This was an exclusive Q&A session to give you a chance to ask every question you’ve ever had, with Inbal Reichman Cohen, Facebook's Product Manager. She answers questions from "How did you become a Product Manager?" to Facebook vs. Amazon - How do they compare?" This is for the curious minds who want to break into product and hear from someone who already has.

1. "Ask Me Anything" with Product School's Lead
Instructor & Facebook’s Product Manager

2. Jake Strich
Campus Director @
Product School
jake@productschool.com

3. Tweet at us!
@productschool
Send us your best pictures of tonight’s event!

4. ` Who’s all here??
● Product Managers
● Software Engineer
● Hardware
● Business
● Design
● Misc.

5. ` Who’s all here??
● Startup: 1-50 people
● Small: 50-300
● Medium: 300-500
● Large: 500-1,000
● Enterprise - 1,000+

6. Upcoming Courses in Silicon Valley
Tuesdays and Thursdays
April
*SOLD OUT*
Saturdays
March 4 - April 22
*SOLD OUT*

7. Meet Tonight’s Speaker
Inbal Cohen
Product Manager @ Facebook
Previously PM @ Amazon
Israeli Army veteran
University of Virginia MBA

8. Q & A

9. What is Inbal’s definition of Product
Management?
- Liaison between Business & Engineer
- CEO or Owner of Product
- Gathering requirements from customers,
business side
- Product Strategy - what should be developed,
execution of strategy
- Prioritization
- ‘Influence without authority’

10. What makes a Good vs. Great PM?
- Best Product Managers: ambiguous problems
into tangible plans

11. How did you become a product manager?
- Inbal’s story
- Israeli Army, worked as software engineer
- Managed team of product managers
- Inbal: Diverse backgrounds, multiple paths to
PM
- Taking on more responsibilities, getting
recognized for their work by managers
- Inbal: Think broadly about what you’re doing
- Ask your PM for projects

12. What are the differences between Project
and Product Mgmt?
- Project Manager - the ‘How’, coordination,
execution, shipping deliverables,
technicalities of getting work done
- Product Manager - the ‘What’, responsible for
results, providing direction for team, shipping
products

13. How does Marketing work with Product
Management?
- Role of PM is to utilize knowledge on team to
build right product
- Marketing team: opportunity to grab market
share
- PM: this is where we’re best position based
on talent, technology, etc.
- The one making the decision on where to go with
product

14. What did you have to unlearn to become a
Product Manager?
- Doing all of it on your own
- Learn to delegate
- Don’t micromanage

15. Facebook vs. Amazon, how do they
compare?
- Amazon: hires business people for PM roles
- Bay Area market prefers technical backgrounds for
PM, varies by role and company
- Facebook: prefer technical background for
PM roles
- Caveat of people with varied backgrounds
- Daily work: Product team is on same side
- KPI’s defined by success of team

16. What happens when product or feature
fails?
- Assessment of PM
- PM’s get credit for product success, take
responsibility for product failure
- Amazon: new product, 9 months later shuts
down
- VP got fired
- Too long before showing results
- Team realigned within org, moved onto next
project
- Viability: is this product going to work?

17. How do you know when you’re on the cusp
of critical mass?
- ‘That’s why PM’s make the big bucks!’
- MVP: finding market fit quickly
- Fail quickly: asking really hard questions..if
this works then what?
- ‘Where do we go from here?’
- Leverage your team to maximize results of
product

18. For PM: how do you persuade your bosses?
- Company vision and goals
- Org
- ‘How does this product get us there?’
- Audience
- Type - Logical, Data, Emotions, Intuition

19. How do you manage working on a product
that you know is going to fail?
- @ Amazon, Inbal worked with Principal PM,
wanting to work with him on Strategy
- Show your way of thinking before, during, and
after the project

20. How to transition from QA to Product?
- Facebook: all about initiative
- Engineer take part in product discussions
- Research session with customers

21. What are tools you use for data and
metrics?
- Facebook uses internal tools
- Ask the right questions, and how to answer
them
- Tools are similar across every company

22. What’s the Facebook PM hiring process?
- Three tracks:
- RPM
- General Product Manager
- Two phone interviews
- Product sense: Design, Decisions, Prioritization
- Execution: Metrics, Questions to ask (Data),
Goalsetting
- Three onsite interviews
- Product Sense
- Execution
- Leadership and drive: hardships, motivation,
behavioral
- Specific-role PM
- Interview with team, e.g. Facebook’s Games

23. How do you choose between different
priorities?
- Depends
- Tradeoffs: e.g. investing time and technical
debt into one feature vs. another… is it worth
it?
- No right answer
- ‘There’s no way Marketing will let this ship’

24. What does your typical day look like?
- Varies by team
- PM’s can work on customer-facing or internal
products
- Can work on their own or with a huge team
- Checking dashboards

25. How does idea start?
- Top-down: strategic initiatives
- E.g. Presenting to Mark
- Autonomy: self-started by PM
- Amazon vs. Facebook = similar in how to
build/recruit team
- More often teams are already established

26. Do you have any examples of roadmaps?
- Facebook: 6 month roadmaps
- No organized template
- Press release

27. How much data are you leveraging at
Facebook?
A LOT!!!!!!!!!!
@Facebook:
- Upside: easy to track, find metrics
- Downside: paralysis by analysis, ‘data will tell
us what to do’, forgetting about intuition
Interpreting data is just as important as the data
sets themselves

28. You’ve done everything you can to be a PM,
what makes the cut?
- Do people around you trust you? Is someone
rooting for you?
- Internal transfer @ Facebook goes through
same process as external, except they are
much more familiarized with product, team,
etc
- Interviews are objective as possible -
knowledge, ways of thinking

29. Do you need a diverse (international) team
to build good products?
- @Facebook: diverse mindsets
- Gender, country, background, etc

30. How to collaborate with other PM’s on
different product lines?
- Relationship building
- Understanding each team’s needs
- What’s more important for Org?
- @Facebook: bootcamp, meeting PM’s in free
time before she needed anything

31. What are internal products at Facebook?
- Data
- Project
- Test
- HR
- Jobs
- Infrastructure/Technical, e.g. FB Ads

32. Upcoming Workshops
March 1: Growth, explained by
Zynga’s Director of Product