I write about products and the PM role.
I’ve done both. And I just changed role again*. So I thought this is a perfect time to jot down my thoughts on the differences between internal- and external-facing PM’s. If you’re wondering what’s the difference between PM’s who serve external clients vs who serve internal teams, or if you’re trying to decide between these…
As Product Managers we often need to take on tasks that we haven’t done before (this is probably true for many who aren’t PMs as well). When learning something new in such scenarios, when unsure of how to get started, I have usually found it very helpful to build a toolbox for this new task/skill….
Recently, the topic of Leadership without Authority came up time and again in my various conversations, so I thought to write about some thoughts and learnings in having these conversations. I believe most people need to practice Leadership without Authority at some point in their professional and personal lives. Product managers is a good case…
Recently I travelled to China for the first time in three years. During the month-long stay (mostly in my hometown of Taiyuan), I became fascinated by the hyperlocal technologies there. From my point of view, the increasingly ubiquitous hyperlocal techs in China offered interesting examples of how such technologies can inject productivity and delight into…
Recently I’ve been working on a writing piece for StackAdapt’s tech blog, and we just published this article at: How We Manage the StackAdapt UI Design System | by Ellery Yang @ StackAdapt | Jan, 2023 | StackAdapt Tech Blog. Check out my article for the story of how I led the evolution of StackAdapt’s…
When I first started my career as a Product Manager almost five years ago, it seemed like a common belief that a PM job cannot be done remotely. Where I was, remote work was generally frowned upon, but the PMs didn’t even get the bit of leeway that developers did: the argument was that you…
Many often think of the tech industry as an ever-growing job haven filled with endless opportunities, but the recent months have certainly reminded us it too is not immune to economic downturns. With large-scale layoffs and offer rescissions frequenting our feeds, you might be wondering how to best manage career risks in such raucous times….
We all recognize the importance of networking, but we often think of networking as a “career”-focused activity, instead of part of our “job”. However, what I have gradually learned in my career as a product manager is that, networking is indeed part of my job description, and I strongly believe this is also true for…
We all need to tell stories in job interviews. The question might be a casual “How did you do X?“, or a more formal invitation of a story such as “Tell me a time you led a product innovation!“. But for many people, the challenge is that there are too many ways to tell stories,…
Work/Life Balance seems to be an important concept that’s on the mind of many workers and employers these days — and rightfully so. But the discussion around Work/Life Balance seems to generally focus on one direction — namely, how to maintain a healthy Work/Life Balance when Work gets demanding. A huge fan of that topic,…
Having been on my current team for 9 months, I recently started asking for feedback from my colleagues. My goal is to get a 360 view of how I am doing my job and use these perspectives to keep growing my skills. In this short article, I share how I do this. (Here, by “Peer…
Producing clear writing is an essential skill. Yet, many people feel their writing isn’t clear enough, and struggle to improve that skill. In this article I would like to share my learning of a method that can help you write more clearly – a method called The Pyramid Principle (“TPP”). It’s easy to use The…