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…
How to tell stories in interviews
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,…
3 Principles to Maintain Work/Life Balance when Life Gets Busy
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,…
How to request Peer Feedback
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…
Writing more clearly with The Pyramid Principle
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…
Why did Salesforce acquire Slack
When someone acquires a company, they get its customers, its product, and its brand. Salesforce just paid $27.7 billion for those things of Slack. (Of course, there are other aspects not discussed in this article, such as its people and patents, and financial concerns.) They got Slack’s Customers In its press release for this acquisition,…
How much is Azure’s revenue? Here’s an estimate.
Azure’s revenue is not a public figure, but I wanted to try to estimate it as a business research exercise. Calculation This week, Microsoft released its Fiscal Year 21 Q1 (Jul. 2020 – Sept. 2020) earnings data. At the same time, MSFT also filed its FY21 Q1 Quarterly Report (Form 10-Q) to the SEC. I…