David Meyer: Why You Should Hire People Who Aren’t In Product Already | E1076

1. 0:00 – 0:55

   Intro

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:00

      Do you think product managers today are worse than they were years ago? (drum roll)

   2. DMDavid Meyer0:03

      On average, yes. Because I don't like happy customers. Because the opportunity to shift reality in the meeting is low. If there's a customer coming in rip shit about something, or upset about the product, you have an opportunity to totally reframe the way they look at the world. (drum roll) If you're rocking it as a product manager, everybody thinks you suck. If sales loves you, engineering hates you because you're chasing deals and you're not thinking about the long-term future. If engineering loves you, sales hates you because you're just doing long-term stuff and you're never helping them close a deal. It's finding these impossible compromises.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings0:35

      Why should people not go into product and product management?

   4. DMDavid Meyer0:37

      It might sound goofy, but... (cymbals crashing)

   5. HSHarry Stebbings0:42

      (laughs) David, I am so excited for this. So I spoke to Ali years ago, and I've heard many great things, so thank you so much for joining me today.

   6. DMDavid Meyer0:49

      I'm, I'm really excited to be here.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings0:50

      Well, I want to start, how did you make your way into the world of product? It's, it's an interesting world.

2. 0:55 – 5:14

   Journey and Philosophy of Product Management

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:55

      What was your entry point?

   2. DMDavid Meyer0:56

      You know, I'm a civil engineer by training, environmental/civil, and then I became a nuclear engineer. So it's not an obvious route. But I ended up, um, at this startup, Plumtree Software, and, uh, first running QA, then running engineering. This guy that ran product, Phil Sopher, he was, like, a very good friend of mine, and every day, I told him how he was doing his job wrong. I was the receiving end, building stuff, right? So I just told him this every day, and then one day, he decided to move on, to leave Plumtree, and he told the CEO I had run product.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings1:30

      Huh.

   4. DMDavid Meyer1:31

      To, like, get back at me, right? I did it. I didn't want to do it, you know? I was like, "My job's too important doing engineering, you know? I can't give that up." But once I got into it, it was incredible. Like... (laughs)

   5. HSHarry Stebbings1:44

      (laughs) I've g- I've got too many things to ask you. First, on the, uh, you know, uh, helpful feedback to your boss, uh, or to your colleague-

   6. DMDavid Meyer1:52

      (laughs)

   7. HSHarry Stebbings1:52

      How did you do that in a productive way that wasn't, um...

   8. DMDavid Meyer1:55

      I, I was pretty young. I wasn't that productive.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings1:57

      (laughs)

   10. DMDavid Meyer1:57

       Like, the, the thing is, you need to build things that matter, right? Like, I... The way I got into engineering is I was in QA and there was, uh, (laughs) there was this engineer and his stuff had so many bugs. So I went under the source control system and I started to figure out the bugs, right? Um, and he locked me out-

   11. HSHarry Stebbings2:18

       (laughs)

   12. DMDavid Meyer2:18

       ... of the source control system. I was like, "Wh- what the hell?" Right? So I went to the CEO, and I'm like, "I don't know what to do here. I want this code to work." So he fired the guy, and he told me to write it.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings2:30

       Oh, wow. That's a, that's a way to respond, though.

   14. DMDavid Meyer2:32

       And, but it wasn't, like, malicious. He was a very, like, bighearted guy, but he just didn't want that kind of attitude in the company, you know?

   15. HSHarry Stebbings2:40

       (laughs) That is amazing. So why did you not wanna take up that product role? You felt that your job in engineering was too important. Anything else?

   16. DMDavid Meyer2:47

       Again, like, I got into this world through, like, weird ways. So I didn't understand the job. I felt that the engineering part was more important. But (laughs) I couldn't work on things that didn't have, you know, clear customer value, weren't thought through, and the... And, like, Phil was amazing, amazing product manager. But it's easy to critique what you've never done.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings3:12

       Sure.

   18. DMDavid Meyer3:13

       Right? So everything coming over the wall, I was like, "These things don't make sense." And I was like, "You have to define these things upstream, or else we're gonna go down dead ends."

   19. HSHarry Stebbings3:22

       It's interesting, you said about critiquing things you've never done. I'm constantly oscillating on the question of, is naivety good or bad? It depends to me. I'm intrigued to hear your thoughts.

   20. DMDavid Meyer3:31

       Yeah, I, I think it's a super power, you know? I think the less you know... So I'm, again, I'm not a CS guy, but I ended up being, like, an architect at Plumtree Software, and, like, running engineering at a bunch of places. And it's because I don't know what I don't know. Code is not complicated, you know? I don't, I can't write it well, but I can understand it. You can look at it as just a logical system. I w- I'm a systems engineer initially, so it's not hubris. It's just curiosity.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings4:02

       What do you think you didn't know that you did or didn't do that was of real benefit? So, like, how you... (laughs)

   22. DMDavid Meyer4:08

       (laughs) Yeah, that's a, that, that's a puzzler right there.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings4:10

       It is hard, but I didn't know actually that it would take years and years to build a following to the millions.

   24. DMDavid Meyer4:17

       Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

   25. HSHarry Stebbings4:18

       If I had've done... I might've quit earlier. I, I thought it would come much sooner. And actually, it was just fun, and so I went along with it.

   26. DMDavid Meyer4:25

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings4:25

       But longevity of commitment required, I didn't anticipate.

   28. DMDavid Meyer4:28

       You figure out a way to solve a problem, right? And everybody thinks you're crazy. But then you just don't really have time to absorb that, and you just show... Let's... There's a saying, some wise person said, "If something's impossible, don't stop the people doing it." You know?

   29. HSHarry Stebbings4:49

       Yeah. (laughs)

   30. DMDavid Meyer4:50

       Ah, it was said much better than that, though.
3. 5:14 – 9:11

   Customer Interactions and Product Feedback

   1. DMDavid Meyer5:14

      I mean...

   2. HSHarry Stebbings5:15

      That's a really tough thing.

   3. DMDavid Meyer5:16

      It's funny. I was... Uh, we're having this world tour, and I'm talking to a lot of customers, and I don't like happy customers, you know? Because the opportunity to shift reality in the meeting is low. They're like, "You're great." I'm like, "You're great. What do you talk about?" But if there's a customer coming in rip shit about something, or upset about the product, or has a real business problem that they're stuck on, then you can almost just do a lame layup and make progress in the meeting.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings5:44

      Mm-hmm.

   5. DMDavid Meyer5:44

      But you also have an opportunity to totally reframe the way they look at the world. And that's what's really exciting about working with people. People come in with a point of view about your product or their business, and the, like... I use the same methodology for, like, everything I do. Go in knowing nothing, and then interrogate the person until you feel like you could do their job.... right? And so you really understand, like, if, if they say, "I did this, this, and this," but you can't figure out how they got from here to here, you know, keep asking questions until you figure it out.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings6:20

      Yeah.

   7. DMDavid Meyer6:20

      And then you get a picture of what they're trying to achieve. But then you're like, "Well, the why behind it..." Because a lo- they don't wanna do all these steps, they just wanna accomplish a job.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings6:32

      Sure.

   9. DMDavid Meyer6:33

      And then you say, "Okay. Well, they articulated a lot of pain in these steps," and you have a point of view that... totally different from what they said. And then you kind of, like, try to tease the, the best imaginable out of them, so they say what you want them to say.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings6:51

       How do you... Uh, th- uh, that's really interesting. So they say what you want them to say. How do you actually do customer questioning well? I find a lot of people lead the witness.

   11. DMDavid Meyer7:01

       I mean, look, I'm, I'm a human, so I'm terrible at customer questioning because it's impossible not to lead the witness.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings7:08

       Oh.

   13. DMDavid Meyer7:08

       It's really, really hard. So I, I oftentimes after... You know, I've been doing this for a long time. I, I like to have other people that I know on, on calls. And then I ask them for, like, notes. One of the, the, uh, you know, Ollie's cultural values, but I, I've kind of internalized it even, you know, pre-, pre-Databricks, is truth-seeking. Like, you wanna get at the truth. You don't wanna... You know, there's all the biases, confirmation bias, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The problem is, open-ended questions, oftentimes you can't get to where you wanna go, right? So then it's just, like, open-ish questions that are kind of leading, you know. "How would it feel if it happened this way instead?" Rather than, like, "Let me talk at you and show you a demo, and this is how it should be."

   14. HSHarry Stebbings7:56

       When do you listen to customers versus when do you stick to product plan, product roadmap, and actually the idea and the vision that you had?

   15. DMDavid Meyer8:04

       People like to talk about being customer-obsessed.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings8:06

       Yeah.

   17. DMDavid Meyer8:06

       But I think of, there's the customer and then there's the collective customer. So you have to be collective-customer-obsessed. So you never wanna overfit to a customer 'cause then there'll be a Tiny Tim, right?

   18. HSHarry Stebbings8:20

       Yeah.

   19. DMDavid Meyer8:20

       So the customer's... Well, I never listen to them in terms of how the feature should work. But what they need to accomplish, you need, you know, suss out if that's a common need from your collective customer. Because if you're serving one customer, if you're obsessing about one customer but it's overfitting, you're screwing over the collective customer.

   20. HSHarry Stebbings8:40

       Totally agree with you. Can I ask, there's a lot of feedback that one gets from customers.

   21. DMDavid Meyer8:45

       (laughs)

   22. HSHarry Stebbings8:45

       Um, when you map it out, it, it makes for an impossible job. How do you prioritize customer feedback and ideas, either that come from customer or come from team? How do you think about what to do next?

   23. DMDavid Meyer8:58

       It's funny. It's like, uh, there are a lot of conflicting inputs.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings9:02

       Mm-hmm.

   25. DMDavid Meyer9:03

       It's funny, because a lot of people come to you wanting to go into product, you know?

   26. HSHarry Stebbings9:06

       We'll get into that. (laughs)

   27. DMDavid Meyer9:07

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. And th- as you know, I try to dissuade them. But

4. 9:11 – 17:58

   Product Manager Role and Data-Driven Decision Making

   1. DMDavid Meyer9:11

      basically, if you're rocking it as a product manager, everybody thinks you suck. Think about it. Okay, your stakeholders are, there's customers, there's field, there's engineering, there's business finance, right? If sales loves you, engineering hates you, because you're chasing deals and you're not thinking about the long-term future. If engineering loves you, sales hates you, because you're just doing long-term stuff and you're never helping them close a deal. Everybody around you... And because they haven't done the job. Like me, when I, I was talking to Phil Sopher, everybody thinks they can do their job better, your job better than you. Like, literally, people come to me and they're like, "I could do your job better than you." Like, from all functions, because they're so frustrated with the, the, the path you have to take in order to, to, you know, juggle all the different constraints.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings10:03

      Why should people not go into product and product management?

   3. DMDavid Meyer10:07

      I mean, it might sound goofy, but d'you... Have you ever read Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke?

   4. HSHarry Stebbings10:12

      I haven't.

   5. DMDavid Meyer10:12

      Okay. I read it when I was, like, much, much younger. The, the argument is, don't write unless you have to, because it's miserable, right? So, people often think, "I wanna be a product manager. I'm the CEO of the product. I'm the GM. I call the shots. I can tell people what to do. I can create something. I can be, you know, Janny Ives. I can create this beautiful thing and everybody will build it, and customers will love it." But that's not what the job is, right? It's finding these impossible compromises.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings10:45

      What do you say the job of a product manager is, then? For people listening, going, "No, I d- I do wanna be a PM, actually." What i- what is the real job of a PM? 'Cause I hear it's the CEO of product, which sounds sexy.

   7. DMDavid Meyer10:55

      (laughs) It's bullshit.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings10:56

      Yeah. (laughs) Sexy, though, isn't it? Like, "Okay, cool."

   9. DMDavid Meyer10:58

      It's, uh, it's finding a way to make baby steps towards the vision while staying alive, basically.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings11:09

       So the biggest misconception is actually the glorification of being the CEO?

   11. DMDavid Meyer11:13

       Yeah, and the fact that you have, like, unadulterated agency, you know? So, if I'm talking to someone that wants to move from another function into product, um, the main thing I try to figure out is, are they doing product now? If you're an engineer-

   12. HSHarry Stebbings11:27

       Yeah.

   13. DMDavid Meyer11:27

       ... and you're not involved in the PRDs and, and... Like, e- let's say you're in the field, right? You're a sales engineer. You're harping on engineering and product all the time to fix the shit your customers need until you see it working the way you want, and then you're doing product management, right? But if you can live as a sales engineer or an engineer without doing that, if you can take the spec and build it without fighting, you can never be a pr-... So, if, if, if you cannot not product manage, then you should be a product manager.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings12:00

       (laughs) I, I totally agree. So, you like people who aren't product managers already. 'Cause I... You know, I speak to, and I, uh, sit on many boards. And everyone says, "Ah, we want someone who's been a PM for three to four years. They've probably worked at Google or Facebook or-

   15. DMDavid Meyer12:14

       (laughs) For sure.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings12:14

       ... uh, and been their success guy." So you like people who are fresh to product management?

   17. DMDavid Meyer12:18

       They might not have had the title, but have they done it?

   18. HSHarry Stebbings12:22

       How do you tease that out in an interview?

   19. DMDavid Meyer12:24

       You ask them where their biggest impact was. Right?

   20. HSHarry Stebbings12:27

       Mm-hmm.

   21. DMDavid Meyer12:27

       And if it has nothing to do with product, (laughs) you know, if it's like, uh, calming down an angry customer, but it has nothing to do with the value the com- you know, so you just tease it out and then interrogate from there.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings12:41

       With interrogation you get data. Sometimes, uh, helpful, sometimes less helpful. Um, you said before about being a data-driven product manager.

   23. DMDavid Meyer12:49

       Yeah.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings12:49

       Before we dr- dive into kind of whether it's good or bad, what does that actually mean, being a data-driven product manager? When I saw this, I was like, "Huh. What, what is that?"

   25. DMDavid Meyer12:57

       So, you know, Databricks used to have this value called data-driven, um, where we wanted everybody to be data-driven. But it has a dark side, 'cause you can weaponize data. Right? You can argue any point of view with any set of data if you're clever enough with numbers.

   26. HSHarry Stebbings13:12

       Sure.

   27. DMDavid Meyer13:12

       Right? So we, we modified that to be truth-seeking, because the point of being data-driven was be truth-seeking, but truth-seeking defangs the dark side of data-driven.

   28. HSHarry Stebbings13:22

       Sure.

   29. DMDavid Meyer13:23

       Right? So let's say you're gonna build a product. You wanna, like, ship early, ship often, but how can you figure out the early signal, if it's not revenue-based, 'cause maybe you're not charging yet, of whether or not it's working? Right? And you come up with a KPI and you can set goals and stuff like that, and you track that. And we could talk about that for days, you know, like input metrics versus output metrics and things like that. As soon as you start, like, reporting on it, it becomes a thing, it becomes the goal. The data in your progress serves one purpose, one purpose only, which is to figure out your blind spots and where to ask questions. The goal is not hitting your target. The goal is seeing where you're varying or going way above your target, why? And then you can dig in and figure out if you need to course correct or not. A lot of times, the right thing to do is change the target. The target was wrong. Like you came up with a target when you had a point of view and hypotheses before you've shipped-

   30. HSHarry Stebbings14:15

       No.
5. 17:58 – 27:29

   Leadership and Communication in Product Management

   1. HSHarry Stebbings17:58

      of something that I couldn't game?

   2. DMDavid Meyer17:59

      Again, e- everything's gameable. No, I can't.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings18:03

      (laughs)

   4. DMDavid Meyer18:04

      But, but things like, uh, active users, like daily, weekly, et cetera, depending on, you know, enterprise or consumer, time is so precious. If people are spending time in your product, there's value there. Now, it might be never, uh, accreditable to revenue value. Right? You... It depends... that's a business model question. But you're building something that has value to someone if someone's using it.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings18:28

      Mm-hmm.

   6. DMDavid Meyer18:29

      So those things are hard to game.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings18:30

      Yeah. No, I totally agree with you there. Uh, uh-

   8. DMDavid Meyer18:32

      Like if you knew... Like for this show, there's a number of subscribers. That's a little van- it's important. It shows us your attraction, but then like-

   9. HSHarry Stebbings18:42

      No, no. There's a lot. If I could get percent of listeners that listen to more than 80% of the show, that would be much more usable and understanding.

   10. DMDavid Meyer18:48

       Yeah, yeah. Or that then talk about it in a bar.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings18:50

       Oh, yeah. Th- that would be fantastic.

   12. DMDavid Meyer18:51

       Yeah, but then how do you get that? So that's, that's a trick, a strategy.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings18:53

       I'm hoping Jeff Bezos comes out with a device that invades your, your bar as well as your home (laughs) .

   14. DMDavid Meyer18:59

       Yeah.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings18:59

       Can I ask, what do you think of the state of product management today? As you said, it's become the hot job for everyone.

   16. DMDavid Meyer19:04

       You know, it's funny. I have a kid, freshman in college now, and I just pay attention more to what's going on in college and like, there's... People hire consultancies because it's a top school of people in college, to advise their companies. It's like a racket. I mean, there's like a, a name which then employs a bunch of college kids to do the consulting, you know? But-

   17. HSHarry Stebbings19:28

       You go to ChatGPT.

   18. DMDavid Meyer19:29

       (laughs)

   19. HSHarry Stebbings19:30

       Fastest growing, uh, leisure activities. (laughs)

   20. DMDavid Meyer19:33

       (laughs) Yeah, but it's like most people don't have like the hunger and the curiosity to keep going, 'cause it's a, it is a thankless job in a lot of ways. You think you're gonna be the rockstar, you're the roadie, you know? So you need a like, sticktuitiveness, whatever that weird word is, um, to be in product. But the people that have shown demonstrated impact, you know then that, well, if it was them, and that's a lot of the interrogation when you're, you know, hiring people, then they, they understand the mechanics of the job. If you were at Google during the aughts or, you know, you think it was because of you.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings20:07

       Of course.

   22. DMDavid Meyer20:07

       It wasn't because of you, you know? So how they accomplish extraordinary things at companies that aren't ramping.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings20:15

       That's what I find this unbelievable, which is how many people are at great companies with insane product market fit, but actually they're really not very good.

   24. DMDavid Meyer20:21

       Yeah. (laughs)

   25. HSHarry Stebbings20:22

       And it's just like, "Well, you know, search at Google was kind of..."

   26. DMDavid Meyer20:24

       It's too easy, because it's confirmation bias. Like you think, you're like, "You ship a feature and it grows." Well, 'cause the button's on the page and everybody's there, you know?

   27. HSHarry Stebbings20:32

       But do you think product managers today are worse than they were years ago?

   28. DMDavid Meyer20:35

       I have no idea. I have no idea. Like, I think that on average, yes, because there's so many of them. You know, when companies scale super fast, they have to build big teams fast. And it's just hard to sustain that, you know?

   29. HSHarry Stebbings20:52

       Do you worry about that at Stay? You mentioned the 6,000 people, uh, amazing people wi- within Databricks, but do you worry that with the 6,000 you just can't move as fast and we have this incumbency challenge?

   30. DMDavid Meyer21:02

       Absolutely. I mean, I think it's just a different challenge at every stage. And, uh, you know, you've talked to Oli a bunch. That's what keeps him awake at night, is the innovation factory. Now, objectively, we seem to be accelerating, which is a little, uh, you know, crazy to think about. I use the product constantly. Like, that's the only way I can understand it, you know? But I can't keep up with everything now. But again, we're, you know, 1,000 engineers and, you know, more than 100 people in product, so... But I think the... It's hard to do. It's a different game at every stage of company.
6. 27:29 – 34:27

   Personal Reflections and Product Management Insights

   1. DMDavid Meyer27:29

      that's funny. Um, no.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings27:30

      I know it's a deep one, but I- I d- yeah.

   3. DMDavid Meyer27:32

      No, but you have to love what you do. Well, I went to University of Pennsylvania, um, because they told me when I was applying that I could get a dual degree in fine art and engineering, and then I got there and they're like, "Who told you that?" (laughs) So I call up my dad, I'm like, "Dad, I have this deep decision to make. Do I go into fine art or engineering?" He's like, "It's not a decision. You go into engineering." (laughs)

   4. HSHarry Stebbings27:56

      (laughs)

   5. DMDavid Meyer27:57

      So, there's a lot of things I've put on pause that I love, that I love. Now I... You know, product management, creativity, you- you bring these things in, yeah? There's beauty in solving problems for humans.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings28:11

      Yeah.

   7. DMDavid Meyer28:12

      And you... Like, if you're not inspired by what's possible in what you're doing, then you should, you know, take a hike.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings28:20

      You mentioned that fine art and engineering, a wonderful balance between art and science, and I'm always conflicted on how much product is art or science. I've had guests out of Spotify say on the show, "99% science." Most people just, like, tentatively go 50/50, which always pisses me off.

   9. DMDavid Meyer28:37

      Okay. So, like, it gets back to this data-driven thing. Like, I've known a lot of product managers that ship a product and don't observe how it's behaving in the wild through data. I think they're fucking insane. Like-

   10. HSHarry Stebbings28:49

       (laughs)

   11. DMDavid Meyer28:49

       ... you spent all this energy and willpower creating this thing, and you're not obsessively watching exactly how it interacts with the world. That's crazy, right? So-

   12. HSHarry Stebbings29:01

       It's a little bit like content, which is the biggest problem with content, is people spend hours and hours and hours, e- especially at large companies, creating and making everything look beautiful. Distribution, just press publish.

   13. DMDavid Meyer29:11

       Yeah.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings29:12

       Pfft. Oh, okay. (laughs)

   15. DMDavid Meyer29:13

       Oh, I mean, we could, "Ah." Like, putting something on your website is not marketing.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings29:19

       Yeah.

   17. DMDavid Meyer29:19

       You gotta get in the mindshare of the person whose problem you're solving. They're never gonna look at your website.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings29:25

       Yeah.

   19. DMDavid Meyer29:25

       It's crazy.

   20. HSHarry Stebbings29:27

       That- that drives me nuts.

   21. DMDavid Meyer29:28

       It... Yeah. That- that-

   22. HSHarry Stebbings29:29

       The amount of times I've put together these glossy reports.

   23. DMDavid Meyer29:31

       This is where I- I've never- I've never run marketing, so I'm always telling them how they should do their job better, 'cause I've never... You know, it's the same thing as the flip as before.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings29:39

       Do you worry they don't like you? Not in a bad way, but like-

   25. DMDavid Meyer29:43

       Well, here's the thing. Like, and this is the- the core of being a humanist, having empathy. I think everybody's a genius. Maybe not at their job, but at something. Um, and they're trying to do the- they're trying to do the best they can. If you lead with that kind of empathy and understanding, and try to enroll them in why it should be different-

   26. HSHarry Stebbings30:04

       I'm just going for it. Do you think they c- do you think they are?

   27. DMDavid Meyer30:07

       (laughs)

   28. HSHarry Stebbings30:07

       Like, they're doing the best they can. I don't know, I work my fucking ass off.

   29. DMDavid Meyer30:11

       Hold on. Uh, so- so, i- i- it's a good point. Doing the best you can. Like, okay, so I'm having, you know, relationship stress. I didn't sleep well, I have a migraine. I, uh, I just wanna get through the day. That might be the best you can.

   30. HSHarry Stebbings30:26

       Sure.
7. 34:27 – 47:09

   Hiring, Scaling, and Company Dynamics

   1. HSHarry Stebbings34:27

      amazing product teams?

   2. DMDavid Meyer34:28

      (laughs) It's hard.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings34:30

      It's really hard. One of my biggest lessons on, like, leadership and management is actually that it's my job to know how each person internalizes feedback. And actually, I was always-

   4. DMDavid Meyer34:41

      Yeah.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings34:41

      ... like, truth-seeking, well, I'm gonna be direct.

   6. DMDavid Meyer34:44

      Yeah.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings34:44

      And then some people actually need a little bit more handholding, a little bit more love and nurturing.

   8. DMDavid Meyer34:48

      Yeah, yeah.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings34:49

      And actually, you have to tailor the leader that you are to the employees that you have.

   10. DMDavid Meyer34:53

       Totally. Like, every one-on-one I have is fundamentally different.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings34:57

       Yeah.

   12. DMDavid Meyer34:58

       Fundamentally.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings34:58

       But that's it, 'cause people are like, "Choose your style, and you stick with it."

   14. DMDavid Meyer35:00

       Yeah, and that's, but that gets to, i- i- I mean, you have empathy, EQ, and human understanding, and, to enable you to do that. And that's really key in a leader. I think a lot of leaders are formulaic. And I think the r-... People follow people that see them. When I'm in a room and I'm frustrated, or if I feel like I'm not kind of in the core of the conversation, but I have a point of view that I think they need to hear, like, I just wanna feel seen. Because if I, if I'm not seen, I feel ignored.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings35:35

       Mm-hmm.

   16. DMDavid Meyer35:35

       You know? When you give people feedback, you need to get their feedback on your feedback, because, y- you know, you might not give them any space to talk about the why or, you know, what they're going through. That doesn't mean not to be resolute on the feedback. Like, "I need you to do this." You know, if they look ashen and they, (laughs) you know, they're like stressed out, figure out why. It's your job to figure out why, because otherwise, you've lost them.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings36:04

       Do you know when you've lost them?

   18. DMDavid Meyer36:06

       I'm overly confident in this topic, so sometimes you do. Sometimes it's clear, right? But I, I generally have this, uh, unspoken or sometimes spoken contract with people that work for me. If you're gonna leave the company, I'm gonna help you find the best job imaginable. But first, I'm gonna figure out if you're running away or running towards. Like, if you're running away from the company 'cause something's broken, I wanna fix it. If you're running towards an unimaginable opportunity, I'm gonna guarantee you get it if I can. But then some people don't trust me.You know, a lot of people tell me six months, nine months before they're gonna leave and I help them get a kick-ass job. But some people don't trust me and tell me, "Oh, I've already accepted this offer from blah, blah, blah." I'm like, what did I do wrong?

   19. HSHarry Stebbings36:55

       Did you make that offer clear enough? Do you say to everyone, "Listen, if there is ever a time when you are tempted to leave, just let me know. We can talk about it. I won't dissuade you."

   20. DMDavid Meyer37:05

       So I do that with my immediate staff.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings37:07

       Yeah.

   22. DMDavid Meyer37:07

       But often, you know, oftentimes there's layers in an organization and, you know, not everybody knows you that well.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings37:14

       Yeah.

   24. DMDavid Meyer37:14

       But I feel, 'cause I feel strong connections with people, I feel that they should know me that well. Like, don't you know me? Don't you get that I wouldn't, like, walk you out of the building in, in, like, anger?

   25. HSHarry Stebbings37:28

       No, no, because most people actually are different to how they present.

   26. DMDavid Meyer37:32

       Yeah.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings37:32

       Which is one thing. And then it's not what you say, it's not what you do, it's how you make people feel.

   28. DMDavid Meyer37:37

       I know. Exactly, exactly. And so, like for example, um-

   29. HSHarry Stebbings37:40

       And the challenge is if they're a manager removed from you, they may not be made to feel the way that you would want them to feel.

   30. DMDavid Meyer37:47

       No, exactly. And when I come into meetings in my maddening way, you know, there's like, you know the term like seagull management?
8. 47:09 – 1:09:17

   Decision Making and Company Friction Points

   1. HSHarry Stebbings47:09

      me through it? Like, I've got-

   2. DMDavid Meyer47:10

      Well, like, okay. So it's very different from like a brand new thing, so a n- a brand new feature, brand new product. In short, there's like, it's like fractal. So I use the product all the time. I'm reviewing the product when I'm using it, like continuously. And so getting into like the preview, we have this dog food system and stuff like that, that's kind of like, uh, uh, you know, asynchronous product review. But then, you know, in the classic Scrum sprint methodology, you, you demo every Friday, you know? The, you want the core group to be seeing things as it's being built because you can't waste time. And if it's going the wrong direction, you need to know soon.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings47:50

      Yep.

   4. DMDavid Meyer47:50

      Right? But then you should have like continuous product reviews for the core team and then, you know, monthly or quarterly for management. But the danger, the danger is, like the seagull management, like everybody-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings48:06

      How do you bring them along enough in the vision in real time?

   6. DMDavid Meyer48:08

      Yeah. And so like let's take Databricks. So when I got there, there's a lot of founders. They're all ridiculously smart. They're all operating in the company. And, uh, you wanna include them in your early thinking because they have so much context, so much wisdom, so much context. But then there's also the danger, you know, if you have a handful of founders, uh, they might not all have the same opinion about the button placement. And so that can be very wasteful to like do cycles on exactly how something should look with a lot of people. The intent and the context they bring to it is, is, is super critical. For example, you know, developers need things fast, you know, they should have few clicks. Everything should be keyboard driven and stuff like that. So the, the danger is, the more people in the room-... the worse it is. In a bigger company, y- you know, people in the management chain all feel like they need to be in the room, and there might be multiple levels there, and then it's just a ceremony. Like, more than six people? What do you think? If you're gonna try to make a decision, how many people would you have in the room? Like, it's gotta be less than 10, probably more than four.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings49:14

      I- I- I say four to six. It's like venture partnerships ...

   8. DMDavid Meyer49:16

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings49:17

      ... but four to six is really where you get the ultimate decision-making, I think.

   10. DMDavid Meyer49:19

       But then if you have 20 people ... it's a ceremony.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings49:22

       Okay. I totally agree. Does remote or work from home change that in some way, where people can be on mute, people can listen in, you don't feel their presence? Does that open up the aperture or change anything?

   12. DMDavid Meyer49:34

       Yeah, because you dilute the clarity and the intensity of what you say the more people are in the room. You know? Like, even simple as, like, being glib, you know, using curse words and things like that, you feel uncomfortable, 'cause like you wanna get to the truth.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings49:54

       Which actually can be quite important. It can emphasize pain, it can emphasize-

   14. DMDavid Meyer49:57

       Yeah.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings49:57

       ... you know, if I say, "Actually, it's frustrating," versus, "It's a fucking nightmare."

   16. DMDavid Meyer50:01

       Yeah.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings50:02

       It's a big difference.

   18. DMDavid Meyer50:03

       'Cause that- that takes maybe four seconds. To say it politely takes 10 seconds.

   19. HSHarry Stebbings50:08

       Yeah.

   20. DMDavid Meyer50:09

       Like if we work together a lot, we use th- we- we have the same lexicon, right? We can be efficient, high bandwidth. If you get 10 people in the room, they'll oftentimes, it'll be, it'll be like damaging. We'll say something, we'll understand each other, they'll interpret it differently, and they'll report the news to other people that's wrong.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings50:28

       I- I totally agree with you in terms of the news reporting. How do you deal with that in terms of documentation of decisions made, action items-

   22. DMDavid Meyer50:35

       (laughs)

   23. HSHarry Stebbings50:35

       ... to ensure that that communication downstream is efficient?

   24. DMDavid Meyer50:39

       God, it's so important, and everybody's terr- I'm terrible at it. Um, I like to be partnered with a kind of a, you know, a, a program management type person, because I'm just useless. I'm not fastidious, you know? So I'll take notes. I want notes to be sent out. And oftentimes, I'll just like, if I join a meeting and there's no document link to take notes for the meeting, I go apoplectic. And then I'll create one and I'll write really bad notes and then I'll forget to send them out, but I'll invite other people to and then they'll send them out. So like, I really believe in the importance of that. I'm kind of shit at it personally, but it's so important because like, you know, at any company of any size, any venture of any size, you know, people do stupid shit, right?

   25. HSHarry Stebbings51:27

       Sure.

   26. DMDavid Meyer51:27

       Um, but if we get back to they're doing the best they can, so why would they do stupid shit? Well, if someone does stupid shit on my team, it's I didn't give them the context, 'cause they're smart people. I hire smart people. So if they're doing something dumbass, it's because I failed to give them the context and the framework to understand why it's dumbass.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings51:51

       When you review that, why have you in the past failed to give them the context? You're too busy? You haven't done it effectively?

   28. DMDavid Meyer51:56

       Too bus- Well, the other thing is like, I need to understand the system of something before I give advice on it, so I like dig in hard. I assume everybody's brain works like mine. I know they don't, you know, and like every one-on-one is different, but, um, my, I have a, a foible of- of- of thinking people think like me. So I assume a lot is self-evident, you know? I assume the things that I find self-evident you find self-evident 'cause it's self-evident. But that's the luxury of me being in a bunch of meetings you're not in.

   29. HSHarry Stebbings52:26

       Sure.

   30. DMDavid Meyer52:26

       So it's self-evident. So I-
9. 1:09:17 – 1:16:05

   Quick-Fire Round

   1. HSHarry Stebbings1:09:17

      as a PM?

   2. DMDavid Meyer1:09:18

      Really, really know the customer, and really, really know the product. Know exactly how the product works, and know exactly what the customers need in aggregate.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings1:09:29

      What's your all-time favorite font? (laughs)

   4. DMDavid Meyer1:09:33

      Uh, DM Sans, 'cause my initials.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings1:09:35

      (laughs) Tell me, what would you say is the biggest mistake founders make when hiring product teams?

   6. DMDavid Meyer1:09:41

      Not being clear about the level of agency they'll have.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings1:09:46

      Hmm. What does that mean?

   8. DMDavid Meyer1:09:48

      Meaning, a founder CEO is gonna be in the details of all the shit, and that's good. And some people expect, you know, complete agency, calling the shots as a product leader, and they will fail.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings1:10:02

      I think you've only worked with good founders.

   10. DMDavid Meyer1:10:04

       (laughs)

   11. HSHarry Stebbings1:10:05

       What I mean by that is quite often what I hear is like, "Oh, my God. I mean, that's so far removed. Like, th- they just kinda left me to all of my own abilities."

   12. DMDavid Meyer1:10:13

       Okay. Okay. Okay. So the... I was talking about good founders. Yeah.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings1:10:17

       Yeah.

   14. DMDavid Meyer1:10:17

       Um, so I've, you know, I've worked with a lot of people that were basically like, "The right thing for me to say was, 'I've got it.'" And I tried that for the first six months at Databricks, and that's not what Ali wanted to hear. He didn't want me to go off and do something and then show him how awesome it was, you know? He wanted to be deeply involved and have the founders deeply involved in the sausage-making because they had so much more context and I wouldn't go through, you know, wasted time that way.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings1:10:42

       No, I totally get you. What one piece of advice would you give to someone starting a new role as a CPO or product leader?

   16. DMDavid Meyer1:10:49

       There's a failure mode where you feel like you have to put together comprim- comprehensive frameworks that sales is, you know, given confidence by and... Like, just give yourself time. Do as little, like, changing the world of how the company works as possible in the first 90 days.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings1:11:09

       Should you look for early easy wins?

   18. DMDavid Meyer1:11:12

       Um, yeah, but they shouldn't be vanity wins, you know? If the early wins are human more than technical, you'll, uh, build the followership you need.

   19. HSHarry Stebbings1:11:24

       No, I, I, I, I agree with that for sure. I see too many coming into that, "I'm gonna change everything."

   20. DMDavid Meyer1:11:28

       (laughs)

   21. HSHarry Stebbings1:11:28

       And then it's like, "Whoa. No, no, no." Uh, what are some most important skills to build early, early in your career in product?

   22. DMDavid Meyer1:11:35

       So when I was at Plumtree and, you know, Phil Seifer left and told John Kunz to make me run product, I met with John Kunz, and he, he was at Adobe in the great days, you know, in product. He ran product for a lot of Creative Suite stuff. And I was like, "John, I'll do this. I'll do this if you want me to do this, but I need you to be my mentor. I need you to teach me how to do product 'cause I, I don't know what to do." And he's like, "You can't teach it." (laughs) That's all he said.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings1:12:02

       Thanks, John. That's, that's super helpful, isn't it?

   24. DMDavid Meyer1:12:04

       (laughs) But-

   25. HSHarry Stebbings1:12:05

       Uh, throw me into the deep end. Cheers, brother. Yeah, yeah, you should do it. And, uh, you can't teach it. No. No. Okay, okay. Uh, you also... I think it's very difficult to teach parenting.

   26. DMDavid Meyer1:12:15

       Yeah.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings1:12:16

       If you could call yourself up the night before you had your first child, what would you say to yourself?

   28. DMDavid Meyer1:12:22

       Like, "Hold on to the wonder."

   29. HSHarry Stebbings1:12:24

       What does that mean? I appreciate-

   30. DMDavid Meyer1:12:25

       It's so easy. Like, so the first kid we had, urgency for them to, like, roll over. Urgent... Like, "They're gonna walk. When are they gonna walk? When are they gonna..." Like, second kid, you wanna delay walking as much as possible 'cause then you have to chase them, you know? Just watching them. Like, you watch videos of them as babies now, and you're just like, "It's just amazing." Every little thing they do is amazing. Like, stop trying to shape them. Just, you know, get a front row seat.

Episode duration: 1:16:05