本集简介
双语字幕
仅展示文本字幕，不包含中文音频；想边听边看，请使用 Bayt 播客 App。
随着科技公司规模扩大，不知从什么时候开始，这种小组的人力配置比例就出现了。
As tech companies scaled, somewhere along the line, this HR ratio of a pod popped into being.
每招六个工程师，就配一个设计师，再配一个产品经理。
Every time you hire six engineers, you add a designer, you add a PM.
招这么多产品经理，反而让工程师和设计师变得像小孩一样，他们本来完全有能力自己做决定，但因为有产品经理在旁边盯着，就从来没这个必要了。
Hiring so many PMs infantilizes the engineers and the designers who are perfectly capable of making good decisions, but just never had to because there was always a PM to babysit them.
你在网上写的东西让Whatnot产品团队的很多人感到意外，因为它的前提其实挺简单的。
Something you wrote online that surprised a lot of people at Whatnot product team was built on the somewhat simple premise.
我们后悔设立了产品管理这个岗位。
We regret that product management exists.
这话大概很少从首席产品官嘴里听到吧。
Not a thing you probably hear from a lot of CPOs.
我们故意说得这么直白，就是为了提醒自己，不要为了招产品经理而招产品经理。
We articulated that way to force ourselves to remember that you don't hire a PM just for the sake of hiring one.
只有在确实有特定需求的时候，才去招一个。
You hire one where there's really specific need.
最好别假设每个地方都需要一个产品经理。
It is better to not assume we need a PM in every place.
认为产品管理应该是一个专业职能的唯一理由，其实是它更像一门手艺，而不是一种资格。
The only argument for why you would want product management to be a specialist function is really it's a trade, not a qualification.
这是通过实践才能做好的事情。
It's something you get good at by doing.
它就像一块肌肉。
It's a muscle.
但反过来说，你越让工程师和设计师远离这件事，他们的这块肌肉就越得不到锻炼。
But the flip side of that is the more you abstract your engineers and your designers from doing the same thing, their muscle gets underdeveloped.
他们还写了一句很犀利的话。
They also wrote this brutal quote.
过去两年里，有31832人申请成为Whatnot的产品经理。
In the last two years, 31,832 people applied to be a product manager at Whatnot.
我们只招了一个。
We hired one.
他在招聘时看重什么？
What does he look for in the folks that you hire?
我可以告诉你
I can tell you
什么趋势正在下降。
what's definitely trending down.
那些在面试中花大量时间谈论推动共识和利益相关者管理的人，因为确实有一批产品经理，他们的专长不是技术。
Folks who spend a lot of their time in their interviews talking about driving alignment and stakeholder management because there's definitely a group of PMs whose specialty wasn't technical.
而是搞政治。
It was politics.
你对转向个人贡献者工作很兴奋。
You're very excited about this move to IC work.
产品经理正在远离这种大型组织管理世界。
PMs moving away from this big org management world.
如果你是
If you were
作为产品经理如果做得特别成功，就会被提拔成总监。
really successful as a PM, you got promoted into being a director.
我们把所有优秀的人才都提拔到不再做具体事情的岗位上去了。
We took all of our players and then promoted them out of doing things.
你为什么不希望梅西在你的球队踢球，反而总想着靠青训体系培养新人呢？
Why wouldn't you want Messi playing for your team rather than trying to have the academy coming along all the time?
今天我的嘉宾是汤姆·维里利。
Today, my guest is Tom Verrilli.
汤姆是Whatnot的首席产品官，长期担任Twitch的首席产品官，之前还在Twitter担任过产品增长总监。
Tom is chief product at Whatnot, former long time chief product officer at Twitch, and former director of product growth at Twitter.
他也是我一直想请来上这个播客的人。
He's also someone I've been wanting to get on this podcast for so long.
汤姆有很多犀利的观点，对产品角色的未来有非常独特且重要的见解，包括他观察到最优秀的产品经理现在在做什么不同的事情，以及他招聘产品人员时看重什么。
Tom has a lot of hot takes and really unique and important insights on the future of the product role, what he's seeing the best PMs doing differently these days, and what he's looking for when he's hiring product people for his team now.
如果你不了解Whatnot，它是一个直播购物平台。
If you're not familiar with Whatnot, it's a livestream shopping platform.
这是美国有史以来增长最快的电商平台。
It's the fastest growing US marketplace business of all time.
汤姆分享了他曾在平台上从渔民那里买了一只活龙虾的经历。
At one point, Tom shares how he bought a fresh lobster from a fisherman on the platform.
在开始之前，别忘了去lenny's productpass.com看看，可以免费获得一年全球最热门、设计最精美的人工智能产品，这些产品只对Lenny的新闻通讯订阅者开放。
Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lenny's productpass.com for a free year of the hottest and most beautifully crafted AI products in the world available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers.
那么，有请汤姆·韦里利。
With that, I bring you Tom Verrilli.
汤姆，非常感谢你来做客，欢迎来到我们的播客。
Tom, thank you so much for being here, welcome to the podcast.
太感谢了，兄弟。
Thank you so much, dude.
看了这么多年，现在能来这儿感觉有点不真实。
It feels kinda surreal after years of watching.
我懂这种感觉。
I hear that.
我听说，来做客播客的人都会这么说。
I hear that when people come with the podcast.
你来了。
Here you are.
第一次来，但关注很久了？
Giving you first time long time?
没错。
That's right.
我想从你在网上写的一段话开始聊，这段话让很多人感到意外，而且我觉得，从一个长期担任首席产品官、长期做产品、打造过很多成功产品和团队的人嘴里说出来，会更让人意外。
I wanna start with something that you wrote online that surprised a lot of people, and I think will surprise a lot of people coming from a longtime chief product officer, longtime product builder, someone that's built a lot of very successful products and teams.
你写的是：从Whatnot产品团队最初成立的时候起，它的构建就基于一个相当简单的理念。
What you wrote is, since its earliest inception, the Whatnot product team has built was built on the somewhat simple premise.
我们后悔产品管理这个岗位的存在。
We regret that product management exists.
是的，没错。
Yes, sir.
这话从首席产品官嘴里说出来，估计没几个人听过。
Not a thing you probably hear from a lot of CPOs.
确实。
No.
说说你为什么会有这种想法。
Talk about why you feel this way.
聊聊你是怎么走到这一步的。
Talk about how you got to this place.
再谈谈这到底意味着什么。
Talk about what this means.
好。
Sure.
我一般喜欢从历史讲起，这样才能理解事情的本质。
I mean, I always try and start with, like, history in order to understand kind of things.
说到产品管理，如果你往回追溯，最早的时候根本就没有产品管理这个岗位。
And one of the things when you come to product management is if you go all the way back, product management didn't exist.
对吧？
Right?
以前就是业务方，通常是创始人或CEO，直接跟工程和设计团队说我们要做什么，然后大家一起执行。
It was the business and very often founder or CEO types talking directly to engineering and design about what we needed to build and then executing it together.
而且，你知道，互联网公司的发展速度比历史上任何其他类型的公司都要快得多。
And, you know, internet businesses, it turns out scaled a lot faster than any other businesses in history.
所以到了某个阶段，规模大了，就得把具体的执行工作交给别人，或者信任别人去规划下一步，因为事情太多，一个人根本忙不过来。
And so at some point scale meant delegating the specifics of execution to somebody or trusting somebody else to work out what comes next, because there's just too many things on for somebody to sit with.
但如果你想想大多数初创公司，或者想想这个演变过程，那其实是一个专业化的角色，由专门的人来负责规划。
But if you think about most startups, or you think about how that evolution worked, that was really a specialist role where somebody was working it out.
通常，你跟工程师沟通时，不需要描述得太详细，跟设计师沟通时也一样，因为他们已经了解情况，或者之前就参与过。
It was usually you said less things to the engineer where you had to describe in less detail what you were trying to get done to to a designer because they understood or they'd they'd been involved.
这种需要在科技行业里设立一个专门做决策的岗位的想法，其实更多是现代才有的功能，而不是纯粹的必要条件。
And this idea that we need this kind of specialist decision making class of humans in tech is really a more modern function than it is a like pure necessity.
你知道，我的看法，也是Whatnot一直以来的做法，就是如果工程和设计团队能掌握足够的背景信息，他们自己就能做出很好的决策，那其实会更好。
You know, the way I would think about it and the way that Whatnot has always treated is like, it would actually be way better if engineering and design had the context that they needed to just make great decisions there.
如果他们跟用户和用户的需求那么紧密，基本上就能做出跟产品经理一样的决策。
If they were so in touch with users and what they needed, that they could kind of make the same decisions that a product manager is.
据我所知，唯一支持产品管理作为专业职能的理由是，它更像一门手艺，而不是一种资格认证。
The only argument as far as I'm aware for why you would want product management to be a specialist function is really it's a trade, not a qualification.
我的意思是，这东西是靠实践练出来的。
And what I mean by that is it's something you get good at by doing.
说白了，它就像一块肌肉。
It's a muscle for want of a better term.
就像每个私人教练跟我说的，肌肉是靠重复训练练出来的。
And as every private trainer has ever told me, muscles are built by reps.
所以做得越多，就越擅长。
And so the more you do it, the better you get at it.
但反过来，如果你让工程师和设计师远离这个过程，他们的那块肌肉就会萎缩。
But the the flip side of that is the more you abstract your engineers and your designers from doing the same thing, their muscle gets underdeveloped.
所以我觉得产品管理确实扮演着非常重要的角色。
And so I think product management plays a really important role.
而且我觉得，你可以把产品管理用在那些特别需要做好的关键事情上，发挥很大的作用。
And I think, you know, you can deploy product management to have a really important leverage on particular things that need to go really well.
在很多情况下，这样做能让设计和工程团队在那些场景中充分发挥他们的专业能力。
And in a lot of ways doing that, let's design and engineering be the best they can be at their craft in those situations.
但只要有可能，不设产品经理反而是最优解，让设计和工程团队自己去经历那些步骤，确保他们的能力得到充分锻炼。
But wherever possible, it's kind of optimal to not have a product manager and instead have design and engineering going through those those kind of steps and making sure that their muscles are well repped.
你是不是觉得产品管理在早期很有帮助，也很重要，但后来经历了一个阶段，就是产品经理太多了，而且很多都不太出色？
Do you feel like product management was very helpful early on and was important, and then it kinda went through a period of, wow, there's way too many PMs that are not that amazing.
现在好像又回到了一个原点，大家都在想，到底什么样的产品经理才算优秀，也许我们需要的数量更少一些？
And now there's kind of this coming back to, okay, what is actually an amazing PM, and maybe we need fewer of them?
对。
Yeah.
有意思的是，我觉得如果你去问大多数工程师甚至设计师，他们都会记得那些合作过的优秀产品经理，主要是因为跟他们合作过的糟糕产品经理太多了。
The funny thing is I think if you talk to most engineers or even designers, they will remember the great PMs that they've worked with, mostly because they've worked with so many bad ones.
我这么说并不是要打击大家，而是觉得，这个职能本身其实是在进行非常严格的自我审视。
And I don't mean that as a disheartening pejorative for folks, but I think it's more, you know, you're being kind of really, really self critical as a function.
普通的产品经理真的能给周围的人带来巨大价值吗？就像优秀的产品管理那样，能够传递清晰度、吸收不确定性，或者帮助大家及时做出决策。
Does the average PM add a ton of value to folks around them in the way that having really high quality product management can, you know, disseminate clarity and absorb ambiguity in the ways that they can or, like, help people make really timely decisions.
我觉得这很大程度上是随着科技公司扩张、我们招了太多工程师而出现的问题。我不想把责任推给HR，但不知从何时起，这种“小组配比”的HR模式就出现了。
And I think a lot of it is this function of, like, as tech companies scaled and we ended up hiring so many engineers, somewhere along the line, and I don't wanna pin it on like HR, but somewhere along the line, this kind of HR ratio of like a pod popped into being.
每招六个工程师，就配一个设计师、一个产品经理、一个工程经理，这个核心团队就成型了。
You know, every time you hire six engineers, you add a designer, you add a PM, you add an EM and the and the, you know, the nucleus exists.
但当你现在要服务十亿日活的产品时，你需要很多工程师。
And then when you're now serving billion DAU products, you owe a lot of engineers.
于是突然间，产品经理也变多了。
And so now all of a sudden, you've got a lot of product managers.
大多数情况下，通知系统的基础设施根本不需要产品经理。
And in most cases, you probably don't need APM for notifications infrastructure.
对吧？
Right?
工程师完全有能力理解那套东西怎么运作。
Engineers are perfectly capable of understanding how that works.
而且很多时候，就像我们刚才说的，招那么多产品经理反而让工程师和设计师变得像小孩一样，他们本来完全有能力做决策，但因为总有产品经理像保姆一样兜底，就从来没自己做过。
And in a lot of ways, you know, as we just described, hiring so many PMs infantilizes the engineers and the designers who are perfectly capable of making good decisions, but just never had to because there was always a PM to baby system.
本期节目由本季赞助商WorkOS提供。
This episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, WorkOS.
OpenAI、Anthropic、Kursor、Verrilli、Replit、Sierra、Clay，还有上百家其他成功的公司，它们有什么共同点？
What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Kursor, Verrilli, Replit, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common?
它们都靠WorkOS来驱动。
They are all powered by WorkOS.
如果你在为企业级产品做开发，你一定体会过集成单点登录、SCIM、RBAC、审计日志这些大公司必备功能有多痛苦。
If you're building a product for the enterprise, you've felt the pain of integrating single sign on, SCIM, RBAC, audit logs, and other features required by large companies.
WorkOS把这些阻碍交易的难题变成了即插即用的API，它有一个专门为B2B SaaS打造的现代化开发者平台。
WorkOS turns those deal blockers into drop in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for b to b SaaS.
说实话，我投资的所有初创公司，一旦开始往高端市场拓展，最后都会和WorkOS合作，因为他们确实是最好的。
Literally every startup that I'm an investor in that starts to expand upmarket ends up working with WorkOS, And that's because they are the best.
无论你是种子轮初创公司，想拿下第一个企业客户，还是已经成长为独角兽，要全球扩张，WorkOS都是让你快速达到企业级标准、扫清增长障碍的最快途径。
Whether you are a seed stage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally, WorkOS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise ready and unblocking growth.
它基本上就是企业级功能的Stripe。
It's essentially Stripe for enterprise features.
访问workos.com开始使用，或者直接去他们的Slack频道，那里有真正的工程师等着回答你的问题。
Visit workos.com to get started or just hit up their Slack where they have actual engineers waiting to answer your questions.
WorkOS让你通过好用的API、全面的文档和流畅的开发者体验来更快地构建产品。
WorkOS allows you to build faster with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs, and a smooth developer experience.
今天就去workos.com，让你的应用准备好服务企业客户。
Go to workos.com to make your app enterprise ready today.
我发现，当人们这样想的时候，最终会遇到一个问题，我想听听你的看法：工程师和设计师其实不一定想做产品经理的工作，因为产品经理的很多工作挺烦人、也不好玩。
That's something that I find people run into eventually when they think this way that I wanna get your take on is engineers and designers don't necessarily want to be doing the work of a PM, because a lot of the work of a PM is kind of annoying and not fun.
而且，你知道，做决策这部分确实有它的魅力。
And, you know, there's a glamour part, like, making decisions.
比人们想象的要更有魅力。
Glamorous than people think.
对。
Yeah.
是的。
Yes.
没错。
Exactly.
你怎么看这个问题？
How do you think about that?
比如，随着公司规模扩大，工程师们不得不整天开会、写文档、协调各方、做记录，这些PM的琐碎工作，同时他们又很想搞开发。
Just like oh, especially as the company scales, engineers having to be, you know, line in meetings, having to write docs, aligning everyone, taking note, you know, all these, like, kind of minutiae part of PM, and also just the big like, they also wanna you know, engineers wanna build.
工程师想写代码。
Engineers wanna code.
设计师想做设计。
Designers wanna design.
对于他们可能并不想干这些活这一点，你是怎么看的？
How do you think about that element of they may not actually want to be doing that work?
我觉得这就是专业分工的双刃剑。
I think this is where, like, specialization works both ways.
对吧？
Right?
有一批擅长做决策的人确实很有用。
It is useful to have folks who are well honed in making decisions.
有人这么说也完全合理：听着，
It's totally reasonable as well for someone to say, listen.
我是基础设施负责人，我想多考虑规模问题，不想花时间争论什么对齐啊、那些细节啊。
I'm an infrastructure lead, and I wanna think a lot about scale, and I do not wanna have to spend my time debating, you know, alignment or getting those minutiae right.
而且某些技能不一定能很好地迁移。
And certain skill sets don't necessarily translate super well.
对吧？
Right?
如果你特别擅长在脑子里构建基础设施如何扩展的大模型，你可能就不具备倾听客户、真正理解核心问题的能力，而不是只听他们说了什么——这又是我们慢慢积累起来的东西。
If you're really good at building big mental models in your head of how infrastructure should scale, may not have the skill set of listening to a customer and actually understanding the core problem as opposed to the thing that they said, which, again, just a thing that we've built over time.
所以我说‘我们后悔’，并不是说我们不需要产品经理。
So my supposition of we regret isn't to say that we don't want product managers to use.
我们意识到，在这些情况下，确实需要帮助其他职能专业化。
We recognize in those situations that you do need to kind of help other functions specialize.
但我认为，我们之所以这样表述，是为了强迫自己记住：不要为了招产品经理而招产品经理。
But I think it's we we articulated that way to kind of force ourselves to remember that you don't hire a PM just for the sake of hiring one.
你招一个人，是因为有非常具体的需求。
You hire one with this really specific need.
而且我觉得，Lenny，随之而来的是，你必须围绕这一点建立组织文化。
And I think what goes with it, Lenny, is, like, you have to build the culture of the organization around that.
举个例子，当我们说‘我们后悔产品管理存在’时，每次写关于如何发布或正在做什么的文档，我们都会非常明确地表示，任何人都可以推动变革，新产品开发的直接负责人可以是工程师或设计师，但所有人都要经历同样的职能层级，比如必须通过产品评审。
So for example, when we say, we, you know, we regret product management exists, every time we write documents about how we ship or what we're doing, we're very kind of clear that anyone can bring, you know, change forward, that we can have DRIs of new product development that is an engineer or is a designer, but that everybody goes through that same level of function of, like, you've gotta go through product review.
你必须真正去做这项工作，因为这是实实在在的工作。
You've gotta actually do the work because it is real work.
如果有人不想做，想做点别的，我们随时可以调整产品管理的安排。
And if people don't want to do that, if they kinda wanna do something else, we can always move product management around.
所以，与其把产品经理分配到团队，默认他们总是做那些事，我们更倾向于把他们分配到问题或核心项目上。
And so rather than mapping PMs to teams where you kind of assume that the PM will always do that, we tend to map them to kind of problems or kind of like core projects.
这意味着，可能有一年多的时间，某个工程团队都没有配备产品经理，尽管有大量的产品工作在进行。
And that means that there will be a year more where there isn't a PM attached to a particular engineering team, even though there's lots of ongoing product work to do.
我觉得很有意思的是，我们经常听到一些以工程为导向的公司，比如开发工具类的公司，会这样说：我们不需要产品经理。
What I love about this is we often hear people at, like, eng oriented products talk like this, like developer tools where we don't need PMs.
为什么需要产品经理呢？
Why do we need PMs?
这种说法通常来自像Linear这样的公司，以及那些做开发工具的公司，你能理解为什么他们觉得工程师就够了。
And it's often comes from companies like Linear and, like, companies that are building developer tools where you could see why engineers are enough.
所以从你的角度听到这些特别有意思，因为你做的都是非常面向消费者的产品，非常非常面向消费者，这类产品通常被认为需要很强的产品管理能力。
And so it's really interesting to hear from your perspective because you've built very consumer y products, very, very consumer y products that require what you think are very strong PM skills.
所以这话从你嘴里说出来分量更重——你觉得产品经理可能不像人们想的那样必不可少，也能做出很棒的产品。
So it it means a lot even more so coming from you that you find that PMs aren't as necessary as people may think in building something great.
对。
Yeah.
我觉得有两方面的原因促成了这一点。
I think there was, like, two parts that that drove it.
当然，我在这里说的很多东西，其实都是我自己慢慢积累的经验。
And I've certainly a lot of what I'm kind of talking about here are things that I've definitely learned over time.
你明白吗？
You know?
我在Twitch待了七年，之后才去了Whatnot。那家公司非常亚马逊风格，讲究两个披萨团队，很注重比例。
I I spent seven years at Twitch prior to time at Whatnot, and that was very Amazon two pizza team, you know, ratio driven.
我最早是在Twitter的硅谷办公室开始的，那里也一样，团队之间总是配合得非常紧密。
I started in the valley of Twitter, and that was similarly very, you always had this kind of very tight alignment.
而且天啊，那时候有开不完的协调会议，所以你能想象为什么工程师们不想参与。后来我慢慢意识到，其实很多问题只是因为管理层看不到实际情况，于是你就招更多人，建更多层级，系统又催生出更多系统。
And there was, god, there was a lot of alignment meetings, so you can imagine why engineers didn't wanna be in And it's kind of evolved over time to understand that, like, actually a lot of that is just a function of, like, management not being able to see what's going on, and so you you hire more folks and you build more layers and your systems begets systems.
我觉得现在真正在改变的是，大家开始意识到，想获得杠杆效应，不一定非得招更多产品经理在自己手下，或者让自己职位更高。我们现在对业务的理解比以前清楚多了。
And and I think what's really changing is people are realizing that, like, it's not true anymore that the only way to get leverage is just to hire more PMs underneath you and and be more senior that, you know, we've got a better understanding of what's happening in businesses now.
现在直接跟代码库打交道、跟工程师沟通，比以往任何时候都容易。
It's easier to kind of, like, converse directly with the code base and talk to engineers than it ever has been.
所以你其实不需要陷入那种什么都靠规模扩张的套路。
And so you don't actually have to get into this, like, all scale thing.
而且我真的不觉得消费者端还是企业端还是关键的分水岭了。
And I don't really think consumer or enterprise is the cutting point anymore.
我觉得更多是组织本身的文化在起作用。
I think it's more kind of the culture of the organization itself.
你觉得这种转变有多少是AI推动的？因为现在AI让非产品经理也能做产品经理的工作了。
How much of this shift in your mind is AI driven because AI now enables non PMs to do PME work?
又有多少是AI出现之前就已经存在的趋势？
And how much of it was, like, pre pre AI?
然后我想聊聊这在你团队里具体是什么样子的，不过先让我问完这个问题。
And then I wanna talk about just what this actually looks like in your team, but let me ask that question first.
我不觉得这完全是AI的原因，但AI确实让事情变得容易多了。
I don't think it's explicitly because of AI, but I do think AI makes it a lot easier.
我觉得有两方面原因。
I think it's two things.
首先，AI确实让个人贡献者现在有了巨大的杠杆效应。
I think AI certainly means that there's an enormous amount of leverage for an IC now.
我不知道别人有没有这种感觉，但前几天我和几位资深主管聊天，我们都觉得现在有了AI，能做的事情太多了，以至于你会因为没做的事感到很大压力，因为你知道只要多挤出几个小时，就能推进很多事情。
I don't know how much other people feel this, but I was talking to a couple of our senior leads the other day, and we feel that we're so capable of doing things now with AI that you almost feel a bunch of pressure of the stuff you're not doing because you know that if you carved out a couple more hours, you could you could move a lot of stuff.
如果你有敏锐的判断力，用AI工具确实能更快地推进工作。
It's certainly easier to move fast with AI tooling if you've got well honed judgment.
你看，现在用Hex Thread就能拉取数据。
You know, you can pull data now on a Hex Thread.
这在2017年，基本上需要一个亚马逊L7级别的数据科学家花一到两周才能完成。
That is basically what it would take a week, two weeks with an Amazon l seven, you know, data scientist in 2017.
所以，如果你有足够的自主权和良好的判断力，基本上可以快速做出决策，让大家保持前进，这真的很了不起。
And so if you're empowered and have good judgment, you can basically make really quick decisions and just kinda keep people moving, which is extraordinary.
但不仅仅是AI，我觉得很多类似的理念转变，也伴随着其他文化上的推动，比如，招优秀的人然后放手让他们干、自下而上的路线图等等。这些因素共同促成了科技行业最近的一些文化转变，那就是，自上而下其实也挺好的，因为高层通常能快速决策，省去很多对齐和争论的时间。
But more than just AI, I think it's also a lot of those kind of, like, ratio, you know, like, kind of pushes also came with a bunch of other cultural pushes, like, you know, hire great people and get out of their way, bottoms up road maps, and and all of those pieces where I think there's been a bit of a cultural shift in tech over the last little while, which is like, actually, top down's pretty good because folks at the top, generally speaking, can make quick decisions and remove all of this alignment debate.
他们通常比大多数人掌握更多的宏观背景信息。
They have probably more macro context than most folks.
假设他们真正了解一线情况并且能力足够，那么让高级管理层参与很多决策，其实是一个非常高效的模型。这意味着，不仅仅是工具让他们高效，而且你可以让一位非常资深的产品经理负责更多的事情，这比用三个相对初级的PM要高效得多。
And assuming that they are genuinely in touch with ground truth and are good enough, it's actually a really efficient model to be able to kind of have senior leadership involved in a lot of those decisions, which means you it's not just the tooling that makes them efficient, but you can have one very senior PM across more things, and they can be more efficient than having, you know, three relatively entry level PMs.
但毫无疑问，AI又让这一切变得更加容易了。
But certainly, AI makes all of that a lot easier again.
所以回到那个核心观点，我觉得这一点很重要，需要澄清一下——说后悔有产品管理这个岗位，并不是说我们不需要产品经理，或者觉得他们没用。
So just to kind of coming back to the broad premise, which I think is very important to clarify, this point about regretting product management exists isn't saying we don't want or think PMs are useful.
而是说，最好不要默认每个地方都需要一个产品经理，让其他职能的人也能做产品经理的工作，这样更好。
It's that it is better to not assume we need a PM in every place, and it is great to enable other functions to do the PM work.
而且，产品经理的存在某种程度上也剥夺了其他人做产品经理工作的机会。
And, also, just PMs kind of take away the reps from people being able to do the things that PMs do.
如果其他人能做这些工作，他们就能执行得更好，做出更好的产品。
And if they can do that work, they can actually execute better, build better products.
你明白吗？
You know?
我觉得，与其说能不能让产品经理不固定在一个团队，还不如说，我们能不能让工作跟着人走？
I think it's also better for PMs to not be mapped specifically to a team than it is to say, could we go where the workers?
这样你就能积累更多、更好的经验。
You will build more and better reps.
你通过在不同项目间切换，能锻炼到更多的技能，而不是说我就固定在这个工程经理负责的领域里。
You're gonna work out more muscle groups by, like, moving around on the things you work on as opposed to saying, I'm attached to whatever this EM owns.
那我们就顺着这个思路往下聊。
So let's let's follow that thread.
你们团队是什么样的？
What is your what does the team look like?
在Whatnot，产品经理、工程师和设计师的团队结构是怎样的？
What does the PM slash eng design team look like at Whatnot?
在这种理念下，整个组织架构是什么样的？
What what does this org look like in this world view?
对。
Yeah.
我们刚刚超过20个产品经理。
We've we've just passed 20 PMs.
目前公司大概有21、22个产品经理，对于了解我们发展轨迹的人来说，考虑到我们卖家处理的交易量，这个数字其实相当小。
We have kind of, I think, 21, 22 PMs in the building today, which for those following what trajectory is is pretty small considering the volume of of GMV that our sellers move.
我们大致分成三个组，买家、卖家，还有我们说的信任与风控。
We're very loosely organized into three groups, kind of buyer, seller, and what we would call kind of trust and risk.
就是那些负责平台标准、支付、安全之类的同事。
So the folks looking after our standards, you know, payments, kind of safety, etcetera.
然后在这些大组里，我们基本上会定期重新分配产品经理。
And then within those kind of, like, broad groups, we basically reassign the PMs pretty regularly.
所以大家只是有个大概的方向。
So people have, like, loose, you know, alignment.
你可能大致是个增长型产品经理，或者主要做发现功能。
You might be, like, broadly a growth PM or broadly kind of like work on discovery.
但就算在组内，资源也会很快重新分配和调整。
But even amongst those groups, it kinda gets allocated and moved around pretty quickly.
这是因为我们做规划的方式是每六个月一次，CEO、我、还有其他几位高管和资深负责人会坐下来，确定接下来六个月必须实现什么。
And that's because the way that we do planning is like every six months, you know, the CEO, myself, some other folks and senior leads will sit down and just define what what needs to be true over the next six months.
作为公司，我们必须在成果和关键项目上完成哪些事情。
What do we have to get done as a company, both in terms of like outcomes and critical projects?
然后我们坐下来，把那个清单过一遍，问：谁是直接负责人？
And then we sit down and we go through that list and say, who's who's the DRI?
谁对这个负责？
Who's accountable for that?
这基本上就是我们分配产品经理工作的主要方式。
And that's mostly how we end up allocating PM work.
所以经常会出现这种情况——你知道，我们今天早上刚结束一个规划周期——你经常会把清单过一遍，到最后说：好。
And so quite regularly, you'll have something you know, we've just finished a planning cycle literally this morning, and you'll quite regularly go through those and you'll get to the end and say, cool.
有件事在好几个不同团队的路线图里都排第二或第三优先级，但感觉真的很重要。
There's this thing that's, like, second or third priority in a bunch of different teams' road maps that feels really important.
谁负责这个？
Who owns that?
实际上我们并没有指定负责人，然后我们就会去找一个产品经理，对他说：恭喜你。
We actually don't have an owner for that, and we'll go and grab PM and be like, congratulations.
这就是未来六个月需要你交付的任务。
This is the thing we need you to deliver over the next six months.
很少需要你做一个功能，必须完全按照某种方式来实现某个事情。
It's rarely you need to build a feature that works exactly this way that does this thing.
它比那个层次要更高一些。
It's a little more high level than that.
但问题是，你怎么去弄清楚需要满足哪些条件，然后找到你觉得能引导这件事的人。
But, like, how do you go and work out what needs to be true, and then you map the human beings that you think can kind of guide that.
不一定每个名字都是产品经理，但大多数情况下，在规划过程中，最终负责的往往是产品经理，而且通常是那些技能匹配任务需求的产品经理。
Not every name is a PM name, but overwhelmingly, when you go through that planning process, it tends to be PMs, and it tends to be kind of PMs who have the right skill set vis a vis what it is.
不管是偏财务的，还是偏算法和推荐的，或者是核心用户功能。
Whether it's more financial, whether it's more kind of like, you know, algorithmic and recommendations based, whether or not it's like core user feature.
我想顺着你最后提到的那个具体点往下聊。
Let me follow that actual specific thread at the end there around.
你招产品经理的时候，看重什么？
What do you look for in product managers that you hire?
你还写过一句挺狠的话。
So you also wrote this brutal quote.
过去两年里，有31,832人申请成为Whatnot的产品经理。
In the last two years, 31,832 people applied to be a product manager at Whatnot.
我们只招了一个。
We hired one.
没错。
Yes sir.
挺厉害的。
Pretty great.
挺厉害的。
Pretty great.
所以这里有几个点我想聊聊。
So there's a few things here I wanna talk about.
一个是，你现在招人主要看什么？
One is just what is it you look for in the folks that you hire, especially these days?
你觉得在成功的产品经理身上，哪些特质越来越重要，哪些可能没那么关键了？
What do you find what's kinda like trending up in what you find you need in really successful PMs and whatnot, and what's maybe trending down?
我可以告诉你什么肯定是越来越不受欢迎了。
I can tell you what's definitely trending down.
就是那些在面试里花大量时间谈论协调会议、推动共识和利益相关者管理的人。确实有一类产品经理——我自己早期职业生涯也是其中之一——他们的专长既不是技术，也不是客户导向。
It's folks who spend a lot of their time in their interviews talking about those, like, alignment meetings and driving alignment and stakeholder management and and those pieces because there's definitely a group of PMs, and I certainly used to be one of them earlier in my career, whose specialty wasn't technical or customer oriented.
而是搞政治。
It was politics.
所以那些天生倾向于推动共识、建立关系的人。
And so folks who tend to kind of, like, naturally lean towards, like, driving alignment, building building relationships.
你明白吗？
I you know?
跟我说说，你什么时候搞砸过，比如因为没及时向CEO汇报，结果导致项目方向调整——这绝对是一种反模式，越来越不被看好了。
Tell me the amount of time when you failed and you're like, oh, I didn't keep the CEO up to date with something and that led to a pivot is definitely kind of a thing that is a bit of an anti pattern that trends down.
我们发现，在产品经理面试中真正出彩的，是在整个面试或案例分析过程中，能不能同时展现出宏观思维和微观思维。
What we tend to find kind of really jumps in a PM kind of interview is over the course of of your interviews or your case study, can we see both the macro thinking and the micro thinking?
我觉得系统大概是这么运作的，我能描述出最终状态，但我也能表现出一种急切——比如，我会如何快速验证这个想法。
I think the system works something like this, and I can describe an end state, but can I, you know, almost exude impatience on, like, and here's how I would validate that very quickly?
这里就是我会推动完成的地方。
Here's where I would push to get that done.
而且你对自己构建的东西有具体的描述吗？
And are you specific about the things that you've built?
对吧？
Right?
有很多人在Fang、Uber或者任何大型公司工作过，他们只是维护现有的东西，可能打磨一下边缘，而不是说我们遇到了这个问题，我必须去提出一些独特新颖的方案，或者我必须通过反复迭代来应对一个复杂的变化。
There's an awful lot of folks who've worked at, you know, Fang, Uber, pick any scale company where they babysat things that existed and that maybe, you know, polished the edges of it as opposed to the idea of saying, we were given this problem and I had to go and come up with something unique and novel, or I had to kind of really iterate our way through a a complicated change.
但我在过程中做了决策，我们向前推进了。
But I made decisions along the way, and we moved.
因为我觉得在大型组织里，惯性很容易让人随波逐流，不一定能成为变革的推动者或决策者，而这正是产品经理需要做的。
Because I think it's it's easy in a very large organization with inertia to kind of go along with what's happening and not necessarily be an agent of change or be a decision maker, which is ultimately what you need PM to do.
你刚才提到的一点，我正好请了Elizabeth Stone来播客。
There's something you said there that I just had Elizabeth Stone on the podcast.
她是Netflix的首席产品官，我问她最看重的、也是目前最受重视的特质是什么，她说的和你一开始说的一样，就是系统思维。
She's CPO at Netflix, and asked her what's the trait she most that is also most trending up, and she said exactly what you said initially, which was the systems thinking.
要着眼全局，思考更大的业务层面。她给出的建议是往这方面努力，我也想问问你在这方面有没有其他建议。
Thinking big picture, thinking about the bigger business, and her advice there to work on this, and I wanna ask you if you have any other advice here.
假设有人听到这个，心想：哇，我得提升一下我的系统思考能力了。
Say someone hears this, you're like, oh wow, I gotta work on my systems thinking skills.
她的建议是，从你的问题后退一步，想想你的上级是怎么看待这个问题的，以及这个问题会如何影响整个业务。
Her advice is take one click back from your problem and think about, okay, for my manager, how do they think about this problem and how does that impact the rest of the business?
关于如何培养和提升系统思考能力，你有什么想法？
Thoughts on just how somebody might develop the skill and get better at systems thinking.
我觉得用“能力”这个词很准确。
I mean, I think the skill is exactly the right way to say it.
我认为通过单纯的思维练习就能把它练好。
I think that you can get good at it from just the mental exercise.
所以，你可以从小处着手。
So, like, you can do it in small ways.
在产品评审会上，当有人说某个方案时，我经常问的一个问题是……
One of the things I ask a lot in product review when someone says, hey.
我们想做实验，就是，好。
We wanna run an experiment is, okay.
如果结果是好的，我们该怎么办？
What do we do if it's green?
如果结果不好，我们又该怎么办？
What do we do if it's red?
如果大家说，其实我不知道我的策略会怎么变。
And if folks are like, actually, I don't know how my strategy would change.
那行。
Like, cool.
我们之前没怎么想过这个问题。
We haven't really thought about that.
那就停下来，在脑子里过一遍，看看会怎么发展。
So like, stop and go and do the mental exercise of how it would work.
然后我觉得，如果你能在脑子里先演练一下，比如，如果这个产品的使用量突然增加一千倍，会发生什么，那就能快速找到本地解决方案。
And then I think it's the same thing if you can build quick local solutions if you have done the mental exercise in your head of, so what would happen if we had a thousand times more usage of this than we expected?
或者，这可能会带来哪些意想不到的连锁反应？
Or what are the unexpected knock on effects that this could have?
在动笔之前，在写代码之前，怎么先在脑子里把这些都想一遍？
And how do you just start doing all of that in your head before you get pen on paper, before you get code on the system?
我觉得这其实能帮大家更快地推进工作，因为产品经理们经常被拖慢的原因就是，哎呀，有风险。
And I think it it helps actually unblock people to move faster too because I think the other thing that PMs are often slowed down by is like, oh, risk.
哎呀，法务、财务、或者其他团队可能会有意见。
Oh, legal might finance might another team might.
我们内部有个说法叫‘先想清楚，再行动’，就是说，把所有可能出问题的地方都过一遍，搞清楚规模大了会在哪里出问题，预判可能发生的情况，然后该怎么做还是怎么做。
And I think one of the monikers we use internally is no, then go as in just like, think through all the things that could go wrong, understand where scale will break, understand the things that might happen, and then make the like, move on anyway.
因为如果你已经想过了大规模应用时可能出现的各种情况，你很可能就能提前规避掉很多问题。
Because if you've thought through all the things that could happen at scale, you're probably going to preempt a bunch of them.
我很喜欢伊丽莎白的那句话，但我的想法是，就做这个思维练习，推演一下：如果这个产品被广泛采用了，如果它真的火了，如果出了什么岔子，那会是什么问题？
So I really like Elizabeth's quote there, but mine is, just do the mental exercise of just, like, playing out If it gets really widely adopted, if it happens, if there is something that goes wrong, what will it be?
你不需要把所有问题都解决掉。
You don't have to solve all of them.
你只需要把所有可能性都过一遍，最后解决的实际问题会比你以为的多。
You've just gotta think through all of them, and then you end up solving more than you think.
这个说法我很喜欢。
I love that.
所以本质上就是，不要只盯着这个实验会不会有影响力，还要想想如果它成功了，接下来会发生什么，再接下来又会怎样。
So it's essentially, don't just focus on will this be an impactful experiment and think about what comes next and what comes next if this is true.
对，没错。
Like, okay.
我已经把它推进了。
It's I moved it.
尤其是在高增长的环境里，你找的不是一个5%的统计显著提升。
Particularly in a higher growth environment, you're not really looking for a 5% stat sig win.
你要找的是那种能彻底改变业务、并且能产生长期复利效应的东西。
You're looking for something that kind of, like, totally moves the business and that has kind of compounding effect over time.
所以你就得想清楚那到底是什么。
And so you just gotta think through what that what that is.
你刚才还提到，产品经理的工作方式正在发生变化，你对这种转向个人贡献者角色的趋势感到非常兴奋。
Something else you said that is changing in how PMs operate that you're very excited about is this move to IC work.
产品经理正在从那种大型组织管理的工作模式，转向真正动手做事。
PMs moving away from this kind of big org management world to actually doing the work.
聊聊这个吧，以及这对产品管理这个角色意味着什么。
Talk about that and what that means for the role of product management.
我前面稍微提过一点，就是在那个所谓的层级体系里，如果你作为产品经理做得非常成功，你就会被提拔为总监。
I I mentioned a little bit earlier, but there was this thing in the, you know, in the ratio land where, like, what you did if you were really successful as a PM is you got promoted into being a director.
然后突然间，你就被告知别再亲力亲为了。
And then all of a sudden, was like, don't be hands on anymore.
你的目标就是指导和引导。
Your goal goal is just to coach and guide.
于是我们把所有最优秀的员工都提拔起来，让他们不再做具体的事情。
And so we took all of our a players and then promoted them out of doing things.
他们把所有时间都花在协调上，花在指导和调整团队的工作上。
And they spent all of their time in alignment, they spent all of their time kind of like coaching and tweaking what their team was doing.
结果就形成了一个特别反复的开发流程，有人辛辛苦苦干完活。
And you get this really yo yo development process where somebody does all this work.
然后拿去审核。
It goes to review.
结果被否了。
It gets told no.
然后就在审核环节来回折腾。
And you just kinda going back and forward in reviews.
你看我这满身的伤痕，都是经验教训。
You can see my scar tissue coming through.
在我们团队里，大家都有管理职责。
On our team, everybody is like, there are managers.
整个团队大概有四五个人在带其他产品经理。
There's like, I think four or five people across the team who manage other PMs.
他们所有人90%以上的时间都在做具体工作。
All of them would spend 90 plus percent of their time doing IC work.
我个人大概还有50%的时间在做个人贡献者的工作。
I'm still probably 50% of my time doing IC work personally.
而且我觉得这样做有几个实实在在的好处。
And I think there's kind of a couple real advantages of it.
首先，如果你是一个有十多年、甚至十五年产品构建经验的VP产品，那你对什么能行、什么不行的直觉应该已经相当敏锐了。
The first is if you are a kind of VP product where you've got a decade plus, maybe fifteen years of experience building things, hopefully your instincts as to what's gonna work and not fairly well honed at this point.
你就能比别人更快地做出决策。
You can just make decisions more quickly than people.
你能非常迅速地产生实际影响。
You can have real impact very, very quickly.
这对组织来说真的很好，有这样的人在，而不是那种层层传递的想法——比如，我们把问题拆开分给几个产品经理。
And it's really great for the organization to have somebody who can do that as opposed to the idea of, like, working through three layers of, you know, we we divide the problem up against amongst a couple PMs.
那些人需要达成一致。
Those folks need to get into alignment.
不同的工程团队还在争论各种事情。
There's different engineering teams debating stuff.
你只管往前推进就行了。
You just tend to go.
所以这很棒。
So that's wonderful.
我觉得第二点是，这能带来两种杠杆效应。
I think the second thing is there's two ways that that ends up driving leverage.
一种是一个VP理论上可以处理多个初级产品经理的工作量，因为就像我说的，他们效率更高。
One is a VP in theory can, you know, handle the workload of multiple kind of like more junior PMs just because, as I said, they're more efficient.
这意味着你在任何时间点都能看到更多的全局情况。
And that means that you see more of the board at any given point in time.
这样一来，你更有可能做出直觉上正确的决定，比如如何调整发现算法来应对发货慢的卖家——这在电商领域是个永恒的话题。
And so you're far more likely to make the intuitively correct decision for how should we tune the discovery algorithm vis a vis people who ship slowly, which is an evergreen thing in ecom.
嗯，如果你在思考如何管理发货慢的卖家，并且了解发现算法的力量，那么无论哪种情况你都能做出正确的决定。
Well, if you're thinking about how we manage sellers who ship slowly, and you know about the power of discovery, can in either case make the correct decision.
我记得困扰Twitch很长时间的一件事——我可能也是其中比较有责任的人之一——就是发现团队和广告团队总是在争夺曝光量。
One of the things that I remember plaguing Twitch for a long time, and I was probably one of the people more at fault of it than ever, was discovery team and the ads team were always at war for impressions.
对吧？
Right?
比如说，广告应该放在信息流的哪个位置？
Like, where do ads go in the feed?
对发现指标有什么影响？
What's the impact to discovery metrics?
对广告收入又有什么影响？
What's the impact to kind of ad dollars?
我到Twitch后做的第一件事，就是把广告放进发现板块，并确保同一个产品经理同时负责这两块。
One of the first things I did when I got to Twitch was just put ads in discovery and make sure that there's the same PM who's accountable for both.
因为他们会做出自然的权衡，比如说，目标是信息流产生的GMV。
Because they're gonna make the natural trade off that say, the goal is GMV generated from the feed.
一部分来自自然流量。
One of them is through organic.
另一部分则来自付费替代。
One of them is through kind of like a paid substitution.
说得好。
Sold.
当你让同一个人负责多个事情时，他们自然会把这些事情协调起来，你就能省去几个月又几个月的来回扯皮和那些把公司利益变成个人利益的政治斗争。
And when you put the same person across multiple things, they tend to organically align those things and you just cut out months and months and months of back and forth and the politics that tends to kind of take it from being company first to career first.
所以，让副总裁们主要做个人贡献者的事，让总监们主要做个人贡献者的事，甚至让我自己也要处理个人贡献者的事，这样能让每个人都贴近真实情况，而不是只看汇报里看起来的样子。同时，这也意味着你更有可能在早期就做出直觉上正确的决定，毕竟，你当然希望你的团队能灵活应变，而不是总等着上面来指导。
And so having VPs mostly in IC land, having directors mostly doing IC work, even having me having to grapple with IC work keeps everybody connected to the ground floor of what's actually true as opposed to what seems true in a review, but also means that you're more likely to make the kind of intuitively correct decision early just because why wouldn't you want, you know, messy playing for your your team when you rather than trying to kind of have the the academy coming along all the time.
我很喜欢这个观点。
I love this.
那么，当你提到产品经理做个人贡献者的事，在这个语境下具体是指什么？
So when you talk about IC work for PM, what does IC work for PM in this context mean?
是指写代码、做开发，还是带团队、负责路线图、写策略文档？
Does it mean shipping code building, or is it like running a team, running, owning a roadmap, writing the strategy doc?
我猜是后者。
Imagine it's the second
简短的回答是：什么能最高效地推动产品上线，就做什么。
Whatever is required to most effectively ship is the short answer.
我本人有没有在Whatnot写过生产代码？
Have I personally shipped some production code at Whatnot?
写过。
Yes.
但我觉得这是最能发挥我价值的方式吗？
Do I think that's the best use of my time?
其实不是。
Not really.
你明白吧？
You know?
我敢肯定，肯定有人悄悄把我大部分代码重写了一遍，就为了确保代码规范正确、本地化没问题，还有那些几十年软件工程经验才能搞定的细节——我和Claude Co都没处理好。
I'm I'm certain that quietly somebody reworked most of my code in order to ensure that the linting was correct and the localization worked and all of the nuance that decades of software engineering has taught you that, you know, me and Claude Co did not get right.
但我觉得，关键还是在于——你有没有亲自处理过客服工单？
But I do think it starts with, like, are you literally in the support tickets?
你知不知道客户现在遇到什么问题？
Do you know what customer problems we're having?
你有没有亲自拉取所有数据，这样才能真正理解它？
Have you pulled all of the data yourself so that you actually understand it?
你有没有和工程、设计团队坐在一起讨论过？
Have you sat with engineering and design?
你明白吗？
You know?
你有没有直接查询代码库，来理解系统是怎么运作的？
Have you queried the code base directly in order to understand how things work?
然后你有没有写需求文档？
And then have you written the spec?
你是不是接着主持站会
Are you then running a stand
和复盘会？
up and a we go?
我觉得所有这些
I think all of
展开剩余字幕（还有 480 条）
这其实就是核心的个人贡献者工作。
that is just like core individual IC work.
很多人一路从产品岗位升到副总裁，再让他们回去做个人贡献者，感觉没什么意思。
There's a lot of people that have worked their way up the ladder of product, become a VP, and it doesn't feel exciting to go back to being an IC.
有些人呢，很明显你热爱这个，你享受其中。
Some people, like, clearly you love it, you enjoy it.
但很多人会觉得，哎呀，我以为我已经不用干这个了。
A lot of people are like, oh, I thought I was done with this.
我可以通过别人来推进工作，我可以考虑大局。
I could just work through people, I could think big picture.
你对此怎么看？
How do you feel about that?
对那些处于这种情况的人，你会说什么？
And what do you what would you say to folks in the in that bucket?
我觉得可能还有很多组织，这种能力依然很有价值，他们也会继续这么做。
I think there are probably still a lot of organizations where that is really valuable and that they will go.
我招的人通常都是那种，天哪。
My recruiting tends to be the folks who are, oh my god.
我以前超爱产品管理，但现在开对齐会议开得烦死了。
I used to love product management and I'm so sick of sitting in alignment meetings.
我到处跟CPO和产品VP们说，你们难道不怀念真正动手做事的感觉吗？
And I'm out there pitching CPOs and VPs of product to be like, don't you miss actually doing things?
你想不想回来？
Do you wanna come back?
我觉得我们得承认，行业里会出现分化。
And I think it's okay for us to acknowledge that there'll be a bifurcation across the industry.
我确实认为有些公司规模太大了，可能不是每个人都适合亲力亲为。
I do think that there are organizations that are sufficiently large that maybe everyone being hands on isn't right.
我也觉得，我之前提到过，你得有匹配的文化来适应这种环境，就是那种大家会说，我不想光讨论。
I also think, know, I mentioned earlier that like, you have to have a matching culture to kind of go with this kind of environment where that's the expectation, you know, where people are like, I don't wanna talk about it.
我就想，咱们直接去干吧。
I wanna just, you know, let's go and do that thing.
在很多方面，每个创业公司都是创始人的缩影。
And in a lot of ways, you know, every every startup is a reflection of their founders.
所以这自然就反映了他们的思维方式以及他们想如何运营公司。
And so that naturally tends to be, you know, how do they think and how do they wanna run the organization?
但我发现，在很多情况下，去找一个在Meta做了五六年高级总监的人聊聊，他们整天都在开协调会议，反而怀念真正跟客户交流、跟工程师沟通、把产品发布出去的感觉。
But I've actually found that for a lot of the cases, go and talk to somebody who spent the last five, six years as a as a senior director at, you know, Meta, who spends their entire time in alignment meetings, and they miss actually talking to customers and talking to engineers and shipping things.
这让我想到，你应该见过那份名单吧，就是那些首席技术官跑去Anthropic当普通工程师的。
What makes makes me think about it, I imagine you've seen this list of all of these chief technology officers that have gone to become just engineers at Anthropic.
你刚才说话的时候，我正好把那份名单调出来了。
I pulled up this list as you were talking.
Workday的CTO现在在Anthropic只是技术团队的普通成员。
The CTO of Workday is just a member of technical staff at Anthropic.
Instagram的联合CTO、Box的CTO、Super.com的CTO，都去了。
C o CTO Instagram, Box the CTO, super.com CTO.
他们现在在Anthropic就是工程师的角色。
They're just like engineers now at Anthropic.
是的。
Yep.
如果这是我最大的愿望，那Whatnot的产品团队基本上就该是那个样子。
If this is my greatest desire that the Whatnot product bench basically looks like that.
所有这些人都拥有出色的技能和深刻的理解，最终都来以个人贡献者的身份工作。
All of these people with, like, great skills and a great understanding and actually end up coming and building as IC's.
那这条路的薪酬待遇怎么样？
What about the, like, the the comp of this path?
你懂的。
You know?
那可是大家的梦想。
That's people's dream.
升到副总裁，赚几百万美元。
Move up to VP, make millions of dollars.
有没有可能既当个人贡献者，又能达到那个水平？
Is there a world where you can still do that and be an IC?
其实我觉得反而更容易。
I actually think it's easier.
这个观点有点激进。
Spicy take.
但你想啊，算一下五个L5向一个L7汇报、四个L7向一个VP汇报的薪酬总和，然后反过来问，如果我只用三个人呢？
But, like, go and take the comp required to have five L fives reporting to one L seven and then four L sevens reporting to one VP and now total the comp of that product org and turn around and say, what if I had three people?
为什么不能给他们都开D2副总裁级别的工资，特别是如果他们能产生和那些人一样的影响力？
Why can't I pay them all, D2 VP money, particularly if they're having the level of impact that those folks are having there?
对吧，为什么不行呢？
Like, why not?
为了彻底理解这件事为什么会发生、为什么应该发生，我听到的是，其实有很多种组合方式。
And just to fully understand why this is happening, why this should happen, what I'm hearing, there's kind of many combinations.
一个是AI正在推动这件事，这很好。
One is AI is enabling this, which is great.
时机正好。
Perfect timing.
是的。
Yes.
那做这件事还有什么其他动机呢？
What are the other motivations to do this?
是不是只是产品最终会变得更好？
Is it just the product ends up being better?
还是人更少？
Is it fewer people?
我当然觉得产品最终会变得更好。
I certainly think the product ends up being better.
比如说，其中一个
Like, one of the
大家长期以来一直跟我们说的就是，对，那样做行不通。
things that folks have been telling us for a long time is, yeah, that won't scale.
比如，领导层就没法亲力亲为地跟进具体事务了。
Like, oh, leadership isn't gonna be able to stay hands on with what's going on.
你得去招更多的人，增加好多层级。
You're going to need to go and hire tons more layers.
但我们发现，其实并不是这样。
And what we found is that's actually not true.
对吧？
Right?
这需要不同的能力。
It requires a different muscle.
你得花力气去确保自己真正理解，比如，最真实的情况。
You have to make an effort to make sure you genuinely understand, you know, like a ground truth.
我们经常举的一个例子是，在增长会议上，有人说，哦，对，那是欺诈行为。
An example we use all the time is we'll be talking in a growth meeting and someone will say, oh, yeah, but that was fraud.
你知道吗？
You know?
然后转头就问，你怎么知道那是欺诈？
Turn around and be like, how do you know that was fraud?
哦，数据集里标注为欺诈。
Oh, it's labeled in the data set as fraud.
好的。
Okay.
你知道它是怎么被标注的吗？
Do you know how it gets labeled?
我猜是运营部门的人做的。
I assume someone in ops does it.
好的。
Okay.
你知道他们标注的标准流程或具体方法吗？
Do you know the SOP or how they label that?
不知道。
No.
好的。
Okay.
所以你不确定这是不是欺诈。
So you don't know it's fraud.
如果你追问一下，像那种经验丰富的产品总监，他们就会说，说得对。
And if you push, you know, a really experienced product director like that, they're gonna go, good point.
我不确定，我得去查清楚。
I don't, I'm gonna go find out.
然后你最终往往会加强代理人用来标注数据的系统，因为突然出现了一个非常聪明的人，他非常投入地了解我们如何做这件事，并帮助指导它。
And then you invariably end up strengthening the system that agents are using to kind of data label because suddenly there's a very smart person who's very invested in understanding how we do that and helping guide it.
所以那种态度就是说，我们要做更少的事情。
And so just that attitude that says like, we're going to do fewer things.
我们要确保把它们执行得彻底。
We're going to make sure we execute the hell out of them.
而且我们要把最优秀的人推到一线，这样在过程中就能解决很多问题，而不是最终只是做大量的权衡。
And we're going to kind of push our best people to be in the weeds everywhere means that you fix lots of things as you go when you don't end up kind of just making loads of trade offs.
我认为普遍存在一种看法，否则增长太容易掩盖所有问题了。
And I think there's a general belief that like, it's too easy otherwise for growth to hide all sins.
公司越大，大家就越是按平均值来运作。
Like you get bigger and you just end up scaling and everybody's kind of like working off of averages.
所以从文化上讲，我觉得你得真正下决心，把几件事做到极致，就像我常说的那样。
So culturally, I think you've gotta be really committed to like, let's, you know, whole ass few things, as I tend to say sometimes.
致敬罗恩·斯旺森。
Shout out Ron Swanson.
然后把最优秀的人派到一线去，深入细节。
And then push your best people to be really in the weeds of stuff.
实际上，时间久了你会发现，这样做反而更高效，因为你从一开始就真正理解了事情是怎么运作的，能做出最好的决策。
And actually what you find over time is you end up being more efficient by doing that because you actually understand how things work the first time, and you make the best decisions.
还有，AI 在这方面能带来巨大的杠杆效应。
And then listen, AI, huge leverage for all of this.
我简直数不清自己当初级产品经理时花了多少时间问工程师某个功能有多难做，结果反而拖慢了他们的实际进度，只是为了给未来的工作做规划。
I I can't think of how much time I spent as a junior PM asking my engineers how hard something would be and, you know, distracting actual velocity in order to help scope future stuff.
现在我可以坐下来跟 Claude 聊一聊，就能大概了解工作量了。
And now I can sit and, you know, talk to Claude and understand roughly LOEs.
我可以坐在那里，过一遍，然后说，感觉有些模型像车祸现场一样，新用户一打开应用就会撞上。
I can sit there and go through and be like, it feels like there's some car crash of models that must be hitting new users as they open up the app.
然后你可以直接过一遍，说，来，加载一下信息流，跟我讲讲谁在什么顺序下看到什么内容的逻辑，这个功能什么时候触发？
And you can literally just go through and be like, let's let's load up the feed and talk to me about the logic of who sees what in what order, when does this thing fire?
而且你能很快得到答案。
And you can get answers really quickly.
就像我之前说的，有足够资历和经验的人，他们看到这个就能说，你知道吗？
And having, as I said before, folks with enough tenure and enough reps that they can see that and say, you know what?
这不行。
That's bad.
我们直接做个好决定，调整一下顺序。
Let's just make a good decision and change the ordering of those.
这样一来，我连启动会、对齐会、写PRD的一周、实验时间全都省了，只需要一个有权做决定的人去执行就行。
I've saved now a kickoff meeting, an alignment meeting, a week writing PRDs, experiment time, all of that, by just having somebody who's kind of empowered to go and make a decision.
所以回到那些想找产品经理工作的人，不管是新人——我们先不谈新人——而是那些经理、资深人士，他们可能会觉得，哇。
So coming back to people that are trying to get a job as a PM, whether you're new let's actually hold off on new people, but people that are, say, managers, senior folks that are just like, wow.
市场确实发生了很大的变化。
The market has really shifted.
现在大家普遍在说，你得能接受重新做回个人贡献者，放弃那些花哨的头衔。
The a big thing we're hearing right now is you need to be comfortable with moving back into IC, giving up your fancy title.
对于正在找工作、又很难找到工作的人，还有什么类似的建议吗？
Is there anything more along those lines of just people looking for a job, struggling to find a job?
你还有什么其他建议给他们？
Any other advice for them?
我的建议是，在你现在的岗位上就开始做个人贡献者的工作。
Start doing IC work in the role you're in would be my push.
就是说，回归到基础，确保自己接手一些实际的工作。
Like, get back to the basics of like, make sure that you're taking on kind of practical work.
因为我觉得，保持这些技能不生疏总是好的。
Because I just think it's like good to make sure that you're keeping those muscles, you know, well honed.
我觉得这也得从内部主动争取这些机会开始。
I think it also starts with like pushing internally for those things.
比如说，我敢打赌，如果你开始把那种高效的工作方式带回你现在的岗位，这不仅能帮你把当前的工作做得更好，还能为你未来的发展铺路。
Like, I I would bet that if you started bringing that level of productivity back into the role that you're in, probably helps you where you are in addition to kind of help you where you might move to.
不过，网上现在有很多讨论，显然都在聊产品经理或者工程师这些角色。
But I think there's a lot of chatter online obviously about like PMs or engineers now.
我觉得这挺好的。
And I think that's all well and good.
这确实是个值得去锻炼的好技能。
Like, it's a great muscle to go and go and hone.
就像我说的，我亲自写过一些生产代码，因为我想通过实践来真正理解它。
As I said, I've I've pushed some production code because I wanted to go through the exercise of understanding it.
但我觉得，在开始动手构建之前，更重要的是你能多快重新掌握界定正确范围、理解问题、定义成功标准的能力，并且利用你已有的规模和视野，看到更多，贡献更多。
But I think there's also before you get to like building things, it's like how quickly can you get back into the muscle of scoping the correct thing, understanding the problem, being able to define what good looks like and like take advantage of the scale and the scope that you've got, that you can see more and bring more to things.
我觉得大多数当过总监或以上职位的人，都体会过那种看着一个初级产品经理在同一个产品需求文档上反复修改、来回折腾的痛苦，而你心里其实早就知道答案是什么。
Like I think most folks who've sat in a, you know, a director plus role will know the pain of sitting there and watching a junior PM yo yo back and forth on the same PRD back to review where you kind of know what the answer is.
不知从什么时候开始，我们选择了‘把马带到水边’，而不是直接帮他们理解答案，然后继续推进。
Somewhere along the way, we decided that, you know, lead a horse to water as opposed to kind of help them understand the answer and then keep moving.
我觉得我们的辅导方式里，有些东西可以回归一下，比如帮别人快速理解什么是好的标准，而不是没完没了地反复审阅。
And I think there's, like, something in our coaching styles that we can get back to of, like, help somebody understand what good looks like relatively quickly as opposed to just endless review.
对对对。
Yo yo.
你刚才说的产品经理不直接上线代码这点，我特别赞同。
This point you make about PMs not shipping to production, I so agree with.
因为最近和一个播客嘉宾聊过之后，我的想法变了——产品经理如果不去亲自上线，他们的杠杆作用其实更大。
Because my mind changed on this recently with a previous podcast guest with this point that PMs already like, the leverage PMs have so much more leverage if they're not sitting there trying to ship to production.
他们可以赋能团队，让团队交付得更好更快，确保交付的东西质量更高，这比亲自上线要划算得多。
They can enabling the team to ship better and faster and making sure the things that are shipping are better is a much better use of PM's time than sitting there shipping stuff.
说实话，这听起来有点傻，但对我来说，搞定Git提交那些工程师习以为常的细枝末节，比真正搞清楚问题是什么、怎么描述它要花的时间多得多。
I mean, this sounds really silly, mate, but, it like, takes me substantially longer to go through the minutiae of getting Git commit and all of the kind of pieces that are second nature to engineer aligned than it does to actually work out what the problem is and be able to describe it.
所以，没错，试着去确保自己动手做点事，是个好习惯。
So yes, good practice to try and, you know, make sure you're doing something.
比如，我不想光听别人说，就判断现在的开发工具是不是变简单了。
For example, I don't wanna judge if our dev tools have gotten easier or not based on what someone tells me.
我会亲自去试试，然后说，对，没问题。
I'm gonna go and try it and be like, yep.
这次比上次做的时候简单多了。
That was easier than last time I did it.
但我确实认为，深入理解代码库，然后跟一个真正能高效执行的人聊一聊，能让你走很远。
But I do think you can get an awful long way understanding the code base and then talking to somebody who can actually execute well.
你明白吧？
You know?
否则，你就会掉进那些经典陷阱里，成千上百个，每个工程师在L4级别时都已经学会怎么避开了。
Otherwise, you're just gonna get you're gonna you're gonna fall foul of, like, a thousand classic traps that every other engineer learned how not to do when they were in l four.
顺着这个话题往下聊，除了原型设计这个AI对产品经理和产品团队最明显的帮助之外，AI还有哪些方式让你或者你的团队更快、更高效？
So following that thread a little bit, what are some of the ways that AI has enabled you and or your team to move faster and be more productive other than prototyping, which is the very clear benefit of AI for PMs and product teams.
还有呢？
What else?
比如排在前三的，有哪些是真正解放了我们的生产力，提升了我们工作质量的？
What are maybe in the top three of like, wow, this has really unlocked our productivity and and and the quality of what we do?
我觉得第一个，毫无疑问，是数据科学。
I mean, the first one I think by our country mile is data science.
我们在Whatnot内部用的是Hex Threads。
I mean, we use Hex Threads internally at Whatnot.
我相信市面上肯定还有其他类似的产品，但我觉得，作为产品经理，在拥有这样的工具之前，几乎很难想象那段日子。你可以真正开始提取非常精细的用户群组数据，可以抓取某个你听到过报告的具体用户，真正理解——比如，拉取日志，帮我搞清楚这个用户具体做了什么、看到了什么，有多少其他用户和他类似，影响会是什么？
I'm sure there are other kind of like comparable products, but I think it's almost hard to remember Time as a PM before you had tooling like that, where you could genuinely start pulling very nuanced cohorts of data, where you could kind of grab an individual user where you've heard a report, actually understand, you know, like, let's pull logs, help me understand exactly what this user did and saw how many other users look like this, you know, what would impact be?
然后，你就能很快地构建出相当有意义的敏感性模型或预测模型、回归模型等等，这真的非常强大。
And then all of a sudden you can build pretty meaningful sensitivity models or forecasts of what might happen, regression models, etcetera, really, really, really quickly, which is incredibly powerful.
我们发现的另一件事是，它帮助我们更快地发布产品，因为你能比以前更快地发现两个产品混合时产生的性能回退和奇怪的连锁反应。
The other thing that we found is it helps us move much more quickly with shipping things because you can spot regressions and weird knock on effects of two products into mixing more quickly than you used to be able to.
而且我觉得，在那些非常庞大复杂的系统里，这往往是拖慢你速度的原因之一，比如发布列车之类的。但如果你构建了合适的AI工具，就能很快发现性能回退，这基本上就让人们可以放手去做了。
And I think in, you know, really large complicated systems, that's always one of the things that ends up slowing you down of like release trains and all of that versus like, if you build the right AI tool, you can spot regressions really quickly, which basically lets people just kind of, like, go.
所以我不知道数据科学的未来会怎样，但作为产品经理，过去一年我和数据科学家交流的时间比我职业生涯中任何时候都少，尽管我花在数据上、真正了解产品运行情况的时间，可能是我职业生涯中最多的。
So I don't know what the future of data science looks like, but I think as a product manager, I've spent less time in the last year talking to a data scientist than I ever have in my career, even though I've probably spent 10 times more time in data and understanding actually how the product's working than I have ever have in my career.
所以这一点我觉得真的非常强大。
So that one I think is really powerful.
第二个我之前提过了，就是别再缠着工程师问代码库怎么运作，直接去跟Claude聊聊，搞明白就行，这真的很有用。
Second one I've already mentioned, which is like stop bothering engineers with how does the code base work, and actually just go and talk to Claude and understand it, which is really helpful.
我职业生涯早期常说，目标就是理解你的系统，知道哪个盒子连哪条线、哪个系统驱动什么，现在没理由不去理解这些，甚至更细的层面。
Used to say early on in my career that the goal was always to understand your systems of the boxes and lines level of which system drives which thing, and now there's no excuse not to understand that or a nuance layer.
但另一个，可能只适用于Whatnot，所以我不确定这对大家都有帮助。
But the other one, and this might be very specific to Whatnot, so I don't know that this will help everyone.
不过，我职业生涯里很幸运的一点是，基本上做直播产品已经十年了。
But one of the things that I've been lucky to do in my career is basically worked on live products for a decade now.
所以，能发布一个产品，然后看着用户使用它，看他们慢慢摸索出来，一直都觉得特别酷。
And so it's always been really cool to be able to ship a product and then watch a customer use it and watch them kind of figure it out.
我觉得很多人通过Listen Labs之类的工具，已经体验过观察用户使用产品的过程了。
So like, I think people have just gotten this experience with Listen Labs and and, you know, others in that cohort of watching people use your product.
但我一直都能坐下来，看别人第一次用某个东西，经历那个新手理解上的障碍。
But I've always been able to sit and watch people use a thing for the first time and go through that new user comprehension gap.
现在很多AI工具特别棒的一点是，当用户说‘哦，我遇到问题了’的时候，你可以实时看到他们的反应。
What's really cool with a bunch of the AI tooling right now is as they're describing, oh, I'm having a problem.
你可以直接实时查看代码库，判断这到底是不是一个正在发生的bug？
You can literally be watching the code base live and work out, is that actually a bug that's happening right now right now?
还是说这只是用户理解上的偏差，导致功能没有按预期工作？
Or is that a comprehension gap where it doesn't work as expected?
然后你突然就有了用户使用产品时的视频记录。
And suddenly you've got this video artifact of someone using your product.
你可以实时分析代码库，通过AI直接和代码库对话，了解实际发生了什么。
You can be analyzing the code base in real time, and you can be just talking kind of through AI to the code base to understand what's actually happening.
这就像一个超级反馈循环，因为你能同时实时了解客户那边、代码那边以及观察者那边的情况，非常酷。
And it's this it's like, you know, a feedback loop on steroids because all of a sudden you know exactly what's going on customer side, code side, and observer side as as like a viewer in real time, which is really cool.
听起来既棒又压力山大，要打造这种实时在线的产品。
That sounds both awesome and very stressful to be building products that are that live in real time.
想想Netflix现在也开始做直播了，而你过去十年一直在做这个，这得多大的事啊。
I think about Netflix where they invest in live now, and that's just like all you've done for ten years, and how big of a deal that was
对他们来说。
for them.
我知道规模不一样，
I know the scale's different,
但说实话，我在Whatnot的第二周，记得坐在房间里看一个直播，给不了解的朋友解释一下，那是一个类似电商、主要是拍卖的平台，一个直播电商平台。
but Honestly, my second week at Whatnot, I remember sitting in a room watching one off, for those not familiar, kind of commerce, largely auction platform, that live commerce platform.
拍卖有各种不同的方式，其中一种叫“突然死亡”，就是计时器一结束，拍卖就结束。
And there's varieties of different ways to run an auction, but one of them is what's called sudden death, which is like when the timer ends, it ends.
对吧？
Right?
另一种是经典拍卖模式，有人在最后五秒出价，计时器就会再加十秒，卖家可以选择他们想要的拍卖模式。
Otherwise, the classic auction environment, somebody bids in the last five seconds, it adds ten seconds back on the clock, and a seller can decide what auction model they want.
我当时坐在那里看一个卖家，他说，这些拍卖太慢了。
And I was sitting there watching a seller who was like, these are taking too long.
我希望这个七秒的计时器能变成三秒，因为我想卖更多货。
I wish this seven second timer was actually three seconds because I wanna move more product.
然后我看到办公室里的两个工程师互相看了一眼，说，那是个配置项。
And the I I watched two engineers in the office look at each other and be like, that's a config.
我们完全可以做到。
We could totally do that.
于是他们当场就更新了设置，然后直接跳进他的直播间聊天区说，刷新一下你的应用。
And so they went and updated it in real time and then jumped in the chat of his show and just said, refresh your app.
然后一瞬间，啪的一下。
And then all of a sudden, bang.
就按那个方式运行了。
It was operating that way.
我当时就想，太棒了。
And I was like, cool.
我找到了我的同类。
I'm I'm with my people.
我算是来对地方了，因为这种响应速度，就是在直播环境里才能体验到的。
I'm in, like, the right place because that's the level of, like, responsiveness that you can get in a live environment.
显然，AI让很多人都能轻松实现这种效果。
And obviously, AI means that that's really easy for lots of people to take on.
当然，我可不会那样去碰生产代码，那简直是灾难性的想法。
Not that I would touch production code, in that kind of way because that's a disastrous idea.
但对于有资质的人来说，这主意棒极了。
But to qualified humans, it's a wonderful one.
那真是太酷了。
That is very cool.
本期节目由Mercury赞助，这是一家深受30多万企业家喜爱的、与众不同的银行，现在还有了Command功能。
This episode is brought to you by Mercury, radically different banking loved by over 300,000 entrepreneurs, and now with Command.
我使用Mercury已经超过六年了。
I've been a customer of Mercury's for over six years.
我从未想过要换别家。
I have never once thought about leaving.
Mercury基本上就是由产品人而非银行家打造的银行。
Mercury is basically what happens when banking is built by product people, not by bankers.
他们让开发票、转账、为团队成员设置虚拟卡变得如此简单，我甚至想说，还挺有趣的。
They make it so easy, dare I say fun, to send invoices, move money around, set up virtual cards for folks on my team.
你的银行有API、终端原生命令行工具，或者支持AI的MCP服务器吗？
Does your bank have an API, a terminal native CLI, or an AI ready MCP server?
我觉得没有吧。
I don't think so.
就在最近，他们推出了Command，一个直接集成在Mercury里的对话式界面，就像你的财务管家一样。
And just recently, they launched Command, a conversational interface built directly into Mercury, which acts as your financial operator.
我一直在用Command转账、查哪些类别花钱最多、分析现金流，就在今天，我还用它查了过去一年从某个特定赞助商那里赚了多少钱。
I've been using Command to transfer money around to figure out what categories I've been spending the most money in, analyze my cash flows, and just today, I used it to find out how much I've made from a specific sponsor over the past year.
我就问一句，过去一年从X那里赚了多少？
I just ask, how much have I made from x over the past year?
十秒后，答案就出来了。
Ten seconds later, have an answer.
这真的太酷了。
It is so freaking cool.
访问mercury.com了解更多，几分钟内就能在线申请。
Visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes.
Mercury是一家金融科技公司，不是FDIC承保的银行，银行服务由Choice Financial Group和Column NA提供，会员受FDIC保障。
Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank, banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA, Members FDIC.
回到数据科学这个话题，我有个朋友是数据科学家，他说，现在数据科学家日子不好过，就是因为这个原因。
Coming back to this data science point, I I I had a I have a friend who's a data scientist, and he said, it's a rough time for data scientists because of this exact thing.
再具体一点，以前他们的工作就是被叫去做数据分析，处理数据，然后回来汇报结果，说‘我对这个结论有信心’。
To add a little more color, basically their time used to be asked to do some data analysis, do some work with the data, come back, here's the results, here's I'm confident in this conclusion.
现在他们的时间基本都花在审核非数据科学家做的半吊子数据分析上，就像‘帮我看看，这个对不对？’
Now their time is basically seeing like half assed data science work from non data scientists, just like, show me, is this right?
有一半的情况都是错的。
Half the time it's wrong.
他们就会想，‘那我现在的活儿到底算什么？’
And they're like, what the hell is my job now?
真糟糕。
Sucks.
是的。
Yeah.
说实话，我对此深有感触，因为我确实见过这种情况。
Listen, I have a lot of empathy for that because I've certainly seen it.
这也再次说明，为什么少而精的高级产品经理更有用，因为他们见过更多类似的情况，能理解其中的门道。
Another plug for why having fewer, more senior PMs is helpful because there is a folks who've seen more of those reps and understand.
但我也觉得，很多时候这种不清晰源于另一个问题，就是那些组织长期以来在数据工程、数据结构、数据标注方面投入不足，不仅是你有没有把分类体系搞对，还包括你是否真正了解自己的数据系统和架构是否搭建得合理。
But I also think a lot of the time that lack of clarity comes from the other thing, which is organizations who have historically under invested in data engineering and data structures and good data labeling and whether or not you've got your kind of not just your taxonomies right, but whether or not you really understand whether or not your data systems and structures are set up well.
所以我们发现，很多最优秀的数据科学家都在往这个方向努力，比如我们是否真的正确更新了所有追踪和归因的方式，这样人们就不太容易误解这些数据。
And so what we found is a lot of our best data scientists are pushing in that direction of like, are we actually, you know, correctly updating all the ways in which our tracking and attribution works so that it's less easy for people to kind of, like, misunderstand those.
然后，是的，用AI工具找数据，就像用AI工具写代码一样，并不能免除你确保分析正确、代码质量的责任。
And then, yeah, using an AI tool to find a piece of data, much like using an AI tool to write code, doesn't absolve you of responsibility to make sure that that was good analysis, good code.
它只是让那些本来就有这方面倾向的人更容易发挥优势。
It just tends to be leveraged for those people who are naturally inclined that way.
所以，想想这些不同的职能——数据科学、用户研究、设计、工程、产品管理——我目前听到的是，我们可能需要更少的产品经理。
So thinking about these different functions, data science, user research, design, engineering, PM, What I'm hearing so far is we'll need probably fewer PMs.
我们需要更少的数据科学家。
We'll need fewer data scientists.
你觉得还有哪些角色是需求会下降的，又有哪些角色是需求会上升的？
Are there any other roles that you think they'll that are kinda trending down in terms of we'll need and are there any roles trending up?
比如说，哇。
Like, wow.
我们会需要更多这类人才。
We're gonna need a lot more of this kind of person.
有趣的是，就像我说的，我有一阵子没和数据科学家聊过了。
Well, funnily enough, as I say, I haven't spoken to a data science in a while.
我们当然还在大量招聘，因为我觉得那些追踪、归因和衡量工作确实非常强大。
We've certainly still hired plenty because I do think that kind of all that tracking and attribution and measurement really, really powerful.
另外，我觉得我们说需要更少人，其实是指用同样的人做更多事，从宏观上看不一定意味着总人数减少。
I also think one of the flip sides of we say we need fewer, it's like fewer of, for the same output doesn't necessarily mean fewer of in macro, because if you are using these systems, right.
你可以更快地发展。
You can just grow more quickly.
你可以做更多的事情。
You can build more things.
你可以接手更多的事情。
You can take on more stuff.
所以，我其实不会惊讶，如果我们最终净减少的人数不多，我觉得更像是净减少对客户的影响，两者都是。
So, I would be surprised actually, we ended up with like net fewer, I think it's more like net fewer vis a vis customer impact for both.
当然，我觉得这些角色随着时间的推移会越来越热门，我不太记得以前人们用的具体标签了，但就是那种技术主管，有点像混合型工程经理，管理一个很小的团队，直接去解决问题。因为就像我们说的，尝试新事物的成本已经降低了。
Certainly, I think kind of like trending up over time within these roles are these kind of like and I don't remember the exact label that people used to use, but this idea of like tech leads that are kind of like a hybrid EM, where you're running a very small team, kind of running at things, because same way that we'd say, you know, the cost of trying something has come down.
这个想法就是说，你可以有一个核心专注点，这是我们非常看重的。
The idea that says you can have kind of core focus, which is the thing we're very big on.
我们还发现，孵化很多小团队，让他们到角落里，试着把这个东西做出来。
We've also found incubating a lot of smaller teams to kind of go over and sit in the corner and just try and build this thing going.
这不完全是原型开发，但就像是去尝试一个我们以前觉得太难的事情，现在成本越来越低，而且杠杆作用非常高。
It's not quite prototyping, but it's like go and take a swing at a thing that we've historically thought was too hard, is getting cheaper and increasingly has very high leverage.
所以，那种轻量级的工程经理，暂时找不到更好的词，我觉得我们肯定会看到越来越多。
So the idea of like engineering manager light, for want of a better term, is the thing that I'm definitely think that we'll see more and more of.
它不完全是技术骨干，虽然那听起来也不错，但肯定不是那种全职的工程经理角色，我觉得这种角色肯定会越来越常见。
It's like not quite the technical member of staff, although that must be lovely, but certainly not the kind of, like, full blown EM role, I think, is one that that definitely will come about more often.
那咱们就这个话题收个尾吧，现在有个趋势，好像人人都成了创造者。
So maybe just to close the loop on this part of the conversation, there's this, you know, trend towards everyone's kind of a builder.
产品经理也开始动手写点代码，变得更像工程师了。
PMs are shipping a little bit, being a little more engineer.
工程师呢，也承担了更多产品经理的工作。
Engineers are taking on more of the PM work.
你觉得未来几年，产品团队大概会演变成什么样子？
How do you think this just kinda maybe plays out over the next couple of years in terms of what product teams look like broadly?
还是产品经理、工程师、设计师、数据科学家这样的组合吗？
Is it still PM engineers, a designer, data scientist somewhere?
你心目中未来典型的产品团队会是什么样的？
Is there how do you kind of envision the the canonical product team over the coming years?
好问题。
Great question.
不过我也不确定每个地方会是什么样。
And I don't know that I know what it looks like everywhere.
我觉得在Whatnot，团队结构可能大体上还是跟以前差不多，就是说，你之所以需要专业的设计师、专业的工程师、专业的产品经理，是有原因的。
I think what it'll look like at Whatnot is it probably still looks mostly like it has historically, which is, you know, there are reasons that you have a specialist designer, specialist engineers, specialist product management.
我认为那些非常具体的团队，基本上还是会保留下来，用于处理那些我们高度确信需要解决的问题，或者我们很有把握能找到前进方向、想要取得良好进展的事情。
I think those kind of very concrete teams will largely be preserved for like very specific projects or like things that we have high confidence or conviction that we need to solve, or we're pretty high confidence conviction that we have a path forward on a thing and we wanna make good progress.
而在这些核心团队之外，会有更多的自由空间，让大家去尝试，比如‘我比较确定自己能在这方面做出有意义的改进’。
And I think at the edges around that, there's gonna be a lot more free space for people to play on like, hey, I'm reasonably sure I can go and make a meaningful improvement to this thing.
不管你是设计师、工程师、产品经理还是数据科学家，你都可以去做，也应该去做。
And it doesn't matter if you are a designer, an engineer, a product manager, a data scientist, you can and you should.
对吧？
Right?
如果你周五下午坐在那里，写POD写不进去，但你觉得可以去修个什么东西，那就去干吧。
If you're sitting there on a Friday afternoon and you can't focus on the POD you're writing, but you're pretty sure you can go and fix something, go for it.
所以我觉得，从正式的组织架构上来说，可能不会有太大变化，但我确实认为，那些对客户问题很熟悉、对代码库很熟悉、并且了解一些宏观背景的人，会有更多的自由空间，被赋予更多的权力去做更多的事情。
And so I think it probably doesn't morph in the more formal sense, but I do think there's just a lot more free space for people who are well versed in the customer problems, well versed in the code base, and understand some of that macro context will just be empowered to do more and more things.
两年半前，我发过一篇文章，说YPM是科技行业在AI时代最有优势的岗位。
Two two and half years ago, had this post I put out where I said, YPMs are the best positioned role in tech to thrive in an AI world.
虽然我们对话一开始提到，我们应该活在一个不需要产品经理的世界里。
And I feel like even though the beginning of our conversation was like, we should live in a world where we regret PM exists.
但我觉得我们都认同一点，那就是那些最关键的技能——无论是产品经理、工程师还是设计师来执行——都是非常核心的技能。
I feel like we agree on this idea that the skills that seem to matter most and are gonna be most valuable, whether it's a PM doing them or an engineer or designer is very skills.
我在这篇文章里分享几个例子。
I'll share a few examples in this from this post.
比如，谁真正擅长这些事情？
Like, what what do we who is really good at this stuff?
就是这些事。
These these things.
确定要构建什么、提炼需求、沟通需求、为最高回报的机会排优先级、对设计提供反馈以提升效果、制定上市策略、理解商业战略。
Identifying what to build, distilling, communicating requirements, prioritizing everyone's ideas for the highest ROI opportunities, giving feedback and design to improve impact, developing go to market strategy, understanding business strategy.
对我来说，这就是产品经理的工作，而且感觉这些变得越来越重要。
Like, to me, this is what PMs do, and it feels like that's becoming more and more important.
所以我想问你，你是否同意这个观点：随着AI承担构建工作，产品经理的技能现在变得最有价值？
So I guess the question to you is, would you agree with this idea that the PME skills seem to be the most valuable now as AI takes on the building?
完全同意。
Definitely agree.
而且还得夸你一句，连时间戳都带上了，真有你的。
Also props for bringing in the receipts even with a timestamp, my friend.
干得漂亮。
Well done.
对。
Mhmm.
我想补充一点，过去五年我们奖励PM的，其实不一定是这些核心技能，而是讲故事、对齐、战略这些。
I think what I my only build on that would be to say, I think those core PM skills aren't necessarily the things that we have rewarded PMs for over the last five years versus storytelling, alignment, strategy.
所以我觉得你说得完全对，关键是我能不能真正理解客户？
And so I do think you're a 100% correct that like, can I genuinely understand the customer?
我能不能真正理解业务？
Can I genuinely understand the business?
我能不能真正理解技术？
Can I genuinely understand the tech?
能不能把这三者结合起来，实现最优效率？这才是杠杆效应的关键所在。当做事的成本降低、尝试新事物的成本也随之降低时，这一点就显得尤为重要。
And can I translate the three together for optimal efficiency is the point of leverage when doing things gets cheaper, trying things is cheaper, etcetera?
所以，我完全同意产品技能可能是最持久、最核心的能力。
So absolutely agree that product skills are probably the most durable.
不过我想补充一点，现在有很多挂着产品经理头衔的人，其实并没有花足够的时间去深入钻研。
My build would just be there's a lot of people who have the title PM who haven't spent a
这些基础工作。
lot of time
过去五年里，我们在这方面的技能提升有限，但在向高层汇报框架方面倒是练得挺熟练。
building those skills in the last five years, but have gotten really good at communicating frameworks to leadership.
所以我觉得，咱们产品团队还是应该把重心拉回到那些最核心的工作上。
And so I just kind of push us back as a function into like that core work.
确实是这样。
Yeah.
Marty Cagan 管这叫‘产品表演’。
Pro Marty Kagan calls us product theater.
很多人其实只是在做产品经理该做的事。
A lot of people just do the things that PMs should be doing.
而且，听我说。
And listen.
我自己也犯过这个错。
I'm guilty of this.
我们长期以来一直在奖励这种行为。
We have we rewarded it for so long.
是的。
Yeah.
所以，很多人把产品表演当成核心技能，我一点也不意外。
That like, it doesn't surprise me that that product theater is a is a core skill set for a lot of folks.
我只是觉得，现在想靠这个蒙混过关已经很难了。
I just think that there's not a lot of place to hide in that anymore.
这就又回到了那三万两千人申请工作的事。
And this comes back to that 32,000 people applied for jobs.
我猜很多人只是自认为是产品经理，或者头衔是产品经理，但实际上就是你说的那种情况。
I imagine a lot of that is just people who think they're PMs or have the title PM, but don't have but are exactly what you described.
他们只关注对齐、写文档、开会这些事，而不是真正去理解如何打造一个成功的产品。
They just focus a lot on alignment, writing docs, meetings, things like that, and not actual building understanding what it takes to build a successful product.
对。
Yeah.
很多人在产品面试中表现得很出色，Lenny，但当你给他们一个案例分析时。
The number of people who do really well in a product interview, Lenny, and then you give them a case study.
在Whatnot，任何岗位的应聘者都要做一个实际的动手案例分析。
So everyone who gets hired at Whatnot in any role has to do an actual hands on case study.
但那些演讲能力很强的人，你给他们一个题目和一些数据，让他们回来给出一个观点，然后我们让他们口头辩护，那些擅长表演但不擅长具体细节的人，思维崩溃的速度真的很有说明性。
But the number of people who present incredibly well, and then you give them a prompt and some data and ask them to come back with a POV on something, and then we make them verbally defend it, how quickly the thinking decays from folks who are good at the theater, but not the specifics is kind of really telling, I think.
好的。
Okay.
所以这已经超出了招聘的范畴了。
So kinda going beyond the hiring steps.
假设你招了人，关于如何让招来的人发挥最大价值，你有哪些心得？
Say you hire somebody, what are some things you've learned about how to get the most out of the people you hire?
你提到过一个反常识的观点，说你并不认同那个说法。
You mentioned this kind of contrarian take that you don't agree with this.
就是招优秀的人，然后别管他们。
Hire great people, get out of their way.
我想多听听这个。
So I wanna hear more about that.
另外，在打造你们那个非常成功的世界级产品团队方面，你还有没有其他经验可以分享？
And just is there anything else you've learned about just elements to building your very successful world class product team?
我的意思是，这里面需要一些细微的考量。
I mean, nuance required in
我直接说吧，招人然后放手不管，这个做法是错的。
my life hire people and get out of the way is wrong, I will say.
不过可以从这个观点出发，延伸出几点来谈。
But couple pieces to build off of it.
我觉得，总的来说，“招到优秀的人，然后别挡他们的路”这句话，后来就变成了一种笼统的说法，意思是让他们自己定路线图，让他们自己找问题，完全放权，你知道吧，就是那种感觉。
I think in general, the higher grade people and get out of their way became this kind of macro saying for let them work out what the roadmap is, let them work out what the problems are, just completely devolve, you know, like what's going on.
而且我觉得，真正的答案显然是，你招的人越优秀，你就越能完全信任他们，相信他们知道自己在做什么。
And I think the real answer is obviously the better people you hire, the more you can kind of like totally trust that they know what they're doing.
但我们通常更倾向于“先验证再信任”，而不是那种“完全信任”或者甚至“信任但验证”。对我来说，我可能比我的任何直接下属都更清楚我们系统里买家、卖家信任这些不同部分是怎么整合在一起的。
But we tend to live in a verified then trust land as opposed to a like, totally trust or even trust but verify, which is like, I'm probably in a better position than any of my kind of directs to understand how all of the different pieces of our system, buyer, seller kind of trust fit together.
而他们几乎肯定比我更了解那些具体功能里的细微差别。
They're almost certainly in a better position than me to understand the nuance of, like, how any of those individual features work.
你知道，如果今天有人考我Whatnot发现模型里所有的权重设置，我肯定说不对，跟那些工程师比不了，跟那个团队的产品经理也比不了。
You know, if if somebody quiz me today on exactly all the waitings in the Whatnot discovery model, I would definitely be wrong vis a vis any of the engineers on that vis a vis any of the team, you know, the PMs on that team.
好。
Good.
但是，实际上我有责任去学习并逐渐理解这些，因为我要让他们做决策，而且我要审核他们做的事情。
But, like, it's actually kind of incumbent on me to learn that and understand that over time because I'm asking them to make decisions, and I am proving things that they're doing.
所以，花时间跟那些团队一起工作，深入一线去解决实际问题，真的非常有效。
And so time spent actually working alongside those teams, like in the trenches trying to solve something, really, really powerful.
我加入Whatnot后最早观察到的一件事，就是我们的创始人兼CEO Grant的做法——他会在评审会上说，我觉得这个不对。
One of the things that I saw earliest when I joined Whatnot that I've seen kind of Grant, who's our founder CEO do, is he'll sit in a review and be like, I don't think this is right.
然后他会停顿一下，接着说，我今天剩下的时间都空出来。
And then he'll pause and say, I'm gonna clear the rest of my day.
我们一起坐下来搞清楚。
Let's sit and figure it out.
然后他真的会和团队一起，借助AI数据工具，一步步分析。
And he'll actually end up sitting with the team and going through, you know, again, easier with AI data tools.
我们直接调出工单来看。
Let's literally pull up the tickets.
直接调出代码来看。
Let's literally pull up the code.
我们一行一行地过数据，弄清楚到底发生了什么，这样才能做出决策。
Let's like go through the data line by line and understand what's actually happening so that we can make a decision there.
这样一来，他对实际情况就非常了解了。
And it means he's very up to date with what's going on.
这从文化上给团队定了个调子，就是我们在追求真相。
Kind of very culturally sets the tone for the team that like, we're just seeking truth.
这就变成了我们和你们对立的感觉。
And it makes it very much a like us versus you.
比如评审会一度变成了只求通过，产品经理唯一想做的就是拿到绿灯，好回去跟工程师说，我有点话语权。
Like reviews got very into like, listen for yes for a little while there where all you're trying to do as a PM is just get a green light so that you can go back to your p your engineers and say, I have some credibility.
而不是说，我们只是在寻找正确答案。
I can get, you know, the CPO to approve what we're building as opposed to this idea that says, we're just trying to find out the right answer.
理论上，每个人都希望我们能找到正确答案。
And in theory, everyone wants us to come up with the right answer.
所以我们用规划来让公司对齐，哪些是真正需要解决的重要问题。
So, you know, we use planning to to align the company on, like, what are the really important things we have to solve?
这主要是个资源分配的讨论。
That's mostly a resourcing discussion.
对吧？
Right?
比如说，如果我们选对了事情，把它们都排好优先级，最终我要负责确保资源分配到位，放在正确的地方去完成任务。
Like, if we pick the right things, stack rank them all, ultimately, I'm most accountable for making sure that we have the right resources in the right places to hit things.
但是，我也不确定那些地方是不是真的正确。
But, like, I don't know if those are the right places.
如果我完全把任务交给团队去解决，自己却不定期深入参与，了解具体是怎么运作的，那会怎样？
If all I do is delegate to the team to go figure it out, and I'm not actually periodically very deep with them on, like, exactly how does that work?
你明白吗？
You know?
我们的推荐机制是怎么运作的？
How do our referrals work?
具体来说，欺诈检测系统可能会用什么逻辑来判定一个推荐无效？
Literally what is the logic that fraud might use in order to invalidate one?
哦，基于地址信号的话，我们是怎么计算地址信号的？
Oh, based on address signals, how do we calculate address signals?
那是像谷歌标准化处理的那种，还是用户自由输入的文本？
Is that like a Google normalized thing or is that like you know, free text that's put in?
如果你不真正沉下去，和你的工程师、设计师、产品经理们坐在一起，你根本不会了解那些细节。
And if you don't actually push yourself down to sit alongside your IC engineers and your IC designers and your IC PMs, you don't actually know that stuff.
所以没有微观层面的了解，你就做不出好的宏观决策。
So you can't make good macro decisions without the micro.
所以越来越觉得，我逼自己尽量做到T型发展。
So increasingly, I think, you know, I I push myself to I try and be T shaped.
需要的时候可以钻得很深，但大部分时候保持广度。
I can go very, very deep when required, but I'm mostly broad across pieces.
我觉得那种只管招人、然后不再过问、把所有细节都甩手不管的做法，其实并不是最能激发组织潜力的模式。
And I think the idea of just like hiring people and then like not asking any more questions and delegating all of the detail just isn't really the most successful model for getting the most out of an organization.
对于产品意识很强的创始人来说，CPO这个角色通常很棘手，因为你夹在很有主见的创始人和执行团队之间。
With a very product minded founder, CPO classically is a very challenging role for people because you're basically this person between a very opinionated founder and the team building it.
你觉得怎么做才能营造一个让你在这个位置上感到舒服的环境？
What have you found works in creating it?
就是那种你在这个角色里能做得开心的氛围。
You know, environment where you are happy in that role.
是的。
Yeah.
说起来挺有意思的，这基本上成了我职业生涯的主旋律。
I mean, kind of funnily, that's become most of my career.
实际上，我连续为三位创始人工作过，他们都是那种产品思维特别强的人。
Actually, I worked for three founder founders in a row who are all kind of very product minded.
在Whatnot，我有两位这样的创始人，这其实是一种福气。
And at Whatnot, I've got two, which is a blessing, actually.
一般来说，如果Grant或Logan，我们的创始人，已经在处理某件事，我尽量不去插手，可能也不需要我。
In general, I try not to kind of double up if, you know, Grant or Logan, our our founders, are on a thing, probably doesn't need me.
多一层有什么好处呢？
Like, what's the advantage of an extra layer?
对吧？
You know?
我记得团队里有个产品经理开玩笑说，这就像‘两个爸爸’的问题——就是有两个人发出互相矛盾的指令，或者有人想要审核一下。
I think jokingly, one of the PMs on the team has referred to it as the two dads problem where you've just got, like, two people issuing kind of, like, conflicting instructions or somebody wants to review.
然后你费了半天劲把东西拿给我看，结果回去之后又变成另一个样子了。
And then you do all this work to present it to me, and then you go back and it gets a different thing.
所以我的第一原则就是，如果格兰特或洛根在负责这件事，我就确认一下他们在跟进、他们对结果负责，然后我就退出来。
So my first thing is, like, if Grant or Logan are on it, I check that they're watching it, they're accountable for it, and I step out.
所以会有很长一段时间，比如我团队里整整一半的人都在忙某个项目。
So there'll be long periods of time where, like, fully half my team could be working on something.
但我没法每天告诉你进展到哪了，因为你知道，这事在格兰特那儿，在洛根那儿，这完全没问题。
And I couldn't tell you day to day where it is because, you know, it's with Grant, it's with Logan, and that's totally fine.
我不需要了解他们做的每一件事。
I don't have to be across all of the things they're doing.
我们只需要确保有人能起到把关的作用。
We just need to make sure that there is somebody doing that bar raising.
所以我们花了很多时间来做这种对齐。
So we spend a bunch of time doing that alignment.
我觉得第二点是，说到底，如果你是在创始人领导的公司里做产品负责人，你得明白这不是你的公司，是他们的。
I think the second one is like, ultimately, if you are a product leader in a founder led company, you have to understand it's not your company, it's theirs.
你只需要找到合适的平衡点，比如问一句：‘嘿，你对这个反馈持开放态度吗？’
And you just find the right balance of like, you know, Hey, are you open to feedback on this?
你已经下定决心了吗？
Have you made up your mind?
你愿意接受在这个问题上的推动吗？
You know, are you open to a push on this?
你只需要找到和人们合作的那种节奏。
And you just find that rhythm kind of working with folks.
一般来说，创始人领导的公司在我们行业里表现这么好是有原因的，最初创造产品所需的洞察力和客户直觉往往非常重要。
Generally speaking, you know, there there's a reason that founder led companies do so well in our industry, you know, The insight required and the kind of customer intuition to make the thing in the first place and work tends to be really important.
然后我的工作就是确保我们覆盖到创始人所在的领域。
And then I just view my job as, you know, making sure that we've got coverage on the places where our founders are.
太棒了。
Awesome.
所以你在构建中学到的几件事——我认为在消费领域尤其重要——与人们可能认为的运作方式恰恰相反。
So a couple of things you've learned here for building and this I think in consumer, this is especially important, is counterintuitively to how maybe people think things should work.
你会发现，最优秀的团队、公司和产品，往往都来自创始人自上而下的领导。虽然很多人觉得“微观管理”是个贬义词，但说白了，就是深入细节——不管别人怎么想，这反而能带来更好的结果。
You're finding that the best teams, companies, products end up coming from top down founder led almost you know, micromanagement is a is a dirty word to a lot of people, but it's basically being in the weeds is in spite of how people may feel, this actually ends up being leading to better stuff Better stuff.
如果领导层足够优秀，能深入细节并且做出精准的判断，那这种方式就很有效。
Works well if leadership is good enough to be in the weeds and be specifically correct.
我觉得问题出在，当你并不真正了解实际情况，却试图从上面去管理别人，这时候“微观管理”这个词就出现了。
I think where it falls apart is where you don't actually know ground truth, and then you attempt to manage people from above, and that's where I think the term micromanagement comes from.
否则，如果你和团队掌握同样的信息，你会发现，无论是初级工程师还是刚入行的设计师，都很乐意和CPO或CEO一起工作、一起交付产品，因为这样就没有任何阻碍了。
Otherwise, if you're working from the same data and you have it, I don't know a junior engineer or a, you know, entry level designer who isn't stoked to sit there and work alongside the CPO or the CEO and ship something because you're just unblocked.
不需要开一堆对齐会议。
There's no alignment of meetings.
没什么多余的流程。
There's nothing to do.
他们也会发现，如果你真的深入到细节里，你能给出的反馈会好得多。
They also find that, like, you can give way better feedback if you're literally in the detail.
而关键在于，你怎么确保自己能在足够多的地方做到这一点。
And I think the nuance is just like, how do you make sure you can do that in enough places?
现在没有比这更好的时机去深入了解细节了，因为你可以实时查询一切。
There's never been a better time to be in to to attempt to be in the detail on things because you can literally query it in real time.
我觉得这里有一个非常重要的细微差别。
I think that's such an important nuance here.
这个故事讲得非常有力量，就是格兰特这个想法。
The story told is so powerful, this idea of Grant.
好吧。
Just okay.
我要把今天的时间空出来。
I'm gonna clear my day.
我要花时间深入研究这些东西。
I'm gonna spend time going deep on this stuff.
这感觉像是高层做出微观决策所必需的一个要素。
That feels like a very necessary ingredient for someone at the top to be making micro decisions.
因为就像你说的，如果他们不了解所有细节，那他们做出的决定就不是基于……
Because to your point, if they don't have all the details, they don't they're not making a decision out of
真实的数据。
real data.
我们能做到这一点，是因为，你知道，就像我说的，我们先规划好要做什么，然后分配任务，再分头行动。
And we can do that because, you know, as I said, we we plan what we're doing, and then we allocate, and then we're dividing and conquering.
所以，他可能一次只专注于搞定三四件最重要的事。
So, like, he's probably trying to nail three or four most important things at a time.
而且，你知道，他是CEO。
And, you know, he's the CEO.
他会拍板说，这四件事是我现在负责的。
He's gonna call the ball and say, these are the four things I own right now.
然后我就会说，好的。
And I'm gonna be like, great.
那我就去忙别的了。
I'll be over here then.
然后在这些事情里，我一天中还有什么比完成我承诺这半年要搞定的五件事更重要的呢？
And then within those, like, what am I doing with the rest of my day that is more important than nailing the five things I've said will get done this half?
比如，除了招聘、固定会议这类事情之外，其他能推的就尽量推掉。这样也能给团队定个调子：在没把情况摸清楚之前，我们什么都做不了。
Like, if it's anything other than maybe hiring, standing meetings, any of that stuff, you can just clear it and set the tone for the team that, until we understand it, we we can't do anything else.
假设有人想找个首席产品官或者初级产品经理的职位，基本上就是给创始人打工。这种情况下，你有什么建议能帮他们找到让自己满意的工作，而不是在那种中间管理层里感到特别挫败，因为根本没有任何自主权？
Say somebody is looking for a CPO role or a first PM role, kind of similar, basically working for a founder, what would be your advice for them to land in a place where they're happy and not just super frustrated by by this kind of middle layer where they just don't actually have any agency.
对。
Yeah.
我的意思是，我觉得首先要搞清楚的是，你为什么想要这份工作？
I mean, I think the first thing you've gotta work out is why do you want it?
对吧？
Right?
很多人觉得首席产品官的工作就是自己定所有路线图之类的，但我得告诉你，这并不完全对。
There's this idea that the CPO's job, you get to decide all the road maps and all those things, and I've got bad news for you.
事实并非如此绝对。
That's not strictly true.
不过我觉得关键还是花点时间和对方沟通，搞清楚咱们怎么针对某个话题深入讨论、碰撞想法。
But I think it also comes down to like spending some time with that person to work out, like, how do we jam on a topic?
他们喜欢怎么被推动？
How do they like to get pushed?
他们不喜欢什么方式？
How do they not?
然后你会花很多时间去调整。
And then you spend a lot of your time calibrating.
所以在我加入Whatnot之前，我和Grant大概喝了五六次咖啡，聊的是怎么让这种类型的团队动起来。
So like before I joined Whatnot, I think Grant and I had like five or six different coffees where we talked about like, how do you get, you know, this type of team to move?
你怎么处理这些事情？
How do you work on those things?
然后我经历了一系列面试，最后去了洛杉矶，当时Grant和Logan在那里，我跟他们待了一整天。
And then I obviously went through a series of interviews and actually came down to kind of LA where Grant and Logan were based at the time and spent a whole day with them.
就在一个房间里，一起过几个不同的问题，讨论路线图上的各种事情，真正深入进去。
Just like in a room, going through a couple different problems, talking through different things in the roadmap, just like really getting into it.
在那过程中，我尽量展现最真实的自己，而不是面试状态，你懂吧。
And I tried through that to kind of be my most ordinary self as opposed to like interview self, if that makes sense.
因为你得问问自己，我真的想把所有时间都花在这种讨论和争论上吗？
Because you kinda gotta ask yourself, do I really wanna spend my whole time, like, having this discussion and this debate?
但我喜欢做CPO或者产品负责人，因为很大程度上，我是在帮助把那个愿景和直觉转化为现实。
But, like, I like being a CPO or a kind of a product lead because in a lot of ways, I'm doing is I'm, helping translate that vision and that intuition into reality.
然后，学会如何推动别人而不与他们竞争，这本身就是一门艺术。
And then, you know, there is an art to learning how to push somebody without kind of competing with them.
而且我觉得很多时候，CPO和CEO的关系搞砸，就是因为CPO在愿景上和CEO竞争，最后闹得不可开交。
And I think a lot of the times I've seen the CPO CEO relationship go badly and ends up with like, the CPO is competing with the CEO for vision and they end up at like loggerheads.
我觉得，那不是你的职责。
And I think, you know, that's not your job.
我想多聊聊这个。
I wanna ask more about that.
这种推回去、把方向稍微调整一下的艺术。
This art of pushing back and and, you know, nudging things in direction.
有没有什么诀窍或者建议可以分享，让大家能做好这件事？因为很多人跟高管打交道时，总想让他们同意自己的想法。
Is there kind of one trick or one tip you might share with folks to get to be good at because a lot of people deal with execs, they're always trying to, you know, get them to agree to what they want.
我觉得第一点是，别把它当成什么技巧。
I think the first thing is like, don't treat it as a trick.
我的意思是，你不是在争取一个答案或一个“是”。
I mean, you're not trying to get an answer and a yes.
你其实是在寻求真相，这是我要说的第一点。
You're trying to kind of seek truth is my my first statement.
所以我不觉得我们一开始就意见不合很常见，但我确实认为，作为房间里比较资深的产品负责人，面对CEO——或者如果你是总监，面对CPO——当你觉得团队被推向你不太理解或不太预期的方向时，应该从好奇心出发。
And so I wouldn't say it's especially common that we start out of alignment, but I do think, you know, part of your role, you're one of the more senior product folks in the room and the the CEO or, you know, if you're a director and and it's the CPO in the room, is like pushing the team in a way that you don't really expect or you don't really understand is like start from a place of curiosity.
那个人是不是比你掌握更多背景信息？或者有没有你不知道的因素在影响这个方向？
Does that person have more context than you, or is there a thing that you're not aware of that is guiding it?
所以我经常先确认一下：我理解得对吗，这是你的优先事项？
So I often try and start with like, you can am I hearing you right that this is your prior?
有没有什么我不知道的背景信息，能帮助我理解这个优先事项？
Is there a, you know, piece of context or something that I don't have that helps inform that prior?
好的。
Cool.
确保大家站在同一个起跑线上。
Make sure everybody's on that same baseline.
而且，我也经常教我的产品经理们这样跟我沟通。
And, you know, I coach my PMs to do this with me all the time too.
比如，如果我以你意想不到的角度跟你交流，先停下来，搞清楚为什么。
Like, if I'm coming at you from an angle you don't expect, pause and make sure that you understand why.
然后在那之后，我会尝试几种不同的做法。
And then after that, you know, I try and do a couple different things.
毕竟，人就是人嘛。
You're obviously just people are people.
对吧？
Right?
他们也有状态好的时候。
They have good days.
也有状态不好的时候。
They have bad days.
有时候问题很简单，比如问一句：这件事你已经有定论了，还是愿意听听别人的意见？
Sometimes it can be as simple as like, is your mind made up on this, or are you open to input?
如果对方回答：不，我已经很确定这就是答案了，那就闭嘴。
If the answer is like, no, I'm pretty set that this is the answer, shut up.
别为了吵架而吵架。
Like, don't pick a fight for the purposes of picking a fight.
如果对方说：其实可以，欢迎你来说服我，但得有数据支持。
If the answer is like, actually, yes, you're welcome to push me, but I'd need to see data.
如果房间里没有任何数据，只有我的个人观点，那讨论的规则就很清楚了。
If I don't have any data in the room, if it's just my opinion, then the terms of the debate are pretty clear.
如果你有新的数据，那就拿出来。
If I have fresh data, bring it.
如果我真的坚信某件事，却没有数据支撑，那就该质疑一下为什么。
If I really believe a thing and I don't have data, question why.
要么自己去找到数据，再回头跟他们谈。
Or go get it and then go back to them with the data.
但如果答案是，如果谁都没有数据，只是两种观点，那CEO的观点会胜出。
But if the answer is like, if nobody's got data, it's just two opinions, the CEO's opinion is going to win.
这没问题。
And that's okay.
放下自我，直奔答案。
Check your ego at the door, get to the answer.
但如果你有数据，就拿出来。
But if you've got data, bring it.
有时候，关键是要确保你争论的出发点是对的。
And then sometimes it's like, just make sure that you're debating for the right reasons.
我觉得在你描述的那种欧洲场景里，很容易就想要确保设定好框架和基调。
I think it's easy in European theater that you're describing of wanting to make sure that you set the framing and the tone.
在我们这个行业里，确实有些时候术语很重要，用哪个词可能非常关键。
And there are genuinely times in our industry where nomenclature matters, and exactly what word is used can be really important.
但很多时候，其实没那么重要。
But a lot of the time, it doesn't.
我听到一个概念，在和与你共事的人聊天时经常被提起。
There's a concept that I heard, come up a bunch when I talk to people who work with you.
这个说法是：拉手风琴。
The phrase was, play the accordion.
解释一下。
Explain.
我之前提到过，我不太喜欢框架，但确实有一个思维模型挺有用的，它和我们之前讨论的类似，就是深入思考一个问题。
So I mentioned earlier, I'm not huge on frameworks, but I do think there's a mental model which is quite useful that goes to the thing that you and I discussed earlier on, like, think through a problem.
即使你完全不发布任何东西，也要在脑子里做足功课。因为代码的神奇之处在于，你可以快速发布、快速迭代，并在过程中获取数据。
Mental do the mental work even if you're not shipping at all, which is like, obviously, the magic of code is that you can kind of ship things and iterate really quickly and get data as you go.
我觉得随之而来的一个陷阱是，你只是一味地向前迭代，像扔意大利面一样往墙上乱扔，根本不知道自己在往哪个方向走。
And I think one of the the trappings that comes with that is you're just iterating forward and throwing spaghetti at a wall, you don't really know what direction you're going in.
我认为还有另一种失败模式：人们坐下来，写出长长的路线图和战略愿景文档，规划未来两三年要做什么，这反而失去了我们相对于其他行业的优势——学习能力。
I think there's a second failure mode, which is people sit down and write up these long roadmaps and strategic vision docs of what we'll do over the next two, three years that kind of loses the comparative advantage we have over every other industry, which is learning.
比如，AB测试意味着你可以不断更新对问题的理解，从而调整前进的方向。
Like, AB tests mean that you can update your understanding of a problem and therefore change your direction you should go.
所以拉手风琴这个比喻的意思是，想象一下钢琴手风琴，在弹一个音符之前，你得先把它完全拉开，再收回来。
So the point of the analogy of playing the accordion is if you think about, like, a piano accordion, before you can play a note, gotta stretch it all the way out, bring the area in.
也就是说，我们到底想完成什么？
So like, what is it we're trying to get done?
但只有当你按下琴键，把它完全推回到第一版时，音乐才会出来。
But you don't make music until you press the key and push it all the way back into v one.
然后当你演奏下一个进展时，你又得把它完全拉开。
And then when you go to play the the next kind of like progression, you pull it all the way out again.
好。
Okay.
根据我们刚学到的东西，接下来该做什么？
Given what we just learned, what do we do?
然后你再去构建下一个东西。
And then you go and build the next thing again.
而且你得习惯这种节奏——拉开的过程本身不创造价值，就像把手风琴拉开其实什么也没做。
And like, you've gotta get used to this motion that says like, this isn't creating value, like pulling it out doesn't actually do anything.
所有价值都是在这里创造的，但如果你不持续经历这个过程——重新评估我们的理解，看看这如何改变我们正在做的事情——
All the value is created here, but until you are going through this motion constantly of saying, reevaluate what we understand, how does this change what we're doing?
那你很可能没做对。
You're probably not playing the right thing.
我知道我可能说得不太准确，评论区肯定会有音乐家指出，这其实也是创作音乐的一种方式。但我发现，对产品经理来说，这确实是一个非常有用的记忆方法：你必须不断拉远视角再拉近，拉远再拉近。
And I know I'm probably bastardizing somewhere in the comments, there's gonna be a musician who points out to me that this is actually also one of the ways you make music, but I found it just a generally very valuable like, memory device for PMs to be like, you've gotta constantly be zooming out and pushing back in, zooming out and and pushing back in.
对。
Yeah.
这个比喻真有意思。
That is such a fun analogy.
因为你知道，虽然拉开来能演奏音乐，但真正的价值在于向内压缩，或者说从中学到东西。
Because you know, it's like the even though you make music expanding it, it's like inward or it's like learning from the Yeah.
压缩的过程。
The compression.
我们学到了什么？
What do we learn?
你怎么跟所有人沟通？
How do you communicate to everyone?
没错。
Exactly.
到交付阶段。
To shipping.
这就像一种不同的音乐。
It's like a different kind of music.
内部是音乐，外部是实验。
Internal music, external experiment.
对。
Yeah.
因为确实，有些人特别看重路线图，有些人特别看重迭代。
Because genuinely, there are people who are really big on roadmaps, there are people who are really big on iteration.
我觉得实话实说，你得两者兼顾。
I I think the honest answer is you gotta do both.
你不能在任何一个方面过度倾斜。
You can't over index on either.
所以这里的教训是，做实验，但一定要从全局角度思考结果的影响。
So lesson here is run experiments, but then make sure you think about the implication of the of the result at the bigger picture.
我们到底想
What are we trying
做什么？
to do?
要有计划。
Have a plan.
我觉得
I think
系统是这样运作的，相信如果我们因为某些原因改变发现算法的工作方式，就会产生这样的影响。
the system works this way, have this belief that if we change the way discovery algorithms work for x y z reasons, will have this impact.
我能做的最小的事情是什么来证明这一点？
What's the smallest thing I can do to prove that?
好的。
Okay.
成功了。
It worked.
太棒了。
Great.
计划不变。
No change to plan.
第二版。
V two.
哦，糟了。
Oh, shit.
那个没成功。
That didn't work.
第三版就得不一样了，你基本上就得一直这么循环着来。
V three is gonna have to be different, and you just kinda wanna always be going through that motion.
在YouTube上看不到的人，汤姆正在比划手势。
People not watching in YouTube, Tom is moving his hands.
手舞足蹈的。
Sticulating wild.
在什么情况下你会对别人说，嘿。
What's like a what's what's like a context where you have said to someone, hey.
我们去拉手风琴吧，或者我们在拉手风琴。
We'll go play the accordion or we're playing the accordion.
比如，他们通常做错了什么？
Like like, what are they usually doing wrong?
往往是你发布某个东西时，只考虑局部范围，而没有充分理解其影响。
It tends to be that you're shipping something with a in a very local sense without necessarily understanding impact.
举个例子，现在大多数市场的核心是商品列表。
So an example right now is, you know, the core of most marketplaces is listings.
对吧？
Right?
比如说，如果你试着想象没有商品列表的亚马逊网站，那基本上就什么都没有了。
Like, if you try and think about amazon.com without listings, there's basically nothing there.
它只是一堆，你知道的，左边栏或者右边栏，再加上一些视频。
It's a bunch of know, it's a left rail or right rail and some videos.
在视频电商和直播电商里，传统上你其实并不需要商品列表。
In video commerce and live commerce, you don't really historically need listings.
如果我想卖给你一副AirPods，我完全可以把它举到屏幕前给你看，描述它，然后说这是AirPods。
If I wanna sell you a pair of AirPods, I could literally hold them up to screen and show you them and describe them and say they're AirPods.
我打算从一美元起拍。
I'm gonna start them at a dollar.
作为买家，你现在已经掌握了做购买决定所需的所有信息，这挺好的。
And as a buyer, you now have all the information you need in order to kind of like make a purchase decision, which is great.
所以你可能不需要像其他人那样投入精力去制作商品列表。
And so you may not have to invest in making listings the way that someone else does.
这对卖家来说可能不是好事，因为制作一个商品列表只需要三分半钟。
And that's probably not good for a seller because it takes, like, three and a half minutes to make a listing.
关于 Bayt 播客
Bayt 提供中文+原文双语音频和字幕，帮助你打破语言障碍，轻松听懂全球优质播客。