Maria Angelidou:Product Lessons Leading Facebook App Monetisation Team to Billions in Revenue |E1210

Intro (0s)

• Promotions to the next level should only occur when an individual has consistently demonstrated their ability to operate successfully at that level for a long period of time (8s).
• Premature promotions can be detrimental to the individual as they will be compared to a group of people who are already performing well at the next level (17s).
• Maria Angelidou is a guest on the podcast, and it is her first time appearing on a podcast (36s).
• Maria is excited to be on the podcast and thanks the host, Harry, for having her (40s).
• The host, Harry, is also excited to have Maria on the podcast (34s).

Joining Facebook (44s)

• A pivotal moment in joining Facebook occurred in 2013 when attending an alumni event for the Boston Consulting Group, where the person had worked many years prior, to congratulate a friend who had made partner (1m13s).
• The decision to attend the event was almost not made due to a lot of work, but the person's husband encouraged them to go, and it was there that they met an impressive woman who was a director of product management at Facebook (1m38s).
• The woman spoke passionately about her job at Facebook, sparking interest and curiosity, and she invited the person to visit the Facebook site, which led to a series of interviews (1m58s).
• After the interviews, the person received a job offer from Facebook while driving home, just 15 minutes after leaving the headquarters, which was impressive due to the speed of the decision-making process (2m35s).
• At the time, Facebook had around 3,000 employees, with a very small product team of less than 100 people (3m4s).
• The person's starting title at Facebook was product manager (3m11s).

Transition From IC to Manager (3m14s)

• The transition from an individual contributor (IC) to a manager is significant, as a manager is responsible for the outcomes of their team and must do everything in their control to mitigate risk and ensure the team delivers on its commitments (3m31s).
• When transitioning from IC to manager, two key things change: the manager is no longer only responsible for the product they're working on directly, but for all products their team is working on, and they're also responsible for the people on their team, including understanding their weaknesses, development areas, and strengths (4m1s).
• The traditional view of career progression, where a brilliant IC is expected to become a manager, can be skewed, as some people may not be suited for management and may excel as ICs (4m41s).
• To address this issue, PM archetypes were introduced, which allow ICs to progress in their careers without necessarily becoming managers, and can go all the way up to VP on the IC track (5m48s).
• There are three PM archetypes: Captain, Entrepreneur, and Specialist, each with distinct characteristics, such as managing complex projects, bringing ideas to life, and having deep expertise in a specific domain (6m8s).
• The Captain archetype excels in managing complex projects, requiring a central strategy and the ability to manage multiple teams executing on that strategy (6m12s).
• The Entrepreneur archetype is skilled at bringing ideas to life, getting teams inspired and motivated, and iterating on an idea to get it to product-market fit (6m38s).
• The Specialist archetype has deep expertise in a specific domain, such as integrity, growth, or machine learning (7m10s).
• ICs may feel pressure to become managers, but it's essential to recognize that not everyone is suited for management, and that's okay (7m26s).
• Good product leaders need to have general management skills, which include a strong product sense and a strong business sense, enabling them to manage a portfolio of products, distribute capacity and resources, manage towards a healthy P&L, and drive business goals, not just product goals (7m41s).
• A key aspect of a product leader's role is to manage towards a healthy P&L, which involves making decisions that drive business goals and impact the company's bottom line (7m59s).
• One of the biggest needle movers on Facebook's P&L was the ads monetization engine around video, which was a major focus area for the company (8m8s).
• The development of the ads monetization engine around video was a challenging project that required significant effort and resources, and was a key area of focus for the company (8m18s).
• Facebook has a heavy feedback culture, where employees receive direct and frequent feedback from many directions, which can sometimes be conflicting, but ultimately helps to push employees to calibrate and think critically about the feedback they receive (8m45s).
• The heavy feedback culture at Facebook is not a sign of a badly run company, but rather a great school that helps employees develop their skills and learn to navigate complex situations (9m14s).
• To succeed in a company with a heavy feedback culture, employees need to learn how to calibrate and think critically about the feedback they receive, and decide which feedback to lean into and which to ignore (9m28s).

How To Prevent Feature Creep (9m34s)

• To prevent feature creep, having solid design guidelines and a design system is essential, as it allows teams to develop consistent components across the product (9m38s).
• A design system provides frontend components that are ready to use, preventing teams from reinventing them and ensuring consistency throughout the product (9m57s).
• Developing clear tone of voice guidelines is also crucial, as it ensures the product communicates consistently across different surfaces, creating a cohesive user experience (10m6s).
• Consistency in design and tone of voice is key to preventing feature creep, as it creates a unified and polished product that feels consistent to users (10m16s).

Science vs. Art in Product (10m19s)

• Product development involves a combination of science and art, as relying solely on science would result in less diversity in outcomes among companies striving for product-market fit (10m31s).
• The science aspect of product development is crucial, as it increases the chances of success, but it is not the most important part (10m48s).
• The art component of product development is vital for achieving breakthrough success, and its absence would hinder the attainment of such success (11m2s).
• Intuition plays a role in product development, and it is necessary to balance intuition with data-centric decision-making (10m23s).
• Companies that successfully achieve product-market fit often have a mix of both science and art in their product development approach (10m39s).

Speed vs. Quality in Product (11m3s)

• When considering speed versus quality in product development, many people prioritize speed, especially in the early stages, but it's possible to achieve both speed and quality simultaneously (11m4s).
• The assumption that everything is operating at an optimal level is often incorrect, and there's usually room for improvement in terms of talent, processes, and tools (12m3s).
• A graph illustrating the relationship between speed and quality was drawn, showing that faster pace typically results in lower quality, but it's possible to achieve both speed and quality by improving the team's talent, processes, and tools (12m41s).
• The factors that enable a team to go faster and build better products can be bucketed into three major things: talent on the team or adjacent teams, how they get stuff done, and the tools and systems they use (13m27s).
• Having the right talent, working in optimal ways, and using the right tools are essential for achieving maximum performance in both speed and quality (14m1s).
• Improving these factors can help teams overcome the inverse relationship between speed and quality, allowing them to go faster and build better products at the same time (13m9s).

Common Reason Why Companies Fail: Talent, Process or Systems (14m7s)

• The most common reasons why companies fail today are talent, process, or systems, and it often depends on the company and its specific circumstances (14m7s).
• Typically, there are opportunities for improvement across all three areas, and it depends on who built the company and their level of expertise in building systems and teams (14m13s).
• The middle aspect, process, is often the one that breaks down, referring to how people get stuff done in product teams (14m33s).
• Building process in product teams is crucial, but it's essential to strike a balance between initiative and process, as both extremes can be detrimental (14m38s).
• Having a company with no central process can lead to chaos, conflicting efforts, and slowed progress, while having a company that's all about process can lead to a bureaucratic environment that drives away talented employees (14m58s).
• Companies tend to do better when there is a minimum amount of process, and the process is a means to an end, such as helping people work faster or ship better products (15m42s).
• Any process that doesn't contribute to these goals is a waste of time, and it's essential to be diligent in preventing the organization from becoming overprocessed (15m53s).

How To Do Product Reviews (16m8s)

• Product reviews are crucial for helping teams ship better products, and the way to measure this is often different according to various leaders and companies (16m8s).
• Two to three hours a week are set aside for product reviews, which are decided through both pull and push ways, including staff meetings and team requests for discussion (16m22s).
• The pull way involves discussing priorities and other important topics in staff meetings, while the push way involves teams requesting discussions for help with decision-making or trade-offs (16m31s).
• Only people who need to directly contribute to the discussion are invited to product reviews, typically up to 10 people, and every review is recorded and documented for transparency (17m7s).
• The materials, recording, action items, and ETAs are posted in a Slack channel, allowing teams to access the information they need (17m32s).
• Product reviews are not done well when teams don't know the most important questions to answer, which can be caught in the pre-read sent at least 24 hours in advance (19m20s).
• The pre-read is a Google doc that goes over the problem, components, and discussion topics, and everyone is expected to read it and add comments before the review (19m36s).
• There are four different types of product reviews: strategy review, roadmap review, launch review, and business review, each with its own focus and goals (18m1s).
• Strategy reviews go deep on the problem, product opportunity, and business case, while roadmap reviews focus on the execution plan, sequence, milestones, and goals (18m2s).
• Launch reviews look at all the things that need to come together for a successful launch, including experience and quality bar, and business reviews examine the financial performance and business levers (18m42s).
• The goal of product reviews is to have a productive discussion, and reading the pre-read in advance is crucial to achieving this goal (20m2s).

Balancing Open Debate with Directive Leadership (20m19s)

• There are two different concepts: encouraging debate and the idea that "talk is cheap." Debate is incredibly important, but talk can also be expensive as it costs time that could be spent progressing towards goals and executing plans (20m48s).
• A culture of "strong opinions loosely held" is valuable, where individuals have a point of view and are willing to share it, but also remain open to new information and willing to change their opinion (21m17s).
• Having a strong point of view requires doing homework, developing expertise, and being willing to share that point of view, which can lead to debate and better outcomes (21m40s).
• Being open to new information and seeking it out is crucial in making better decisions, and it's not about being right, but about making the right decisions (22m21s).
• Talk can be expensive because it can lead to disillusionment if opinions are presented but not considered, and it's essential to be open to debate to avoid this (23m0s).
• Not being open to debate can result in missing out on valuable information and insights from team members, and it's essential to create an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their opinions (23m27s).
• Philosophizing and action-oriented decision-making are not mutually exclusive, and it's possible to balance both by making decisions quickly and iterating based on new information (24m26s).
• While whiteboard brainstorming sessions can be seen as useless, they can also be valuable for generating ideas and exploring concepts, and it's essential to strike a balance between philosophizing and action-oriented decision-making (24m5s).

What is Possibility Thinking? (24m40s)

• Possibility thinking is an approach that encourages product leaders and organizations to pursue big ideas and take significant risks to achieve substantial growth, rather than solely focusing on small incremental gains (24m40s).
• This approach involves dreaming big, thinking big, and being willing to take on riskier and higher-reward ideas, as these are more likely to bring about step-change growth to a business (25m16s).
• To encourage big ideas in companies, leaders should set a clear strategy that allocates resources to both big ideas and optimizations, and communicate this strategy effectively to their teams (25m57s).
• Leaders must also be mindful of the incentives within their organization, recognizing and rewarding not only incremental gains but also people who take on bigger ideas, even if they fail (26m46s).
• Rewarding both types of achievements is crucial, as going after bigger ideas is often harder and more unpredictable than achieving incremental gains (27m20s).
• To overcome the challenges of pursuing bigger ideas, leaders must compensate for the fact that these endeavors are often more difficult and less reliable than achieving incremental gains (27m26s).

Lessons on How To Do Launching (27m31s)

• To generate big ideas, it's helpful to personalize the thought process by imagining how different people, such as Mr Beast or Johnny IV, would approach the product, which can lead to multiple different answers and ideas with varying design aesthetics and shock value (27m32s).
• Launch strategy meetings often result in poorly executed product launches, and a successful launch is not just about releasing a working product, but rather it's the exception (27m58s).
• Typically, signals are gathered throughout the development process, and it becomes clear over time whether a product will be successful or not (28m18s).
• A second product should ideally be conceptualized one to two years before it's needed in the market, as it takes time to build a successful product (28m48s).
• For companies with a single successful product that has achieved product-market fit and is growing, it's essential to start thinking about introducing the next product one to two years in advance (29m5s).
• The time to start thinking about the next product is when the current product is going great, and growth is happening, usually about a year or two before the next product is needed (29m12s).

Balancing Resources Between Core Revenue & Future Innovations (29m23s)

• Resource allocation for CPTO involves balancing between historical technical debt, existing revenue streams, and future innovations, with three main categories of investment: new products, existing products, and maintenance/internal productivity (29m38s).
• New products include high-risk, high-reward ideas and big bets, while existing products require optimization and step-change improvements to maintain quality (30m2s).
• Maintenance, also known as "keeping the lights on" (KLO), and internal productivity are essential for companies with multiple products and hundreds of millions in revenue (30m27s).
• Ideally, the allocation should be intentional, with 30-40% invested in existing products, 30-40% in new products, and 25-30% in maintenance and internal productivity (31m4s).
• Within the new products bucket, it's recommended to keep at least 5-10% of capacity for "planting new seeds" and exploring future innovations (31m20s).

Lessons on Hiring (31m31s)

• Hiring is the most important aspect of a leader's role, and one of the biggest lessons is to hire people who are better, stronger, and smarter than you, as this will drive growth and success (31m36s).
• Mark Zuckerberg's advice is to hire people that you would want to report to, which emphasizes the importance of finding individuals who have the potential to excel and grow within the organization (31m50s).
• When hiring, it's essential to consider whether you would be willing to report to the candidate in the future, as this mindset helps to identify individuals with high potential and growth prospects (32m1s).
• Paying candidates more than yourself and being willing to report to them in the future demonstrates a commitment to hiring the best talent, regardless of their current level of experience (32m5s).
• For senior leadership positions, it's crucial to hire individuals who are better than you, as this will drive growth and success within the organization (32m32s).
• When hiring for lower-level positions, it's essential to focus on potential, rather than current abilities, as this will help to identify individuals who can grow and develop within the organization (32m45s).
• The key to hiring the best talent is to consider whether you can see yourself reporting to the candidate in the future, as this indicates that they have the potential to excel and grow within the organization (32m58s).

Hiring Process (33m17s)

• The hiring process for the Facebook App Monetisation Team is a four-phase process, starting with the screening and exploration phase, which involves a couple of interviews with a talent acquisition partner to assess relevant experience and fit with current roles (33m19s).
• If the candidate passes the first phase, they move on to the exploration phase with a product leader, who digs deeper into motivation, relevant experience, and potential red flags (33m45s).
• The next phase is the functional Loop, which assesses the candidate's product sense and execution, including their ability to take an ambiguous problem and come up with a good solution (34m9s).
• The functional Loop includes two 45-minute interviews, one for product sense and one for execution, which tests the candidate's ability to set the right goals for the team and make decisions based on data (34m40s).
• If the candidate passes the functional Loop, they move on to the case study phase, which involves a take-home assignment that presents a set of problems the candidate would face if they joined the company (35m8s).
• The final phase is the leadership and drive phase, which includes a bu Riser interview that assesses the candidate's values and fit with the company's values (35m30s).
• After the final phase, the team debriefs and makes a decision on the candidate (35m45s).
• The hiring process can be lengthy, but it's designed to ensure the right candidate is selected, and it's possible to move faster if needed (36m10s).
• The case study phase was not initially a fan favorite, but it has proven to be a valuable tool in assessing a candidate's skills and fit with the company (36m14s).
• A lengthy case study, approximately 30 pages, was provided during the hiring process, which initially deterred the candidate but ultimately piqued their interest due to the challenging problems it presented (37m2s).
• The candidate is drawn to challenges and learning new things, which made the case study appealing and invested them in the opportunity (37m21s).
• Upon starting at the company, the candidate had to redesign the hiring process to make it more rigorous, which they believe is crucial for hiring the right people (37m47s).
• The original hiring process was kept due to its uniqueness and being part of the company's DNA, but it was modified to be more concise, taking no more than an hour to complete (38m8s).
• The revised process involves providing candidates with the task at least two days in advance, allowing them sufficient time to complete it without feeling rushed (38m21s).
• The task is designed to assess how candidates would tackle specific problems, and they are expected to return with their thoughts and solutions (38m34s).

Approaching Comp & Title Negotiations (38m38s)

• When offering compensation and title, it's essential to negotiate, as it's part of the deal, and women typically don't negotiate as much as men (38m41s).
• Women may internalize the negotiation process too much and feel that it could reflect badly on their relationship with the person they're talking to, but this shouldn't be the case (39m12s).
• Title is not something that can typically be negotiated, as companies need consistency and clear mapping to levels from other companies, unless the company is very early-stage (39m35s).
• It's often possible to know if someone is not the right person for the job within a few weeks, but it can be challenging to let them go, especially in Europe where there's a probation period (40m4s).
• In Europe, the probation period allows companies to decide if an employee is a good fit, but this is not the case in the US, where employment is at-will (40m30s).
• Hiring in Europe can be more challenging due to a smaller talent pool, with maybe only one solid candidate for every 10-20 in the US, which can slow down the hiring process (41m8s).
• Despite the challenges, it's still possible to build an incredible company in Europe, but it may require more energy (41m36s).
• There are differences in work ethic and approaches to work between the US and Europe, with people in the US often feeling that their job is a bigger part of their identity (41m50s).
• This difference in identity can lead to people in the US putting in more effort and feeling more ownership of their work (42m6s).
• Entitlement is more prevalent among the younger generation across Europe and the US, particularly those who have had cushy jobs with many benefits and think that's the norm (42m17s).

Opinion on Remote Work (42m45s)

• Research was conducted on location strategy when starting at Personio, and it was decided to continue hiring remotely due to access to better talent and faster hiring, despite potential risks that can be mitigated (42m45s).
• The benefits of in-person interactions, such as socializing and forming stronger relationships, can be mitigated by regularly bringing people together, which is done at least once a quarter at the team level (43m50s).
• With a high percentage of remote workers, meetings need to be intentional, and async collaboration is used as much as possible, with tools like Loom, to minimize unnecessary meetings (44m25s).
• Product reviews are not significantly worse when done remotely due to having a structured process in place (44m48s).
• Brainstorming and idea generation can be more challenging remotely, but this can be mitigated by quickly pinging team members for discussions and leaving time on the calendar for creative processes (45m3s).
• It's essential to work with various team members, not just direct reports, and to have a flexible schedule to accommodate spontaneous discussions and idea generation (45m32s).
• Leaving time on the calendar for creative processes and not overpacking it with meetings allows for quick discussions and idea generation throughout the day (45m48s).

Bull or Bear: Maria’s Outlook on Europe (46m0s)

• Europe faces challenges in innovation due to limited access to talent, with the number one issue being the availability of skilled workers from countries like Thailand (46m8s).
• Companies in the US tend to prioritize initiative over process, whereas European companies often focus more on process, although there are exceptions (46m35s).
• In Europe, it is harder to fire people, and the process is often more amicable, which can impact a company's ability to adapt and innovate (46m51s).
• To thrive in Europe with a focus on initiative and minimal process, companies must be more intentional in their approach, as this is not the default mindset (46m44s).

Quick-Fire Round (47m2s)

• A disagreement with a manager occurred when deciding whether to promote an employee, with the manager ultimately convincing that promotions should be lagging, not leading, and only given when an employee has consistently demonstrated success at the next level for a long period of time (47m4s).
• Premature promotions can be detrimental to employees, as they may struggle at the new level and receive bad ratings, making it difficult to recover (48m24s).
• To get promoted, one should start doing the work at the next level, taking responsibility, and showing they can do the job (49m9s).
• Founders make two common mistakes when hiring product teams: they don't hire the right person due to a lack of understanding of the role or how to vet candidates, and they don't know how to build a good product team from a structural perspective (49m22s).
• A good product team structure should include a mix of experienced and junior members, with senior members to train and guide the junior ones (50m10s).
• When starting a new role as a Chief Product Officer (CPO), it's essential to build context quickly, do a listening tour, and gain expertise in the company and the space being worked in, including spending time with customers and the finance team (50m28s).
• To become valuable in a business, one should use the product, study the competitors, and become an expert in the space, while also delivering results and making themselves valuable to their boss, team, and peers (50m49s).
• Two companies with impressive product strategies are Microsoft and Instacart, with Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella making a successful bet on AI and Instacart's CEO Fidji Simo turning the company around and making it profitable during difficult times (51m13s).
• Fidji Simo's approach at Instacart is notable for its win-win mindset, as seen in the company's deal with Uber, which positions them better in restaurant delivery against competitors like DoorDash (52m11s).
• Instacart is also investing in healthy eating initiatives for low-income communities, demonstrating Fidji Simo's ability as an operator and her commitment to making a positive impact (52m28s).