Dylan Field: evaluation

Transcript context

…We're still here. We're still here. I want to get your take on product management. You all have amazing product managers at Figma. I've had three of them on the podcast already. I'm curious just what value you find the best product managers bring to Figma? It was really funny last year after that interview, so Yuhki, our chief product officer, had invited me to a dinner for our PM team. And it took a while to get out of Config at the end of the day, and I eventually made the dinner but I was 40 minutes late. And I walk in and Mihika who was on stage yesterday, presenting Figma Slides, Flides, she was standing up and doing a mock Brian Chesky impersonation. And she's standing up in front of the entire product team and she goes, "And then Brian Chesky's like, 'There don't need to be any PMs.' And Dylan's like... Ooh." And I'm like, "Hi, Mihika." And I'd never seen her so red. And then I gave a quick, "Hey PM team, I believe in you. Thank you for your hard work." Seriously, I think that if you zoom out, it's always tricky whenever you're asked to formally define, what is the separation between a product manager, a designer, and an engineer? It's always hard to actually create those clear lines. And I think in many organizations they're blurry. But at the end of the day, a PM and designer, they need to have some technical expertise or at least understand how some systems work to probably create the best things they can possibly make. A designer, engineer, they should probably have some sense of the business objectives. They should have some sense of what users want. An engineer and a product manager, they should have taste and craft and some sense of the option space, and some desire to care about the visual implementation. And I think you can include research in there too, if you want to make it four legs of the stool rather than the trio. And you can talk about all three probably should have exposure to users and be talking in dialogue with users. So I think that if you think about that group holistically, each is important. If you think about a team, there's all these qualities that you have to have to make a great product. And that said, I think for product managers and the product function... I think sometimes when you see people that fall down in that function is because they treat it too much like process. Which is very important too, don't me wrong. Good process can help support good outcomes. But I think that you can't lose sight of the problems that you're solving. You have to go talk to users and you have to actually have a strategy. And if you're really good, you should have a point of view. And some point of views are going to lead to good outcomes and some point of views aren't. And there's some tense sense of taste. And you also have to bring everyone together and make sure that they get to the objective, that it's celebrated, and that at the end of the project or when you complete a milestone, everyone's stoked. Otherwise, it's not going to be a team that gels, you're not going to get to the next outcome. Even if you get to an outcome and it's a milestone, but if everyone's unhappy, you failed. yone's stoked. Otherwise, it's not going to be a team that gels, you're not going to get to the next outcome. Even if you get to an outcome and it's a milestone, but if everyone's unhappy, you failed. And so somehow good product people are able to do all this and they're able to create great frameworks that bring everyone along with them. And so everyone's able to have a shared head space around what it is they're trying to get to.…

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