Arbel Zinger (Melio): Real Impact Over Feature Counts in Product Management
Host: Eyal David · Guest: Arbel Zinger · About the host
In this episode
- Impact is the real measure of a product manager — not 'I wrote specs' or 'I shipped features,' but which company metric you advanced and by how much. Every line in the roadmap has to justify itself against the company's goals.
- Don't let the size of your resources limit your product thinking. First find where there's impact, and only then worry about how and by whom — not the other way around.
- You can create enormous impact with no developers at all: writing better FAQs, building training programs for salespeople, and bringing customers closer to PMs. A product isn't only the output of code.
- Leadership in PM isn't giving orders but the ability to make people want to act. Communication, empathy for the user (product sense) and analytics are the core.
- A product manager is usually the 'second job,' not the first — the best way in is from an overlapping role (programmer, analyst, customer support) and sticking to the product from there.
- The industry moved from a growth metric (MAU) to a profitability metric and path to profit — a change that's especially hard on juniors and mid-level, but healthy for the industry.
Listen to this episode
Episode Description
Arbel Zinger, Senior Director of Product at Melio, hosts a conversation about how you create real impact as a product manager — not by the number of developers or the features you ship, but by the metrics you move. Over a career that spanned MyHeritage, Microsoft, Google and Lightricks, Arbel breaks down what separates a good product manager, why the profession has become a 'craft,' and how you can create enormous value even with no development at all. Along the way he also talks about founding 'Tsarot BeHitech' (Troubles in Hi-Tech), the largest hi-tech community in Israel.
Full transcript with speakers and timestamps
Selected quotes
“You're a craftsman, you want to practice your craft, you don't want to be in the business of paying bills.”
“A product manager doesn't need to give orders, they need to make people want to act.”
“The product manager's goal is to advance their metric.”
Questions & answers
What does Melio actually do?
Melio solves a centuries-old problem of payments between small businesses and their suppliers in the United States. It breaks the symmetry of payment methods: the business pays however is convenient for it (for example by credit card) and the supplier receives it however is convenient for them (for example by check or bank transfer), with Melio doing the conversion inside the banking system. The key advantage is a simple, delightful user experience for the small business.
By what criteria does Arbel hire and measure product managers?
By an orderly PM Ladder with several axes: scope (how many developers/features/products you can hold), real past impact (what you did and what you achieved, not just specs), and skills — excellent communication, leadership, product sense and empathy for the user, and analytics. The most critical of all for him: being an impact driver.
How do you find impact that management didn't see, and also move it?
First you derive management's goals into concrete product metrics. When you spot an opportunity with no owner, you don't stop because of a lack of resources — you do 'politics' in the sense of the art of the possible: you prepare a presentation, run a roadshow, get buy-in from Finance, from the CTO and from stakeholders, and surface to everyone how much the opportunity is worth and how much it will cost.
How can a junior break into a product manager role in this hard time?
Enter a company in an overlapping role — programmer, analyst, customer support — and stick to the product: give insights, understand the customers and how the company works. This way you both test whether the profession really interests you (much of the work isn't what people imagine) and shorten the leap inward.
What is 'Tsarot BeHitech'?
The largest community of hi-tech workers in Israel (on the order of 60,000 members), founded by Arbel and Eran Yaakovovich. It started as a humorous page about hi-tech employment terms and rolled into a community of transparency, information-sharing and consultation among workers.
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