Tom Verrilli: belief

Transcript context

…So thinking about these different functions, data science, user research, design, engineering, PM, what I'm hearing so far is we'll need probably fewer PMs, we'll need fewer data scientists. Are there any other roles that you think they're trending down in terms of we'll need... Are there any roles trending up like, wow, we're going to need a lot more of this kind of person? Well, funnily enough, as I say, I haven't spoken to a data scientist in a while. We've certainly still hired plenty because I do think all that tracking and attribution and measurement, really, really powerful. I also think one of the flip sides, if we say we need fewer, it's like fewer of for the same output doesn't necessarily mean fewer of in macro. Because if you are using these systems right, you can just grow more quickly. You can build more things, you can take on more stuff. So I would be surprised actually if we ended up with net fewer. I think it's more like net fewer vis-a-vis customer impact for both. Certainly I think trending up over time within these roles are these kind of, and I don't remember the exact label that people used to use, but this idea of tech leads that are kind of like a hybrid EM where you're running a very small team, running at things. Because same way that we'd say the cost of trying something has come down, the idea that says you can have core focus, which is a thing we're very big on. We've also found incubating a lot of smaller teams to go over and sit in the corner and just try and build this thing. It's not quite prototyping, but it's like go and take a swing at a thing that we've historically thought was too hard, is getting cheaper and increasingly has very high leverage. So the idea of engineering manager light, for want of a better term, is the thing that I'm definitely think that we'll see more and more of. It's not quite the technical member of staff, although that must be lovely, but certainly not the kind of full-blown EM role I think is one that definitely will come about more often. So maybe just to close the loop on this part of the conversation, there's this trend towards everyone's kind of a builder, PMs are shipping a little bit, being a little more engineer. Engineers are taking on more of the PM work. How do you think this just maybe plays out over the next couple of years in terms of what product teams look like broadly? Is it still PM engineers, a designer, data scientist somewhere? How do you envision the canonical product team over the coming years?…

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