Transcript: Hadas Sheinfeld | The Loneliness of Product Managers and How to Break It

Hadas Sheinfeld: [00:04] She said to me, but tell me, if I let you build the ideas, where would you take this? I was so deep in the details and the mockups that I hadn't even thought about it, and I didn't have a good answer. And that's what I learned. That's the important lesson here, I think, and it's also what I teach at the Guild. When you build a strategy, it's always a game of compromises.

Eyal David: [00:27] But you need to have a vision of where you want to take it. Hi, it's Eyal. This time Hadas Sheinfeld joins us for a practical conversation, full of insights and examples from life and from her career, about the loneliness of product people and how to deal with it as effectively as possible. How to tell the essential from the trivial under pressure, and also why most problems are about people, not features. I hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed chatting. Come on, here's Hadas. Hi Hadas, good morning. Good morning. How are you this morning? Wonderful. With us is Hadas, a consultant and the founder of the Guild for Product Management. We'll get to what the Guild is; maybe give us a quick pitch about your background so we know who we're talking to. Sure, hi everyone, I'm Hadas Sheinfeld,

Who is Hadas Sheinfeld: Clicktale, Google, Datagen and the Guild

Hadas Sheinfeld: [01:18] I've been a product manager for many years. My experience, really quickly: startups most of the time, 0 to 1 was my sweet spot. Those who know Clicktale, which did analytics, I was employee number 11 there. I left when we were over 200, and we made some very interesting moves. After Clicktale I went a bit corporate and was at Google, at Google Israel I worked on a very large infrastructure product. I left Google to go back to a startup: I was at Datagen, which was at the cutting edge of technology, and we did machine learning, computer vision. And for the last two years I've been an independent consultant and founded the Guild. That's me. How did I do, 30 seconds, 60 seconds? Very good. You're also connected to Product X, right? Maybe tell us about that in a word too. Right, great point. Ten years ago, when I was at Clicktale, they made me speak at the conference because we really needed people, and the VP Sales told me, you committed, you committed. I was nine months pregnant. Since then I've been connected to Product X and volunteer there on the content side, and since last year I also run the conference content together with Gil, the entrepreneur Gil Hoffer, Graph from UI, and we're responsible for all the content: screening the proposals, selecting the proposals, the scheduling with the mentoring. The speakers who work with us really work hard before the conference

Eyal David: [02:34] because content is the thing. So I invest my time there this year too, and it's a lot of fun. I know that from home too, both working hard and working on content. Let me ask a question. Speaking of content, we came up with this episode around a WhatsApp message you sent to your group about screw-ups and how nobody talks about them. Right. That's basically where the episode was born, and we'll get to it, we'll get to it, and we'll also try to take it somewhere practical, not just raising the problem but diving deeper. Let's dive into the heart of the episode now. We came here to really talk about screw-ups, to really talk about how to deal with them. Maybe let's start for a second with you at the Guild: tell us what the Guild is, and then we'll try to run a session, at least I'll try to run a session somewhat similar to what you do. But tell us what the Guild is and what a session looks like for you. Great. So the Guild is a format I developed for learning product management.

What the Guild for Product Managers is and what a session looks like

Hadas Sheinfeld: [03:32] Out of a real, real understanding of the pains and what people need. It started from my own pains, and I saw it happens everywhere. How, how can you learn to be a product manager? There are already all kinds of courses today, and that's great, and you can learn a lot in theory, and there's plenty online and books and it's all great, but as we all know, life is really, really complicated, much, much more complicated than what a course will teach you. The whole idea of the Guild is that you sit in a group of people at roughly the same level of experience, but they're product managers at different places. And you learn together. So it starts from my experience: I share a bit of my experience and some frameworks and some best practices and what works and what doesn't, and then we open it up: how do you do it at your place, and at yours, and what works for you and what doesn't. And it's a forum where we swear to confidentiality at the first meeting, really, and I also give tactics, because, you know, Israel is small and right away they'll say, oh, you come from... you know that guy, he heard what, so he told you what's going on there and so on. So I really give tactics on how to answer that in a way that doesn't reveal anything. And the whole idea is to open a group that talks about real life and gives the practices that work, that work in real life. How many people are in a room like that, what does it look like? Ten, twelve max. And how long does a session last? So sessions are usually online, 90 minutes, and besides that we have two half-day workshops where we really sit together in a room.

Eyal David: [04:53] That's not easy, it's not easy to reach that level of openness online. Come on, so I'm really taking it there, and I hope you won't give me one of those tactical answers, but what surprised you most to hear in a session like that? What I'm trying to understand here is whether everyone experiences the same problems and it basically repeats itself. Okay. Or alternatively, whether you do find things that really surprise you, wow, about how companies operate. So I'm trying to fish from both directions. Very interesting. There aren't many surprises. I've really been in the field 20 years and I've eaten so much gravel and seen so much that I don't have many surprises.

We're all in the same boat: micromanagement vs. absent managers

Hadas Sheinfeld: [05:26] The big surprise for people sitting in the room is how much we're all in the same boat, really, really. Always, when there are people from startups at really early stages, always, always, in a startup there are rules: there's always the one who thinks he knows everything. And sometimes he's super nice and floods everyone with honey, but then you sink in the honey and can't move forward, and sometimes he's a complete jerk and it's really, really hard to deal with him, and it's classic, simply a classic. I'll tell you what surprised me. I thought the biggest problem with managers was micromanagement, that this is what people suffer from most, and Guild after Guild, when I ask people, we have one meeting that's really about stakeholders and such: what do you suffer from more, micromanagement or managers who aren't there, who are hard to get feedback from, hard to get backing from, hard to get anything from.

Eyal David: [06:21] The second one, by far. Yes, which is pretty obvious, right. It wasn't obvious to me at all. It was totally obvious to me. To everyone, I think. Let me ask you a question. What I'm hearing even more inside this whole thing is that it's basically a kind of support group, a kind of support group. And you mainly talk about relationships, those are just examples, but you also really talk about practice of, I'll give an example, metrics.

Metrics, RICE and dashboards that don't tell the story

Hadas Sheinfeld: [06:42] Metrics are the most painful and hardest thing. There are two kinds of problems: either we don't have enough data or we have too much data, right? Those are two problems. But what do you do, what do you do when there's tons of data and no order and it's all a mess, and how do you define it? Beyond that, RICE, because we all know RICE: does it work or not? It really depends, it really depends how many... and what the company is, and by what, before what you prioritize, not prioritize, but basically assign priority, right? But what you're taking me to, those two examples too, is communication. No doubt communication is half the story, but also really the practice: does RICE work or not, how do we make it work for us. What can you expect, like a rasterizer? Exactly. You can't, you can't, exactly. Exactly. Someone opens a dashboard that looks amazing, amazing, everything works there. But what story does it tell? And what is it connected to? No, really, it looks like everything at your place works in sprints and everything is ticking and it's all awesome. And then he opens it, he explains how it works, and then after it's over and we're all sitting there eaten up with envy, he says, it's all a lie. That's what I'm saying, what story does it tell? It doesn't tell the story at all. You don't get it. It's a team that doesn't function and never functioned. This team, what's marked here in green, is the team where they're kind of the only ones talking. The whole thing. And we all sat there and said, that's the dashboard I want.

Eyal David: [08:05] And he says, aha. You know, we have an episode here, we did it a long time ago, on bullshit in product management. Bullshit I tell myself, and bullshit in general, and how to spot bullshit, it's exactly this. There's a lot of bullshit in this field, because there's a lot of fluff. So if you're very practical, then these things too,

Calling bullshit on vanity metrics, and a 10x target

Hadas Sheinfeld: [08:24] you basically catch them, if I understand correctly, and then you cut to the chase. Look, I'll give an example. We have a strategy workshop, and we always analyze a product, and when I analyze the product, I bring a product we all know: sometimes we analyze Spotify, sometimes LinkedIn, and each time I bring a different product. I bring the metrics the company reports about itself. There's a list of metrics, and then we're calling bullshit on the ones that are bullshit. For example, LinkedIn: they represent the population, they have x percent of the world's population registered there. How many of them are active? So what? Like, what did that give me? What is it, what, what? All kinds of metrics like that which are completely vanity metrics, which sometimes sound really impressive, wow, like that. But that's not it, that's not it. So really, this calling bullshit, which is also critical thinking: looking at things critically, reading the strategy, thinking about the strategy, which of these is fluff and which is show me the money, where we'll actually do things. That's a significant part of the work at the Guild too. Also vision versus reality, yes? We had, we started from what you said, tell us surprising things. Someone sat in the Guild and said, listen, we closed a plan, I worked with sales, I worked with this, we closed it, closed it, we started from the business metrics, did everything according to that, closed it, we're all happy, we know which customers, we know everything. Management came back and said, listen, the targets are nice, we need ten times that. Ten times. That's what's needed, and that's what will be, and good luck to you. And the guy asks, should I resign? Seriously, what should I do? He says, I know they're now going to the board and saying, this is what we'll hit next year, and we all know we won't hit it. What do you do? What do you do? What was he? He couldn't sleep at night. What do you answer to something like that? Because you don't need thoughts anymore, what do you answer? That was, first of all, speaking of surprises, that surprised me. It surprised me, and it gave me a kind of knot in my stomach. I've run into all kinds of things, you know, we too, always. I heard someone say, you always present the board the most optimistic version there is. True, but a version of the truth, not the fantasy version. There the group had a lot of power, a lot. They really analyzed it with him, with that guy: who said what, what was said, what the context is, what it means, and they gave him tools for the conversation, to go to a conversation with the chief product officer and what to say and what to ask. So he went to a conversation with the CPO,

Eyal David: [11:02] and can you tell us what came out of the conversation? Yes. With what message? He went with a message of lowering expectations, I take it? Or grounding it?

Setting up for success: the conversation with the CPO

Hadas Sheinfeld: [11:10] At Google there's an expression, setting up for success. Are you, are we set up for success? Have we given ourselves all the tools? Are we heading in the right direction? And he went with that message of, I'm not, really, being super honest. I'm not, I can't sleep at night, I can't stand behind this thing, I think it's a mistake. And there was also talk about how to plan it, and whether to talk to the salespeople first, or to go only to... really, like, how to get this thing out. This is also, here's a classic example, it really depends on who the people you work with are. There are places where the dynamic with sales is so aggressive and unpleasant that you can't go consult them, and there are places where they're real partners and you can build it together. It's also very personal: how long you've been there, what kind of relationship you have with the CPO, how it's possible, lots and lots of different things that need to go into this. And really, the group prepared him for this discussion, and he came back a week later relieved, you could see the relief on his face, because the CPO told him, don't worry, don't worry, we, it's a management tactic, the CEO likes to push people forward, it's not what the board will see, it's part of the whole thing, it'll be fine, let's build it together, let's see where it's possible, let's see where it's not, really, like, it was...

Eyal David: [12:23] Imagine if he'd kept it to himself, carried on with his life alone. Wow. So I really believe in...

Hadas Sheinfeld: [12:32] in sharing. Really, more than sharing, yes, but it's also not raising a red flag, it's simply going, not leaving the burning problem as a hot potato for some later time.

Eyal David: [12:40] So what I feel here, and we also talked about it before, so it's easy for me to feel it, is basically the loneliness of product managers. Let's talk about that for a moment.

The loneliness of product managers

Hadas Sheinfeld: [12:50] That's my thing. My thing is the loneliness of the product manager, man or woman, also because I was alone for a long, long time. At Clicktale I was alone for years before we raised money; we started very, very, like, the company was self-funded. And I was alone, and even more than being alone, at some point I also became VP Product and sat on the management team, and I discovered I was the only woman besides the VP HR, and the only one for whom it was the first time in that role, apart from the two founders, who really come with a different hat. And I was simply alone, and who do you really consult with? And there are lots and lots of things like we talked about, some about relationships and some substantive, about what you commit to and how you build the roadmap and so on, and how you build that whole process. And we were, I was a total kid, and no, really, I needed a lot of advice, and I was very, very alone. Now, by the way, in big organizations too: when I got to Google, and I was already in a relatively senior role, I was still alone, because everyone is busy with their own thing and needs to deliver their own thing. And really, I think one of the things about product management, and people who move into product management are always surprised by it, is the amount of load. It's really a mental load that doesn't exist in other roles: lots and lots and lots of things all the time at different levels, different resolutions. Yes, there's what needs to be delivered tomorrow and what next week and three months and another year, and the circles are running all the time. And you're with your world, and at Google too we were alone, I was alone and was constantly looking for people. Then I got to Datagen, and there too I was alone, because the innovation there was so new to me. Machine learning, selling to machine learning engineers. I knew how to sell to marketers and I knew how to sell to DevOps and I knew how to sell to them, but this was a new world. We're alone all the time, both at the level of having to solve problems and at the organizational level, yes. And this story of finding the group and who to consult with

Eyal David: [14:43] is the thing that saved me all those years, really, that's what saved me. So you already jumped to the end, which is great. I'll say, from the moment I remember most: I remember from the start of my career I realized my whole day was going to be meetings, and then I'd find myself working in the evening, and that's when I felt loneliest, because really, it's from there that I remember starting to talk to other product managers, or other people who stayed in the office. Great. It's also a matter of personality, I think, right? Like, if you're not someone who opens up, then it will also hold you back in your career, I think, because you'll keep it in, like that example of the product person you mentioned. So basically, let's open up for a second what you're describing, which is basically creating small communities around you, supportive communities, right? So maybe expand on that a bit.

Hadas Sheinfeld: [15:35] Finding the people you can really consult with, really open things up with, and many times it's more comfortable with people who aren't in your organization, they're really outside but they understand the world.

Eyal David: [15:47] So maybe being at eye level is also something that needs to be there? Do you need to find people who are roughly at your stage in their career, or who have already been there?

Mentors, peer groups and support groups

Hadas Sheinfeld: [15:57] Good question, I'm not sure. There's a lot of talk about mentors, right, mentors, and I'm in favor of getting advice from anyone you can, but you need to remember that the mentor gives their own perspective. A single angle, theirs. At Clicktale, when I suddenly realized I was very alone, I went to the CEO and he told me, find a mentor. And it also took time until you find the relevant experience, someone you have chemistry with, it's not simple. In the end I found an amazing mentor; he came every two weeks, sat with me for two hours, and helped me with lots and lots and lots of problems I had. And still, it was his perspective, and at some point you understand how he thinks and what his abilities are and where he brings things from, and it's not the same as... I think it was also when I was at Clicktale, when I was at that Product X conference, and during the break I met two other product managers; one of them spoke on stage about, I think it was about time management. We met by chance at the break, you know, by the coffee, water, I don't know what it was, and we said, kind of in passing, we have to make ourselves a group of this and that. And then we picked up the gauntlet: three product managers, roughly the same age, mothers, we worked in very different organizations. But still, we met the first time, there was a lot, a lot of chemistry, and since then it's been ten years of meeting once a month like clockwork. And in the meantime, places changed, roles, kids, pregnancies, everything, and they were a crazy support group for me on every decision, every decision. And even when they weren't there I'd think, what would she say and what would she say, and it came back so, so much. That was, I think, my first support group. And then you basically went and created it. And then I realized it works, and I really used it everywhere. So at Clicktale I really did have a mentor, and I was... but at Clicktale, because I was alone as a manager and a woman, I said, okay, I need to find women managers. And I set up a forum of women managers from lots of... which we still have to this day. Yes, that happened, yes, tell us. No, it's a small group we set up together. I realized I was a manager and a woman and alone and it really bothered me, and at some conference I met someone and we talked about it too, and then we said, come on, let's set up a group, and we looked for women managers sitting on the management teams of startups, of companies and so on, and that's how a wonderful group came about, which also met every... then there was COVID, so it was on Zoom, and also those delicate consultations: we're managers and it's COVID, and there's the one who refuses to get vaccinated and the one who refuses to come to the office, all kinds of what do you do, what do you do. There's a lot here: there's the legal aspect, but there's the aspect of values, and there's the aspect of who you want to be, and lots and lots of things like that we talked about there; the discussions really were different. Then I got to Google and looked there too, and exactly then they were setting one up: there were two senior women at Google Europe and I was the third, and we set up a kind of Women PM group in Europe, and we actually had conferences and such. And back then the Lean In circles of Sheryl Sandberg were fashionable, so we set up a circle like that. There were five of us, four of whom are no longer at Google, and the group still meets; we have once a month in the calendar, each of us somewhere else. Really, we're two Israelis,

Eyal David: [19:03] one from Switzerland, one English and one Dutch. Amazing, amazing, amazing to me. That's really a power forum. So we've already started, basically, not started, but the episode is already giving you value, and it's something both women and men can absolutely do. I think about being at eye level, what I meant is that it has to be, it has to be a give-and-take, at least from my experience. Right. So that you don't feel it's one-directional, and then it will also be much more supportive. By the way, I just read some book by Arnold Schwarzenegger, never mind, he describes exactly that every path in his career, that's what he did: he got somewhere, he built around him, gathered people who were somehow like-minded like him, and then it's a win-win for everyone and you push forward. He described it around his training at the gym, then in movies, then totally. It's really amazing. So that's a takeaway for life, in my opinion. Totally. One moment before we continue: click the link to the Product Builder WhatsApp group in the episode description and join. You can continue the discussion, ask questions and be the first to get updates on new Tachles episodes. We're waiting for you there. And now back to the episode. But let's change the record for a second, and now let's really start talking about, not screw-ups, but let's do a session where you share, and I can share too, around screw-ups we've had, and maybe try to analyze them together. I want to say that this is also the power of groups like this: that intimacy is created and it's okay to talk about things that don't work, because if

Why we need to talk about failures

Hadas Sheinfeld: [20:26] well done. We all know LinkedIn is a network of how wonderful I am, how amazing I am, what things, what successes and so on. By the way, that's feedback we also get about the Product X conference: it's all successes with you, all successes, everyone is amazing, everything they try works, and we all know life isn't like that. Really, talk, talk about real life. And that's so, so true, so true: what's hard, what's hard. First of all, in failures you're always alone, right? Who said it, the sages said, success has many fathers, failure is an orphan. And sharing things, by the way, is a good test for a group: a group where you feel comfortable

Eyal David: [21:07] talking about things that don't work too. About failures too, about where I tried and didn't succeed, without "and then I built a startup out of it and now I'm a millionaire," which is what's called a humble brag. Do you know that expression? Sure. I'll also say it's one of the things I love most. If I'm reading, really diving into content on LinkedIn, those are the things that interest me most.

The Google screw-up: a roadmap without a vision

Hadas Sheinfeld: [21:25] And also if there's some moral to it that I can take afterwards, think about and adopt, I really like posts of exactly that kind. That's life. Speaking of VCs, it's no accident: they talk about the successes all the time, but how many succeeded and how many failed? That's your life; your life is one of the x that failed. Let's talk about failures. You can learn lots and lots and lots from failures. Really, the places where I fell and didn't succeed, first of all it hurts, but it's growing pains, there's nothing you can do. I'll give an example. Wow, lots and lots of things that didn't work and places I didn't succeed, but I'll give an example that's really very, very painful and that I remember as something painful. I got to Google, I wasn't a kid anymore, I was a manager, and I was given a system to build. It was very successful, a small system but very successful, and then they said, come on, now you'll get a bigger system, sure. Build a roadmap, build a roadmap for where this thing is going. Who am I to build a roadmap, what is it, right? There's legacy here and you need to understand what to do with it, and there's the new part we want, and there are 180 engineers here. In short, I didn't succeed. I didn't manage to build it; it was too complicated. There were lots and lots of conflicts at the really technical level: whether to rewrite the legacy system or not, whether to build on top of it or not, whether to... it was really, really, really hard. Just give us the context: this is a meeting where you basically came to present a final result, right? Exactly, that was kind of its title. Exactly, and then, like in big organizations, two VPs come from the United States and we have a meeting where we're presenting the plan today. I remember trying to sit with my direct managers to talk to them about it, and they said, let's talk in the meeting, we'll talk in the meeting. And we got to that meeting and I'm presenting something that, A, I don't stand behind, B, there's no agreement in the room, I know there's no agreement in the room. And I present it and pray for the best, like, it's not it and it's not good, it's not good. First thing, our VP asks the room something like, and is there agreement and so on, and then people start to say, no way. It won't work, the technical guy says, it's not this, the guy... nobody is happy. Right, they taught us in product, interestingly, that if nobody is happy it'll be fine, it's a sign you've got there. No, no, no, no, no. World war. Technologists not happy, PMs not happy, the customer-facing side wasn't happy. A bad meeting in a big room with lots of people, and the two, the satellites as we said, the two VPs are in the room, they flew to Israel. Wow, not good. Not good. And my boss looks at me and I look at him, and the engineering director looks at me and I look at him, and it's not good. And it also didn't get resolved. No, no progress in the meeting, it's stuck, and it ends with them saying, okay, we'll need to think about it, we'll break the thing down and think about it. Such a catastrophe, really, it was one of the hardest meetings. What do I want to say? A, we all have failures. B, what I mainly learned from it is how to handle it when I'm the manager, because from my point of view, in that situation I did the best I could, I really did the best I could, and all the advice holds: I should have raised a flag, I raised it, I was, all of it. There were two things here I learned from. One, who called me afterwards that same day? Not my manager, not his technical counterpart: the VP. She sent me an email in the evening: what's up, we haven't scheduled a one on one, this time let's meet tomorrow morning. Boom. And I really learned from that pain, it was, it was an important lesson. I was already a PM, I had already led things, but I'd entered this Google system and didn't know how to operate in it, didn't know how to resolve a very, very, very, very complex situation. I'll add another pain: when I sat with the VP the next day, she told me, I understand, it was a bad meeting, it's not, we'll give support, we're here, we're there. Cool, she was a ten. And then, really two minutes before the end, she said to me, but tell me, if I let you build the instructions, where would you take this? I was so deep in the details and the mockups that I hadn't even thought about it, and I didn't have a good answer. And that's what I learned, that's the important lesson here, I think, and it's also what I teach at the Guild: when you build a strategy, it's always a game of compromises, but you need to have a vision of where you want to take it. And I didn't have one at all; I was busy all the time with those compromises, and that's what it looked like. Something really came out of it.

Eyal David: [26:06] What happened? I know this story from home, as I said; I've experienced it too, I think many experience something like it. I was thinking while you spoke, and we really talked about it in our prep call, like, what could have been done, what do I take from it here. One, in that moment you feel like the sky is falling, that it's total. But like, here you are, a VP at Google; how much money did they invest in bringing you in, how much would it cost them if you left. No, I wasn't a VP, God forbid, I was a senior PM. Right, sorry. But the very fact that they brought you in at all, they won't fire you after one meeting, for the better. Yes, right, let's take it with a grain of salt. Totally. Now the question is, okay, how, how do you get up from that? The fact that she reached out to you, wow, amazing. And also that she asked a really wonderful question, and that she also asked you at the end what your point of view was, and really gave you a lesson for life; she probably went through a place like that too. You feel like a technician, right? That's the feeling, and then go defend it in the meeting too. So yes, I, I've been there, I take similar things from it. I assume that today you also take things very differently. So you said we won't go into how I'd solve it here; there's a lot here, and probably if there had been some group, some feedback on this thing, it would probably have been easier to get the other side of things. Maybe we should have set up a group together. I'd have been like, wait, listen, this really

Hadas Sheinfeld: [27:24] And really, the challenges inside a big corporate are different, they're different. What I discovered at the Guild, by the way: in the first year I split them, there were groups, groups for startups and groups for corporate, and it worked nicely. At some point I had to merge them, I don't remember why, and then I discovered it's actually really interesting to people: whoever works at a startup is very interested in how things work in corporate and vice versa, and also techniques you can... Yes, that was my tool when I got to Google, every time

Eyal David: [27:54] I'd tell them, if we were at a startup we'd do it this way and that, and then they'd say, come on, let's try that. That also says something about Google's approach. I sometimes try to bring a faster approach into big organizations; it's very hard, you know. Like, it's nice, it's really nice, this connection, in the sense of getting to know and knowing, but practically I really like that separation, because these really are completely different pains. So it makes a lot of sense to me. And since we touched on Clicktale, maybe tell us a bit about what it was like there. Do you also have a screw-up there? We held a failures day. Look, when you're on the management team of a startup,

Clicktale: boundaries on the management team, startup vs. corporate

Hadas Sheinfeld: [28:33] it's a different world. Let me debunk a lie that's said a lot in our industry: "we're like a startup inside a corporate." No, bro, you're not a startup inside a corporate, and the essential difference is that if it doesn't succeed, your job won't end, and that's very, very essential. So at Clicktale, I think one of my challenges as a first-time VP Product was understanding the boundaries of my territory. What's mine and what's management's, which is also a very, very interesting discussion: what's the difference between business strategy and product strategy. And in startups it's very, very close, very, very close. So one day we sat planning a work plan, and the chief revenue officer, who was relatively new, really pounced on me, saying he couldn't stand behind the plan I'd proposed because I hadn't shared enough details, because he didn't know what the prices were, all kinds of things like that. Now, he was new in the organization but with a lot of experience. I'd been in the organization a long time, but it was my first time in product. Listen, it was unpleasant, it was an unpleasant situation. I was very proud of how I handled it, because there, unlike the Google story, I had a real backbone: I knew exactly where I wanted to take things, it was ready, it was well cooked. I realized during the situation that the attack on me was not, it was not appropriate, and the one who wasn't being professional here wasn't me. And still,

Eyal David: [30:07] unpleasant, unpleasant, an unpleasant situation, and it's exactly the kind of thing of, like, what do you do, what do you do. And I also wasn't in the room, but it's really interesting. Like, fine, so he's probably driven by his fears, by his lack of knowledge around the thing, and he doesn't want to promise anything. But what did the forum in the room look like? And where were the others, why didn't anyone get up and tell him, bro, calm down, calm down. She knows what she's doing, we're heading in the right direction, why are you pouncing, why are you shouting. Because it's also a very, I don't know who was in the room, a very tricky situation too, because like you say, he's new. It's management, we also can't. I don't know him; I'm saying, also not to take the wind out of the sails, or to take out the, like, there's

Stopping inappropriate behavior in real time

Hadas Sheinfeld: [30:50] a difficult managerial situation here too. So listen, yes, these are the places where I, as a manager, think there's room to clarify what our company's values are. And I'll give an example of when it happened to me at Google: we sat in some very large meeting with a lot of people, and one of the engineers burst out at me. What's all this nonsense? It happens, listen, people are people, sometimes they're very passionate about the thing, and then he said something like, they're also types, yes. He said something, I remember he said something like, "excuse me very much, but," I could have said what, he was really shouting. Now, I was already in a different place: I was a senior person and I was at Google, and I was much more aware also of the fact that I was a relatively lone woman in the room. And again nobody said anything, even though his manager was there, and I stopped the meeting. I said, excuse me, excuse me, and they moved on, like they kept talking, and I said, excuse me, excuse me, we're not continuing, because this tone is not acceptable. You can't ever shout at me. And then he said, but I said "excuse me very much." Because that's how he started the thing. And there was a moment of embarrassment and it was unpleasant, and then he said, okay, I understand, and we moved on. Two things from this, okay? And it's a super important tip for managers. For parents too, yes. Super, super important, and for women managers. When there's inappropriate behavior, telling him about it afterwards on the side, which is what his manager planned to do and told me, that's doing nothing. You did nothing. Everyone in the room understood that you can talk like that, that it's fine. It has to be stopped that same second. The second it happens, in the forum where it happens. I don't need to sit there offended with tears in my eyes while someone shouts at me, and tears come up right away. That's not it. He needs to feel he was out of line, and it needs to be stopped immediately. I didn't make too much drama. There wasn't, it's not, really, I think I acted with the utmost professionalism, and I said you can't just move on from this, you don't talk like that, period, done. He said fine, and that was the end of it. But months later, months later, someone told me that someone told her she'd been sitting in the room and "you should have seen how Hadas handled that thing." Amazing. That with us it won't happen again, on our floor at Google, with us it won't happen again. And I'll say one more amazing thing: how was your relationship with him, I'm just curious. My relationship with him was excellent. Excellent, because this thing works great, yes. Because he knows it's something in his personality, his, it's, after all there was nothing, really, there's nothing, there's usually, except in super rare cases at work, no situation that justifies it. No, I'm really glad you said that, yes? It's something that men, women, like, I know it too,

Eyal David: [33:35] so great that you did that. And is this something that comes up a lot for you at the Guild? This topic, because I don't know people who shout, what is that? No, it doesn't come up much at all.

Hadas Sheinfeld: [33:43] At all, at all, at all. It sometimes comes up subtly. I had a group of only women, and there were all kinds of subtle things like that, sort of undertones of inappropriateness. So you also need to know what to do it about, I think. Totally. Wait, by the way, I think there's a significant improvement in the atmosphere and in how people are treated. I really feel it, both as women come in with more confidence, and as we all understand that we're all colleagues, like in this. The last two years in general too, who has... Exactly. The world, really, I feel the world is changing in these contexts, and it's a lot, I see much, much less of it, and great, that's how it should be. Yes, so really, I'll emphasize this: it's very, it's a tool you can use, but it really depends on the situation. The tool of stopping everything. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Because again, everyone's time is precious too, right. No, no, it's for edge cases, really, it's for an edge case where you need to send the message that this isn't acceptable, that it won't happen again. It's really, really for an edge case; it happened to me once. And the fact that I remember it, you know.

Eyal David: [34:48] Lovely. Okay, so we've gone through a few types of companies here. Do you also want to say something about Datagen? You worked there too and we didn't mention it; maybe there was a screw-up there too?

Hadas Sheinfeld: [34:57] Oh! Endless, really endless, that's our life, really, that's our life. I think that especially in the product worlds and in the tech worlds in general, you have to take into account that there's no formula, there's no one way. It's really funny: I ran a strategy workshop, and someone who had been VP R&D at a company I worked at came, because he wants to start a startup and he wants to do a strategy workshop. And after the first part he said to me, so tell me, what you're basically saying is that there's no formula. Like, it's not, there's no particular thing you need. And then, you know, dude, like, are you a kid? Obviously there isn't. If there were a formula and we managed to work by it, then all of us, then there'd be no need for VCs. So that's the point. From mistake to mistake, really, from mistake to mistake, from one time like this to another time like that, that's how you learn, that's how you do it. What mistakes did we make? Right, you fall, you get up. Exactly, that's the world, that's the world. If you don't do, you don't make mistakes. Really, I very, very much believe in that.

Eyal David: [35:56] It's also worth analyzing your mistakes afterwards. I really try once a week, with all the load. That's not news to anyone.

Hadas Sheinfeld: [36:04] So what do you say, Datagen? Do you have some... or was everything great and... No, it was hard from every direction, really. I'll give an example of where I realized I didn't know and needed help. Really, in that story of a product that's supposedly based on... and you sell it to machine learning engineers. Right, you mentioned it earlier. First thing, I went to Facebook and said, who else sells products to machine learning engineers? Boom, a group. Meeting every... I learned a lot from it. A lot, a lot, a lot. Lovely, that brings us back again to the same rule of thumb. Exactly, these groups, and connections came out of them, and there are people I'm still in touch with to this day. And it's really funny, because someone told me, you don't remember me, I was in the group, I didn't talk much.

Eyal David: [36:40] So I say, wow, but still, you know, sometimes people just sit there. There's also a delicacy in creating a group like that. Do you need everyone to contribute, is it a somewhat wider group, where then really there are also people who don't talk? Let's put this into practice for a second. Yes. So okay, say there's the situation of, hey, we're having coffee, and it's really easy to connect, and we exchange phone numbers, and somehow that probably made a group out of it. Right. I'm curious how you went from there to a group. Versus, hey, a call-out on Facebook, right. Who's in, and here I'm setting up the group. Right. I'll say,

How to start a peer group: three tips

Hadas Sheinfeld: [37:13] I'll give two tips. A, start. Really start. Do a call-out on Facebook, set a date, do a Zoom, come on. Start making things happen. At first there will be three people, or thirty, and gradually only those who really want to be there will stay, and so on, but you mustn't give up. You mustn't, because it's really hard. If nobody shows up the first time, what do you do? Or if thirty people show up the first time, then what do you do? So first of all, start. Two, personal example. Really, personal example. Start by telling a screw-up of mine, awesome. That immediately puts on the table the spirit of the things you want to happen. Set goals, set what I want to do here, do introductions that go a bit beyond "I'm a product manager at such-and-such company." A bit, something beyond that. So first of all, start. Two, really put on the table what we want and be as open as you can. As, as, as open as you can; really sharing is the recipe for creating sharing, so that others share. And one last thing, which is the hardest to implement: watch out for the one type who ruins it for everyone. Because in these groups sometimes someone comes in who's busy showing off all the time, and he takes all the oxygen in the room and you can't continue like that. So there too, do an intervention: listen, the oxygen. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, but find a way. Find a way to give other people room. That's actually really in a one on one. These are voluntary groups, people really come to get value, one person can ruin it for everyone, really. At the Guild I screen, I talk to everyone beforehand, I make sure I don't have people like that, but in a group you open it can happen, and then it's only in a one on one. Say, listen, you kind of need to let other people talk, I'd like a bit more. Maybe you noticed that this time you talked more and people didn't have much room. You have to take into account, by the way, that someone who's a jerk, a jerk won't come again afterwards. However gently you say it, his ego is very, very delicate and he can't take it. But most people will say, wow, I didn't notice at all, you're right.

Eyal David: [39:14] Cool, cool, cool. I think that if it's the first time and you're not putting out a call-out, then really doing those matching conversations, like you said you do at the Guild, is probably the best thing. And it's a very big investment. But you're building something here that you probably want to succeed very, very much, or, say, in a case like Datagen, you needed people who really know what they're talking about and whom you can communicate with, so it's probably worth investing in. And also the part about setting the framework, I really liked it, because really everyone's time is precious and it's a shame if something stalls. Okay, that was lovely. I'm stopping for a second, because you surely have lots of screw-ups, but we'll move on and talk about AI for a moment. So, the AI corner: do you have some tip or something you can contribute around it, something you found, loved, want to share?

The AI corner: get your hands dirty

Hadas Sheinfeld: [39:59] Yes, no "found, loved." I think all the "found, loved" things have no place nowadays, because every day there's something new, every day, every day, every day there's something new, and the model and this and here and there. I want to give a very important tip, and in my view the hardest one, which is that you have to get your hands dirty. You have to get your hands dirty. Block time in your calendar. I thought about doing a club like that: let's meet every Sunday at 12:30 noon and we'll all invest an hour in it. You have to get your hands dirty. I heard an idea, who was it from? The CEO of Lovable, I think, or of Bolt? He said, listen, whoever today sits for a whole week from morning to evening with this tool is already in the top 1% of users. Nobody invests that much time. Think about the distribution of users. That's it. The tools will keep being new tools, the models will get better and better. Until we get our hands dirty, we won't know how to work with it. From a product management perspective, really: what these tools are good at, what they're less good at, where I need them or don't need them, and where they can help me. Get your hands dirty, try everything. Me, everything I run, every query I run, I run it in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, all three, all the time, all the time, all the time I look at all three. It gives me lots of tools, and I also learn

Eyal David: [41:13] how these things are progressing and what's happening with them. Get your hands dirty, block time in my calendar. So I'll add something to that, okay? Yes. What you said, yes? So you also talked about a club, kind of jokingly, but here too, set up another group of a few people with a mindset similar to yours, and also give it structure. Okay, every day. You didn't just say that, right? That's how I work, that's my way. I really love that elite-unit thinking, yes, it also really suits us. So I liked that. And also the aspect of, I don't know how much time you have, but being able to compare between all of them is also amazing, that broad view, and it also really keeps you on top. If you shared about it, maybe you do share

Hadas Sheinfeld: [41:50] and I didn't see it, but around the differences, yes, or the learning curve you went through, that's really interesting, I'd be happy to hear. Such fun: we did a meetup like that for Guild alumni, we took Bolt, Lovable, Base44 and so on, and did a comparison, both at the level of their performance and in product thinking: who they're meant for, what they're trying to do. What is it, share a bit, can you? Listen, that was already two months ago, but it was very interesting that we already saw then, maybe it was already three months ago, that Base44 is meant to take apps to production. That's where it started, that's its goal, it talks about it from the very first moment, and that's a differentiator. On the other hand, Lovable, I think, Lovable gives you the code and tells you, start here, move it to your GitHub and run. So it's a tool that's maybe ready for corporate life, like, I as a PM prepare things and then I'll hand it to the developers so they can play with it and so on. A different perspective is the perspective that they're more counting on being acquired by one of the giants as... that's all fine, it's a different perspective. And the question is whether, at the strategic product level, each of them is going in its own direction and that will be the differentiation, or whether in the end it's all a matter of price considerations and such, and in the end they'll all converge and all offer the same thing. Very interesting. Very interesting, very interesting. I think the world is simple. So like, in the end it... in the end things will fall into place, so I don't want to just make predictions.

Eyal David: [43:22] Amazing. Okay, now toward the end, now really the end: giving advice. So we said you'd give one more piece of advice for some segment, and you chose a segment. Eyal challenged me and I said: pick some segment and give advice, golden advice.

Advice for middle managers: invest in your people

Hadas Sheinfeld: [43:34] And I want to say that the truly neglected segment, right, there's plenty on how to get into product, how to succeed in your first role, all kinds of things like that. I want to give advice to managers, men and women, team leads, group leads, all of that, who really, really aren't the CPO, aren't the VP Product, the ones in the middle, what's called mid management. First of all, my heart is with you, you're in the hardest role. Know it, don't be sad, it's hard, really, it's a hard situation. You're in the busiest and hardest role with the most demands on you, and people both from below and from above, it's all clear. My advice, and maybe it's a bit counterintuitive but stay with me, is to invest in your people. Invest in your people, really, really; it goes in every direction. One, you never cancel a one on one, ever, under any circumstances. I heard that Jensen Huang doesn't do one on ones. Fine, you're not Jensen Huang, okay? And your employees aren't VPs at NVIDIA. You don't cancel a one on one, there's no such thing. And a one on one starts with looking the person in the eye and asking: how are you? What's up? Especially these days in Israel, really, it's like a basic that used to be basic. You won't believe how many managers don't do it. You really won't believe it. That's the first thing. The second thing: invest in their education. A group: when I was at Clicktale we had our weekly, and we had another meeting on Wednesdays that we called "learning something new." And each time someone had to present something; it could be related to work and it could be unrelated to work. I don't care, but learning something new. Now, we're talking about ten years ago already. Today it's easier to learn something new, and still we don't have time, we don't have time. I say, sorry for repeating myself, but this really is one of the most, most loaded professions. And there's no time, and if you don't invest, either you teach them, or send them to courses, send them to learn, open them up, give them air, professional air, big air. Otherwise we become a feature factory, busy all the time with delivery, with Kanban points, with agile, with whatnot. You can't, you can't be good product managers like that. Invest in people at every level, from asking how you are, to putting you in the right course,

Eyal David: [45:45] that's the thing. I'll add something to that too, two points, okay? One, make your own life easier: it's easier to manage people who want to be there and who won't leave you tomorrow morning. A hundred percent. You've also invested, you don't want to go back to hiring again. And the second thing: you want to manage and be in the details, but also have people who can lead things, so you don't have to be in every bit and byte. So totally. Totally. So I love the approach we ended with. Hadas, so great that you came. We'd be happy for you to come back again. Gladly.

Hadas Sheinfeld: [46:17] Bye bye.

Eyal David: [46:19] Hi friends, thanks for listening. If you found this podcast valuable, you can subscribe and follow us, of course, for more episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other app. And of course, if you didn't find us on some app, I'd be happy if you wrote to us. We'd really appreciate five stars on every platform, and for you to follow us so more listeners can discover us and find the podcast. You can also find previous episodes on every app or on the YouTube channel; we have links in the description. So until next time, come on, be effective, and bye bye.