Camille Hearst: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah. A lot of Apple people. Yeah. And actually one of the new leaders they've hired, I don't know if you know Judson Coplan, dear friend of mine, we interned that same summer at Apple and he worked there for 15 years before heading over to Airbnb. But yeah, the Apple construct, it's much more of design and engineering led organizations, craftspeople I would say more so than strategy people. So that was one of the stark differences I saw in my transition from Apple to Google. There are a lot more like people from Coca-Cola and McKinsey and Bain at Google. I don't think any of those people even existed at Apple. And it was very much like, "Let's 3D chess our way into what our next move is going to be." Whereas at Apple it was, "Let's tinker and let's craft and let's build and let's see what feels right." There's different approaches. As a result, the approach to product management was quite different. So I think it makes sense. Brian Chesky's background is a designer so it probably resonates a bit more within the Apple way. And then in terms of what it means for product managers on an individual level, so again, there weren't product managers, the closest thing would've been CPMs, technical program managers who help manage the sprints and manage the schedule and listing out what features would happen. I spent a lot of my time with the incredibly talented design team and if I had ideas of product features or... We would think months ahead of time, like what's the anchor story or what are the three key messages for the launch of iTunes 10 or whatever and we might have ideas for new features that would go in that. But because we had that moment in time, we knew well ahead we were planning for and you were working on the messaging and working on the consumer positioning again while in advance of anything actually being live or built. That was what framed what features you wanted to build and what problems you would put on the table to be solved as opposed to as clear cut metric you're trying to drive forward which is how product management has evolved in another capacity. And that's how it works at most companies.…

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