Thread by @ruima

How do Great Chinese PMs think? A🧵:

Besides Allen Zhang from WeChat, there are many other "super famous" PMs in China. One is YU Jun 1st Product VP at Baidu & then at Didi.

5 Aspects of Good Product Management:
1) Logic
2) Empathy
3) (Sector) Experience
4) Dissent
5) Data

The first 3 are more dependent on the PM & their life experience, what they did before. The last 2 is more on the company & how it organizes its systems.

1) On Logic:
You can be wrong on the conclusion, but you can't afford to be wrong on the logic (thought process).

2 diff types of logic:
Small Logic:
You are a food delivery co & it's raining. You prob need to add $ to your delivery cost.

Big Logic:
If you don't add $ even when it's raining, u lose some % but user might remember u & appreciate u, you'll get the next 5, 10 orders.

2) On Empathy:
This is mostly trainable. The easiest way is to use your own product a lot, under every circumstance.

3) On Experience:
# of years does not indicate someone's level. There are 3 components to experience: reading, actual experience, and thinking. Your level is...

determined by the lowest one of these. Reading means how widely you acquire information. But you also need to think after you read. Experience is mostly irreplicable. This is why how you think abt your experience & apply to a new thing is so important. Reading & thinking help.

4) Dissent
You really need your company to have a flat culture & allow dissent to be heard. Everyone thinks they have egalitarian culture but really it's just the boss saying one thing & everyone else piling on w something additive. But decisions that can withstand a lot of ...

dissent are the best decisions.
But egalitarian culture is a difficult thing for any company and relies on multiple factors. For one, your talent needs to be high quality. A bunch of know-nothings in egalitarian environment won't magically produce great decisions.

5) Data
Data is the engine of the world today, but has its deficiencies.
Not everything can be AB tested. If you AB test everything, PMs will pick only the things that can be AB tested to work on.
Scaled up proj are great for data, but a new one is not.

Its up to the PM to figure out what should be data-driven, and which is only partially explained by data.

Thus, hiring a good PM is always abt this person's thinking. An avg PM will prob be very satisfied at a data-driven company, bc it's easy to feel fulfilled, there's less ...

uncertainty in ur output. But if you are a very high ability PM, I suggest you don't go to such a co, and I suggest u switch positions often, since u will find that ur thinking will be quickly bounded by the product & only in new applications of ur experience will u learn more.

That's how you get to thinking very thoroughly & to the level of being able to abstract experience into theory.

/end

Agree, disagree? Comments? I'll be elevating more thought leadership from China tech, so follow for more.