Kevin Yien

The best way to get feedback from people is not by asking what they think, but to put something concrete in front of them and then have them react to it.

We all talk about product sense. To me, it's just a fancy way of saying you can make good decisions with insufficient data. PMs need as many reps as possible in making decisions, documenting the rationale behind those decisions, and then crucially seeing the outcome of them.

Most people, I would say, under invest in design, point-blank. When you get to a certain scale, maybe things change, but truly I don't think most teams have experienced what it feels like to have a really high design ratio and what that actually does to the quality of the work and the quality of the thinking.

PM should be doing everything in their power to draw the perimeter of the space, of the problem space. And it's within that, eng, design, everyone else that you're working with, they can go as crazy as they want, push up against the bounds and it's fill the box to its maximum capacity, but you've now applied the constraints that allow you to actually have productive conversations.

Your sales team is a research team, and if you don't view them that way, you are missing out on half the value.

There is a difference between you not being good at something and a business or company not needing that thing at a particular moment in time, or you being very good at something but not in the way that a company needs.

Writing is clarity at scale, and a key component to a PM's job is creating clarity both internally and externally.