Anuj Rathi: preference

Transcript context

…Awesome. I want to go in a completely different direction. It feels like you have a lot of contrarian opinions about how to build product, and how to build teams, and build companies, and things like that, so I just want to start broad. What are some things you have contrarian opinions about, things you believe that a lot of other people maybe don't believe or seek differently? So one, for example, excellence and speed. There's always a question around that. "Hey, would you rather ship faster, or would you rather ship better?" In my opinion, when you have to make a choice, think more and ship better. Most experiments should be thought experiments. They should not even be tried out because they're obviously going to fail which is contrary to, "Let's try it out, and then let's see." I think that wastes a lot of company time. If you had smart people who could do metathinking, a lot of experiments would just not even be like... It's not a rule, but it's a preference. I think speed and excellence are two different axes. Ideally, you should be better at both, but if you had to choose one, choose excellence. There's another contrarian opinion which is... I think most product managers, and again, I'm probably talking a little bit of the kind of people that I work with and have interacted with in product. Most product managers should not even be product managers. They should think a little bit more around whether this is actually the right field for them because I think a lot of people from other areas have entered the field without fully realizing what it takes. So there is definitely a way in which you can coach yourself, and then work your way upwards of that one, but it can make you quite miserable if it's not right for you. Is there something folks should look for there that will tell them you probably shouldn't be a product manager? Either motivation, or skill set, or background, or anything?…

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