2 minutes and 9 seconds
It’s 2008 — Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella walk into a bar.
“Whiskey,” Pichai tells the bartender. Nadella nods, “A lot of it.”
“Rough day at work?” asks the bartender, pouring drinks, “What do you do?”
“More like a rough job,” says Nadella.
“We’re product managers," says Pichai.
“What the heck is a Product Manager?” says the bartender.
“We build software products that sell,” says Nadella.
“Build? So you write code”
“No, we work with the coders,” says Pichai.
“And you sell what they build?”
“No, but we work with the sales team,” says Nadella.
The bartender looks at them, confused.
“Look, a product is a solution to a customer problem,” clarifies Pichai.
“Our users might have hundreds of problems— Our job is to figure out the problems worth solving," says Nadella. "Say you run a restaurant. We'd be the ones diving deep into your customers’ behavior, wants, and needs to figure out if people would rather order food online, or just need easier parking to get in and out fast."
"Building the right product isn't just one decision," Pichai chimes in. "It's a thousand tiny ones. What color button works best? Should that feature be free, or do people pay for it? That’s on us to figure out.”
“But how do you know people will use your product?” asks the bartender.
“We don’t know!” Nadella admits. “We need to learn. We talk to customers, watch what they do, analyze the market and data reports... Sometimes you think you've got the next big idea, and then... flop. Nobody uses it."
“We are like a bridge between’ the people directly working together on the product. Like designers, engineers, marketing, and adjacent teams such as business development, customer support, and legal. We coordinate the key decisions by getting input from all stakeholders— making sure everyone understands what is happening, when, and why ” says Pichai.
“Under the CEO's vision - in a way where the team collectively feels ownership over the spec and everyone has had input and been able promote ideas,” adds Nadella.
"You are like mini-CEOs, going around ensuring everyone follows the vision, right?”
“No we are not like CEOs, we do not have any authority. We have to evangelize our ideas to align the team,” says Pichai.
“And then build a roadmap to achieve that vision, often writing detailed documents on the product requirements to capture the team’s consensus. A written plan,” says Nadella.
“If you’ve already made a plan why does the team need you?”
“A plan might fail. Once a product ships, we observe the usage data and help the team figure out what is working and what is not, then we come up with a new plan for improvement and testing,” replies Nadella.
“So you make plans that fail?” says the bartender.
“I think I’m drunk enough,” Pichai stands up, “Makes the two of us,” Nadella follows, and they walk out of the bar.
“Mini-CEO,” Pichai Sighs “I’d like to be a big-CEO one day.”
Nadella taps his shoulder “We’ll get there bro, tell me about this chrome thing!”
