Transcript: From Developer to Product Leader: Yael Shamir Zalmanov on Riding Your Strengths and Deciding Fast

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [00:05] And in product, suddenly you need so many other people to reach that productivity — suddenly you have to do really good onboarding for the people around you, suddenly you really need from people things you don't know how to do — certainly for me in the UX area, say, it was very very strong, because in other areas I maybe came with more inherent strengths, but in the area of UX, less so, and it was a very very strong difference, a difference I really felt physically — like suddenly gears in the other lobe of the brain start to move, like some one side that suddenly I think I also asked myself, like, wait, so I'm not producing anymore? And it took time until I realized that the productivity is really different, and it's even much, much more, because you influence more

Eyal David: [00:57] Hey friend, today I talked with Yael Shamir, who is a Product Group Manager at Fiverr That basically means she manages five PMs under her, and essentially five development teams. Yael and I have known each other for about a decade from the time we both worked at Fiverr, when Yael still worked as a developer back then. Since then she's advanced a lot in the product world. Yael will tell us how she actually advanced into product management, what it looked like, people who believed in her along the way, what the difference was between the development role she did and what she suddenly started doing as a product manager She'll tell how she focused mainly on strengths — that's basically the recommendation, for a person to focus mainly on the strengths you arrive with, and to train along the way the things she felt weaker at. One of the areas she mentioned was, for example, decision-making. She gave a ton of tips around it — some resource that I'll share in the show notes. So come on, let's start. Hi Yael, how's it going? Great that you're here. Good morning, Yael, how are you feeling these days? Feeling okay, as much as possible Yeah, considering the situation. Good, so come on — actually, correct me if I'm not saying it right — you're basically a Group Manager at Fiverr, responsible for five teams, closing in on a decade at Fiverr A bit nostalgic that we're here in the old Fiverr building. Do you want, in one sentence,

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [02:32] to describe to the listeners what you do? Yeah, so today I basically lead the product group of Fiverr Pro which is the product that essentially comes to serve larger businesses. Fiverr reached excellent product-market fit for micro-businesses and solopreneurs and essentially this product, Fiverr Pro, is supposed to enter the market of larger businesses and serve their needs, and that's how it's also supposed to be the most significant Group Manager role at Fiverr. So basically the move was to break out from the five dollars, first of all, and then to generate larger orders, and now essentially to turn

Eyal David: [03:13] to much larger businesses, and it's a really super interesting move. Okay, so, in short, we're a bit tight on time here, and we get straight to the point in the podcast too, and we'll basically talk about how you actually broke into product management seven years ago, right? Right. Like me, you basically started — you from development, computer science, right? Right. You worked at Fiverr, first job, right. And how did it progress from there?

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [03:45] So I really started as a student, my first student job in development at Fiverr, ten-plus years ago Something you must have in order to advance is a manager who believes in you, and I had that luck a manager who believed in me and promoted me very quickly, also to manage development teams — for two years I already managed two development teams and at some point, really, throughout all that time, I always had a pull to be among the decision- makers, and to understand why we do things and to influence the business, and not to receive things that are already done at the end of the line. Why was that always there — that need? Really always? Always, yes I was really drawn to people — you know, people we both know, but no names now — I was really drawn to those people and to the work they do day to day, and to being part of it and understanding it and doing it, and I always pushed for discussions to explain why we do things, even in the period when Fiverr was a less well-oiled product machine than today. Why do we do them? Do you mean from the business aspect or the technical aspect?

Eyal David: [04:58] From the business aspect, obviously. And you actually did that while still wearing the development hat, right? Um, okay. And it always comes

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [05:05] and it carried me, and at some point, after I reached some comfort zone in managing development teams, I got an offer — and again, here too you need luck — to move to product management Wow, it happened twice. It happened twice, right. It probably wouldn't have happened without me bringing that desire and bringing that pull, but yes, you also need someone to open doors for you, and that door opened and I grabbed it with both hands. And Fiverr — wow, what an insane school for product So I started in product management on a team, in a task force actually, that has developers and an analyst and a designer, and I was responsible for an area that was very very UX-oriented. Afterwards I moved to an area that was more infrastructural

Eyal David: [05:54] And you came from backend, which is actually a bit not the natural place, right? Right. So how was it — okay, so let's take I still really want to hear how your entry into something very UX-heavy was, but maybe let's actually take it more at a high level How was it compared to development? What was the experience of actually moving from development to product? Wow, so really,

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [06:17] like, it feels like — I was already a developer, I was already in the details, I was already in the standups, the dailies, I already knew the product, I already knew the business like everything was supposedly already there — I saw the product managers working, I saw what they do, and in principle like on the level of the dry facts, it was true. In practice I remember myself really physically feeling other gears in the brain working, because one of the most central reasons is some difference in how you reach productivity. When you're a developer, those hours, those windows where you sit and write code and write code and write code, and sometimes go into the night writing code — those are the situations where you feel the most, most productive. And in product, suddenly you need so many other people to reach that productivity — suddenly you have to do really good onboarding for the people around you, suddenly you really need from people things you don't know how to do — certainly for me in the UX area, say, it was very very strong, because really in other areas I maybe came with more inherent strengths, but in the area of UX less so, and it was a very very strong difference, a difference I really felt — suddenly gears in the other lobe of the brain start to move, like some one side that suddenly — I remember I also asked myself, like, wait, so I'm not producing anymore? And it took time until I realized that the productivity is really different, and it's even much, much more, because you influence more — because essentially the emphasis is much more on the planning right? And you basically have to pray when you release that plan, and accompany it so that — like with a building, that the building will stand in the end and be built

Eyal David: [08:05] I think that if you have to pray, then it's probably a less good state. That's the skill — basically to reach a state where you don't pray. When it's your first feature in product, I think you pray a little in the attempt. That's true but then, ultimately, to reach a state and acquire the tools and the methods that we'll surely talk about soon in order to reach a state where you don't pray, where you have confidence in the output of the people around you, together with your own output that it will go in the direction where you're really steering the ship. I call it a process — I, for example, have a defined process that I wove for myself over the years, that this is how we set out when we work on a product until we finish. I think you also have something like that So just before we dive into that and come back to it, maybe let's actually touch on what you said — you said strengths so maybe let's really touch on which strengths you actually came into product management with let's touch on them, and maybe also, when you mention those strengths, you can actually think about the listeners and people who come from development or from another place within the tech industry and move to product, and what it's worth for them to actually focus on

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [09:14] Yeah, I'll start by saying that really, product management is such a different and varied role from company to company even though I'm only at Fiverr, I know it — from person to person, from team to team even, and everywhere it very much depends on the dynamics that you create, and on your personality and your strengths. There can be a person who comes with a very strong technical base, like the two of us who came from development; there can be a person who comes with a strong analytical base, or strong UX. Each brings some profile to the table — marketing-wise, business entirely — like so many things. It's insanely multidisciplinary The things I came in strong with, beyond the basic intuitions that I already described — like a desire to be part of the decision-making, an interest in how it affects the business leadership traits that were always part of me, and there's no way around it — they're required to be a good product manager viewers, of course. Natural critical thinking But yes, the very fact that I grew from within the company — I already had a reputation in the company, I already knew the business and the product, I already knew the people around me I had good relationships around me that helped me glide inward, and people who gave me

Eyal David: [10:38] both the backing, the push, and also the grace — wait, the time to learn, which is also a very unique thing to Fiverr, I think Could be. Yes, yes, yes. Not many companies actually give, so to speak, that period of time, that grace, until it basically drops — but essentially so that you learn because it costs a lot of money for the other side. Listen, it takes a year, really it takes a year

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [11:05] to be at some peak, right. And I also came with a technical base which we talked about a bit before — on one hand it's such a big advantage, and people always hear it and say, oh, you'll be able to sit in conversations and understand all the words in English that come up, and jump in and say — you're telling me it's two weeks, but actually it's less, and things like that It has an advantage, and of course it also has a disadvantage. Yes, there's a flip side to it, totally Do you want to elaborate a bit on that? What's the disadvantage? I think the disadvantage touches on something bigger about what it's like to be a product manager, and it also very much touches on the matter of how you generate output and how much you need the people around you. And one of the risky things here — and it's also very related to the method by which I manage product today — one of the risky things is essentially that you won't only steer the ship where you want, but you'll also literally tell people what they need to do, and then they become executors and they think less on their own they're more task-executors, and when you come really from the development background where you were the one who managed the execution and you decided how to build the architecture of certain areas, and you end up intervening in it, then you somewhat shut down creativity in the people who are the most important people for your output, ultimately — the developers the analyst, the designer, and the stakeholder — those are your others, and you also basically shoot yourself in the foot, because you're junior and you want to get in and you want to learn and you learn a ton and you're in meetings and you don't have time now to do the whole job. I really remember some really moment at the start when my manager tells me, Yael, don't come to these meetings, just avoid being there because if you're there then you very quickly slide into areas where it might just be that in that meeting, the meeting will close with some decision, but ultimately you shoot yourself in the foot, like you said

Eyal David: [13:13] So cool — you mentioned some method, my method. Do you actually have a method, some methodology you work by? Want to share?

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [13:22] I'm obsessed with the Six Q's, and I think I sort of direct everyone around me, under me, who consults with me and wants to get a recommendation from me to do this thing. For those who don't know the Six Q's, it's very easy to find it online, but it's a method that essentially comes to define why you're doing something — what's the problem we came to solve, or what's the opportunity we see, what's the data that supports it what's the hypothesis, really in the form of an if-then phrasing and it's really some muscle that I had to train, and those lobes I talked about, the gears in the brain — it's one of the things I remember doing again and again and again. A muscle — I love that. It really is a muscle, until it just becomes a natural work tool Now, these Six Q's are a tool not only for me — first of all, I'm a person that the moment I believe in some direction I charge at it — I don't know, it's happened that people told me I steamroll it but I don't steamroll it if I don't believe in the direction. First of all I need the most important person to convince is first of all myself, and I think this method helps very well to convince myself first of all that there's a problem here, that there's an opportunity here, that there's something here we want to go after. And then it's also basically a work tool that's really it's written, that you distribute around you to the people who work with you and convince them of the problem and enlist them to the cause. And it may sound small, but it's a precision you return to every time, every time you get confused later on wait, wait, what did we come to do — really. And then also everyone speaks the same language, and then everyone pushes forward

Eyal David: [15:11] Mhm, so basically at the beginning of the road, how was it when you didn't have the Six Q's? Messy, very very messy

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [15:19] It took time until, like, this world called product time and experience and really a muscle like you say, and like building a muscle, but it's really like that because it takes — there's no way around it — it just takes time and experience and iterations, again and again and again, and you need to understand what you're training on so really, if I have to give a concrete tip, the Six Q's is such a concrete tip. Obviously there's a lot more around it and it's simply the experience of doing it again and again with different people. But it took time until that mess of, like, lots of decisions in the air that you need to make, lots of people who kind of depend on you and ask you, okay, what do I do now lots of not-so-successful products going out into the world, and so on. So let's touch exactly on what you said

Eyal David: [16:08] So, decisions — how was it?

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [16:13] So, like, I said I came into this field with some natural forte — I don't know if a forte, but some natural desire to make decisions. And then suddenly, when you're in that place, you suddenly feel the weight on your shoulders and suddenly it's like, wait, I'm the owner of the decision. And I found myself, also because of some nature of very high thoroughness and a love of getting into the details — I'm very much through the details, even today when I manage five teams I love the details and it helps me — and I found myself simply, like, investing so, so, so much time weighing between decisions. I'll go deep, I'll understand all, all, all the details. And at some point I realized I'm investing too much time in this, it can't be — it's also basically a blocker to other people. You were a blocker? Yes, right, more than today

Eyal David: [17:11] And how did you improve? I assume you improved, so how did you improve? Yeah, unequivocally I improved

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [17:18] I think one of the technical things that helped was, at some point, to understand — okay, I'm allocating time to the decision I can't dawdle here until Tuesday for no reason, I need to make a decision and come what may. As much as I can dive, I'll dive. And then it forces you to go deep while knowing you can come back up from it a bit like diving — you really know you have enough time to come back up from it. And in general, I see in product management one of the important skills is the ability to move from breadth to depth, from breadth to depth — you constantly need to make that movement and then go deep, but to a place where you'll still have enough time to come back and look at the breadth and choose between the opportunities It feels like a silly tip, but it really really helped as a start — just to allocate time

Eyal David: [18:09] which is a stunning tip in life too. Yeah, that's true. In general, product management My wife and I have been choosing a closet for two weeks now — I really get it and relate. Yeah, right. And choosing a vacation abroad, in the days when we used to do such things, could be a project. It feels like a distant past

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [18:31] But there are also other things — I think one of the things that's also a matter of a lot of experience is at some point, to understand that the road to success is through mistakes and 'failures' in quotes — and I say in quotes because it's not really a failure. Like, if you define what you want to learn and how you want to learn it, and you succeeded in learning, even if in the end you hurt the business — you succeeded in learning what you wanted to learn. You had a hypothesis, you guessed the users would react this way and that following something you'd do, and the only thing that's right is the data and your users so if you succeeded in learning that, even if the answer is 'it's not right' and you hurt the business, you succeeded and got one step closer on the road to success. And essentially this somewhat reduces the weight of decision-making, because you don't have to make the right decision like, there's no such thing as the right decision — you need to make a decision that brings you closer to moving along this gradual track toward success, until you actually reach the solution. And this is also probably something that's a bit of grace at Fiverr, or at more established companies that have that patience. That's a question — like, I think that it's — like, probably yes, probably there really was the business base around to enable that grace without, like, eight hundred eyes looking at you and at the results you bring. And ultimately it's product management more than anything — those iterations, the repetition, the gradual learning, the understanding that no one is right — not the CEO, not the board, and no one except your users. And that's a very very strong characteristic

Eyal David: [20:19] of Fiverr, that understanding. Right, right, right. And if you can give more tips really around decision-making or basically, in Hebrew, to decide — what actually helped you get to a state where you decide fast? Because there really are decisions you can make within three days, but there are things that need to be closed on the spot, and they usually also come up out of nowhere, and you might also be in a context switch

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [20:40] entirely different. What actually helped you there? Look, I can say data, ideas, users and that's all true — really, the combination between qualitative — qualitative information — and quantitative information is very very important. The qualitative information is usually meant for — qualitative is meant to build your intuition, which is a very very very strong component, very. And it's also a component whose backing needs to be rebuilt each time when you probably switch companies — which I haven't experienced for a long time, but yeah, it's like — it's probably a muscle that when I switch companies I'll have to rebuild some intuition about the users. And therefore it's a very very good tool. Data is another tool, but I'll wrap up and I'll say, ultimately, that the thing that helps most to make a fast decision, like, in money time, is the understanding — it's what I said before, it's the understanding of, like, which direction you're going, and then the understanding that essentially the decision is about the next step, and not about the goal, the final step of how you become a one-billion-dollar company. Like, it's the step on the way to the final goal, and that's what you need to understand — how the next step you take is some step function on the way to the biggest step function you can take, of course, on the way to the final goal

Eyal David: [22:04] Right, and I think another thing you mentioned — and maybe worth touching on too, I don't know whether to touch on it, I'll just mention it — essentially, the moment you use the method and you use the Six Q's, and you use it with the whole team over time, then everyone starts to speak the language, so the information already reaches you more flattened toward a decision and more, basically, baked for a decision, such that it may even come with some recommendation, and you just need to approve or not approve, right

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [22:28] so basically it makes everything easier, right. You also touch on another point — like, we're very very zealous and we follow the data, very data-driven at Fiverr and in the industry in general, but there's also a risk here, because a flood of data is not necessarily a good thing — you need to know how you look at the data you need to know how to aim yourself at the places where the data can tell a lot of stories and ultimately flooding with more and more and more and more won't always help you make decisions it's one of the biggest problems — with data, you can tell so many different kinds of stories. Okay, all good

Eyal David: [23:14] I'm thinking about it — just, if someone now wants to get into product and takes with them the tips you gave — basically, take what you're strong at, great — to start finding someone who'll believe in you, maybe to join a company and then basically start from a different role and find that someone who believes in you in order to navigate into product. But how would you suggest still improving in those areas, like decision-making, where you currently don't work at a company, or you work at a company but you're in a different hat? How can you improve at it, in your opinion?

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [23:48] I think we touched on it in half a word earlier, but, like, the parallel between product management and life can be made very easily. I remember there was a product manager at Fiverr who had a child — this was before I was a mother — and he said, the child is the product, and I was like, whoa, whoa, something here feels wrong but at some level there's something to it — you can make that parallel to almost anything in life almost any objective function. We talked about planning a trip abroad and we talked about buying a closet and you can talk about some other initiative — of a friend at Fiverr, too building a playground for her son, and practicing the Six Q's — it does feel a bit kind of compulsive in areas that aren't really business, but I think that if you want to get in as fast as possible to a place where you feel confidence and start training that muscle — because that's the important thing — then that's what I'd recommend doing: go to Google, search the Six Q's what it means, find a template, and start doing it on the silliest things in the world just apply it to things. So maybe take it and even level it up, for the advanced — you could also start working on some side project, or some side project where you can really test it, basically put it to the real test definitely. But the very important thing in my eyes is that you connect to it, that you love what you're trying to solve that you connect to it from the inside, that you care about the thing. So, like, just to pick — let's pick a problem less so, but to choose something that speaks to you, that you have an emotional affinity to, and on it to do that muscle training

Eyal David: [25:38] That seems like a practical and good tip. We love practical, Yael. So we've run out of time We have so many more things to talk about. First of all, thank you so much for coming, awesome tips, and I'm sure that we'll want to touch on more things in a follow-up episode, definitely — we didn't touch on. Where do you recommend, actually, where do people get in touch with you

Yael Shamir Zalmanov: [25:59] if people have questions? So LinkedIn is best. Is your profile active? I don't share a lot of content but if you write to me I'll definitely see it. Yeah, Yael Shamir on LinkedIn, and that's the best way. Alright, my pleasure. Thank you so much, Yael

Eyal David: [26:20] Thank you, Yael, it was a pleasure. Alright, bye bye