around what needs to happen. And that is a very micro way of looking at things. I also then have quarterly goals or yearly goals to say, here's what I do want to do. And really finding time for it and accountability for it throughout my day. And feel free to interrupt me if it didn't answer your question. But I think given a lot of what it depends, I just shared what areas I end up focusing on. But the second question about managing product at scale and then in sort of a group product manager role, I think what has helped me in past and more recently as well is what I call radical delegation. Be radical about delegating and trusting your product counterparts who may be handling specific parts of the product that you are accountable for or KPS that you are accountable for. At the same time, you do want to place mechanisms so that they also feel supported and get what they need out of you. So if it means spending 30 minutes or an hour every week with each of them trying to figure out and either unblocking them or being a sounding board, I think that plays even better role as to something. They just need a different product person to talk to validate their thought process to say, okay, does this make sense? Is this something should I go after next week or next quarter, et cetera? So those are the two things that have helped me. One, be very radical in delegating and at the same time put mechanisms in place so that they do get the support that they need throughout their product journey. Great. Thank you. Okay. Leela, we can go to you. Yes. By the way, I saw someone in the chat mention that they wanted to know how you formulated goals for a product you follow, okay, our process, and then I can ask my question. Thank you. Yeah. I think how about this? Let's go through all four of you and then we'll go through all the comments top to bottom. But thank you for drawing my attention there. That is helpful. Yeah, for sure. My question has more to do with your career journey. I see that like me, very early in your career, you started off in digital marketing and now you're in more of a technical product role. For myself, my current background is less technical. So in addition to learning about your journey, I'm wondering about, in your day-to-day, how much do you lean into your technical knowledge and how have you developed your technical knowledge throughout your career journey? So there's really two parts of the questions, this overall journey and then how you've developed technical skills throughout that journey and how much of that you need and want to lean into that day-to-day? Absolutely, yeah. So as far as my career and the influence of technology on it is concerned, I did my undergrad in information technology. I did both traditional software engineering courses, et cetera. So that kind of helped their foundation and then my master's was in information systems. So that's where I ended up getting introduced to a lot more system design constructs and concepts, et cetera. Of course, academic art did help. But in my day-to-day role, whenever I do go into a new product area or new team or new org, like one I have to accept, I know almost nothing about it. But then what I do is find right sort of people either directly in my organization or outside of my organization or even external resources to really understand the behind-the-scenes of how it works. And it is not an easy process when I started working on Alexa or smart home. Like I had no prior experience of conversational AI but you do take like two to three months to understand the behind-the-scenes of it and be very okay spending several hours either with your principal engineer or senior engineer to sit down and say, like, how does it work? Help me understand. I personally have been very comfortable parking open postman and making API calls to understand here is how systems are interacting with each other. So that has helped. And more recently, Amazon is concerned, like there are two distinct roles. Like one is product manager, very traditional product management. And then there is PMT, like product management technical. You end up working with a lot more technical products. So the expectations are also that not only you do the core product roles but also are capable of influencing technology decisions and system design, et cetera. So the interworking of how Amazon Operates has also helped me recently to kind of maintain a higher bar for my technical needs and performance. I think, again, that was one of the two questions. Your second question was what again? Just about your career journey, like, you know, how you got into product management and why you chose it, how you drove over your career. Yeah. So I found product management by accident. I did do a bunch of... I started my career in data science roles, right? I was essentially doing number crunching data analytics or startup based on balance. And without realizing, I recognized that I was bringing product management of some source when we are the other, whether it is figuring out what should the data visualization look like for a report like this. If I were to standardize this kind of report that does go out to all of our clients every month, what would that process or product look like? And then I ended up inventing, okay, if I run these set of macros, I'm going to produce this kind of data visualization dashboard and I'm going to work with some engineers to write a script to say publish these reports out to these recipients. Now, without realizing, essentially, I was building some sort of product. But then when I got done with the masters, I graduated, I was looking at all possible things that people with information systems degree go into. I identify product management and I ended up finding a few mentors who helped me find my foot in the door and helped me recognize what is product management and how to be better at it. So yeah, it's very much by accident, but mostly all of us would have done some sort of product management without realizing. So that's how I ended up finding it. Thank you. And just one last follow up question to that is, now that you've been a product manager over the years and now are at Amazon, what has evolved about your practice, how you approach product management today versus a couple of years ago? That's an interesting question. I don't know. One thing that I have learned is when to be in control of your product and when to let go of the control on your product. And it's very, very important. You do want your UX designer to feel very comfortable coming up with what the product needs to look like. Your engineers should not feel constrained at the same time, knowing when to take back control and steer the ship as to what makes sense and how to go to market, et cetera. So I wouldn't say I was the best at that part in my first 24 months in product career 10 years ago, but I now feel more comfortable and in tune with what those needs are. Thank you. Let's quickly go through Priyanshu and then we'll see if there's some time left for comments as well. Sure. Okay, so I have 40 years of experience out of the two years in the product management and 12 years in business analysis side. Currently working as a business analyst, but the product management that I have worked in 2017 to 2019. Now, I would like to come back to the product management as per your side, but whenever I apply for a job, usually people basically ask like why you want to go back to the product management side if you have a strong experience in the business analysis side, which is lagging behind applying to the product management side. Second thing, even if one or two interviews are lined up into the product management side, one of the questions I basically say challenges is like how do you make the product strategy because I would say when I was a product manager, my seniors used to basically create the product strategy. I was just helping them out. So if you can basically shed some light on that. Yeah, on the first one, like people asking you, hey, you have been business analyst and why product management, et cetera. I would say like in a product role, at some point or the other in your product life cycle, you will end up wearing multiple different hats. Like you will end up playing part business analyst when you are working with your business analyst counterpart or if you don't have a business analyst counterpart as a startup or a small art, then you are doing it yourself or whether it is like testing or QA or like if it's system design or like if it is like GTM pricing strategy, et cetera. You do end up doing a little bit of all of those things unless you are very much privileged with like actual people in those roles supporting you. So like answering that first question if anyone asks you that is like fairly straightforward. Like, hey, yes, I do have business analyst experience. I just want to take all of my experience and apply it to my product role. So like that kind of gets it out of the way. And I think that that is true for anyone. Like you have been a chef all your life and then you like involve yourself into product and take et cetera and you think how you can serve a company or with your experience that's completely fine. That sort of diversified talent actually does help organizations and companies. So I capitalized on it. Like I was telling one hour as well. So that's one. Second one is strategy. I think like short answer is each company does strategy differently. Like what I've seen. I'm just quickly going to answer Naomi. Yes, Naomi, if you can extend five more minutes I can stay back so that I can also take a look at the LinkedIn comments and answering questions. So like more than knowing what, like how do you drive strategy or what do you strategy? Like what do you do as part of product strategy? What you do want to know is what is not product strategy? Like figuring out a roadmap for next year is not product strategy. Coming out with like set of use cases and product session is not product strategy. And I think maybe during our time constraint we can have like dedicated conversation on product strategy et cetera. But what I can do is I'll probably speak with Naomi to share whatever resources that I have used to have better understanding of product strategy and then putting it in practice. That will possibly help you. Sure, sure. Okay. Given we are extending for five more minutes I'm going to quickly go through LinkedIn comments and see what all we can answer in the next five minutes. I'm going to go from top to bottom as I'm seeing on studio. How is product management different from project management? Yeah. Again, like each company operates differently. They have their own definition of product management and project management. Sometimes the line between them are blurry. I do not enjoy it. I actually run away from those places. But to answer your question, like project management is fairly critical, traditional in recent times in large organizations. You see more of technical program managers versus project managers. So maybe I can talk about like TPMs and then help them differentiate from product management. So technical program managers help you deliver a product in collaboration with dev managers and engineers. They also sometimes get involved in breaking down large size engineering problems into smaller consumable deliverable chunks. And they of course work in collaboration with product managers for productization, et cetera. Product management in its true sense, like the core job of product management is to help make sure engineers get to deliver what the product and customers need. And you do whatever is needed to make that happen. If that includes writing sets of requirements, building roadmap, writing strategy docs, and managing dependencies and stakeholders and like traditional product managers will end up doing a lot of that. But when it comes to actual delivery of an engine solution or product, that is when technical program managers come in place, project management is like a version of it where historically I have seen project managers not getting too involved in technical aspects of the solution, but that is not to say that's how all project managers operate. As I said, it kind of depends on the company and org and how they have formed those roles. The next question I see is how do you formulate your goals for a product or do you follow OKR process? More recently, I'm currently working on more of a zero to one product.   And then you spend a lot more time looking at that KPI doc as to here is everything that you can measure or should measure. But then be ruthless in prioritizing those KPIs and say, hey, here are the five most important ones.  Does it make sense or not? So building that cohesion is equally important as you coming up with the right set of KPIs. And for goals, again, I think it does depend a lot more on the product. Like for conversational AI, the goals look very different than something for computer vision. I do have some resources on like the process and frameworks to come up with, not only the KPIs, but also success criteria for those KPIs. And I can probably share that with product school and see how we can get it across this audience. And sorry, I'm having to rush through it. I'm mindful of time, so hopefully we can do more of it in future to answer any additional questions. I'll do one more question, and we have a minute left. Let's see. Product management more into product projects. Yeah, someone answered that question. What helped you make it into Amazon? What is the strategy? Personally, I was looking for interesting problem statements. Like before entering Amazon, I had already spent close to seven or eight years in product manager roles, mostly in e-commerce space. After that, I started looking for like problem statements that do excite me personally, that I do find very interesting and almost knew nothing about. And that's how I ended up with Alexa and Smart Home, et cetera. And now I'm into AWS trying to figure out computer vision and AI and all of that. So more recently in the last couple of years, and I don't know if pandemic has anything to do with it, but what has interested me in figuring out my strategy and what to go after is, what problem statements truly, truly excite me. So yeah, that kind of answers hopefully the question. We are at time, but I do see a bunch of questions. I'm gonna jump on LinkedIn and see if I can answer any of those questions in comments, but this has been super fruitful. I enjoyed this conversation. All of the questions that all the folks in the studio like Manohar, Victoria, Leela and Priyanka asked as well as a bunch of really good questions in comments over LinkedIn. So I just wanna say thank you all for your time. Hope you have a fantastic rest of Friday and a great weekend. Thank you. Thank you.


0. Accounting software 2023 bank feeds matching deposit from a customer to bank feed deposit.  Here we are in our custom 0 home page going into the company file. We started up in a prior presentation, the bank feed file. Duplicating some tabs to put reports in like we do every time. Right click on the tab up top so we can duplicate it. Right click in the tab up top again and duplicating again. Let's go back to the tab to the middle. Accounting drop down. Open up our balance sheet report. One of the major financial statement reports tab into the right. Accounting drop down. Open up the other major financial statement report, the income statement. Changing the date range up top. Selecting the drop down. Go on 2022 starting in January ending in December of 2022. And there we have it running and updating that. Let's go back to the first tab now and go into where our bank feeds are located, which we uploaded in a prior presentation accounting drop down located in the bank accounts. And then within the bank accounts, we got our bank feed up top that we connected to managing the accounts. And we're going to go to the account transactions. And then I'm going to go to the first tab, which is the reconcile tab. So we've been basically trying to as best we can construct our books from the bank feeds, but now dip it into those areas where we might have a little complexity in doing that and have to come up with some other systems to work around. Let's go to our flow chart to see what I'm talking about. This is from the QuickBooks desktop, but we're just really looking at the flow of the forms, which are the same for any kind of accounting system. We're on the customer cycle here and we're trying to think about how we can fit the bank feeds into a customer cycle when we have an accrual concept we have to put in place, meaning we do the work first and therefore has to invoice or bill the client and have to track the accounts receivable. So that would be if we had the type of industry would drive whether or not we would have to do that. So if we're in an industry where we have to do that, we're going to have to do that. We can't just say, well, I'm just going to be in a cash based system. It's like, well, no, people aren't going to do business with you then. So we have to invoice them. So that would be like an accounting firm or that could be like a law firm or landscaping. We do the work, we invoice the client. So obviously the invoice doesn't have any cash impacted or affected from that transaction. So we can't do that transaction from the bank feeds. But then after the invoice has been input, when we get paid, we saw that it might be possible to connect the bank feeds to the invoice waiting until the payment clears the bank and then connecting it to the invoice. However, you can only do that if you're getting a payment that isn't the exact same amount as the amount on the invoice and you don't have kind of grouping of multiple invoices or other forms of payments together. Things that can muddy that up would be if there's credit card charges or a middle person in the transaction that kind of charges fees or groups the deposits like a credit card company or something like a PayPal or Stripe like that, then we might not be able to connect the bank feeds to an actual invoice. And if they group the payments together, meaning we have multiple invoices, for example, or invoices and sales receipts possibly that are being grouped together by a credit card company or something like that, then it's going to hit our bank account in a one lump sum of multiple invoices are combined together. And so we're not going to be able to just match it with the bank feeds. We're going to have to do more of a full service system, which means we're going to have to receive the payment. Now, when we receive the payment, that's when we can deposit it into the bank at that point in time. However, we might need another step there because we might want to set up like a clearing account because again, we might have some system where the credit card company is grouping payments together in a way that we cannot easily group together on our side and therefore put it into a clearing account and then take it out of the clearing account and put it in as a deposit. Now, if we have to do that, then we're going to be reliant on the bank feeds just to match. So what we want to do is make our deposit in our system the same format, the same dollar amount, the same grouping of money into the bank as will show up on the bank side, which will come through the bank feeds. We still need to use the bank feeds or can use the bank feeds, but the bank feeds will not be recording anything here. Instead, it will be simply helping us to reconcile, which is still quite important. Alright, so let's see if we can see what I'm talking about here. Let's pick a payment, one of these deposits, and kind of do our same thing where we're going to work backwards to get to that deposit amount. So let me find one first. Let me stop talking while I look. Alright, here we go. I found one. Let's take this $150 here. Now, let's imagine that we have multiple invoices that were in play that are making up that $150. So I'll make multiple invoices and receive the payments on those invoices, and you'll kind of see why hopefully we can't just tie the invoice out to here, but rather we'll have to basically make the deposit on our end. So let's imagine we're going to go backwards now. I'm going to make the invoice, which normally would happen first in our time frame, but now we're going to... So you're imagining this happened first before that deposit, right? So let's say this is customer... Let's make another customer just to switch things up. Number three, customer three. I'm so creative with my names, my customer names. Creativity is one of my blessings, one of my strong points. On making up names. So then we're going to say this happened on October 1st. Let's say the end date, 17th. Okay. That'll work, whatever. And then let's go down and say that we sold. Let's just put a random description. Service, service, item. Usually we would want to have items that were describing what we sell because that'll make things easier, but that's not where our focus is right now. Our focus is on this grouping issue. So let's say we sold something for $100. I'm not going to deal with the sales tax because, again, the sales tax would be... We've talked about sales tax, but that's not really our point of focus here. Noting here, though, what is our point of focus is that this will increase the accounts receivable by $100, and the other side will go into the sales account for $100, a revenue account. However, when the deposit came...