I write about products and the PM role.
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…
TLDR: I believe the ability to work with your manager to advance your career is a key skill for professionals. It may be an uncomfortable topic due to reasons like workplace culture, but there’s no harm and a lot of goodness to work with your manager to identify career goals clearly and build concrete plan…
Recently I learned how to import and subscribe an Outlook calendar into Google Calendar. I did this because I manage two different calendars: Outlook for work, Google for personal stuff — and I wanted a consolidated view of my day. It took a bit of research so I document it here for others and my…
I’m really proud to share that Azure Communication Services, which I have been working on since July, was announced at Microsoft Ignite by CEO Satya Nadella! What is Azure Communication Services (ACS)? You can find a lot of descriptions out there, but quoting the official ACS webpage, Azure Communication Services brings rich communication APIs to…
In a nutshell, this article answers the following question: What is the equivalent of form 10-K for companies publicly traded in Canada? And the answer is: the equivalent consists of 3 forms, namely the Annual Information Form (AIF), Annual Financial Statement and Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A). Summary U.S. tool Description Canadian counterpart EDGAR database…
(Image source: US Embassy & Consulate in Canada) I recently left the US to move back to Canada. In this article, I share my thoughts and reasoning on this move. I came to the US at the end of 2019 on an H1B visa, which I got on my 3rd attempt towards the H1B “lottery”….
As a PM, I always see storytelling as one of the most important communication tools. Whether I am trying to get buy-in, build alignment, explain a strategy or share my learning, stories are usually a powerful way to retain attention and elicit empathy. But as I keep practicing storytelling, I am gradually realizing that as…
A few weeks ago, a customer told me that my product is so good that he plans to stop using it. A bit of context here: As you may know from my blog, I am the product owner of a wiki-as-a-service documentation web app at Microsoft. Our service offers multiple managed wiki sites to various…
As we enter an extended WFH (Work From Home) period of time, I’ve become increasingly aware of the importance of self-sustainability. Self-sustainability, a sense of confidence in leading an effective life completely by myself, relies on something called P/PC balance. In this article, I share some learning about these concepts from the past month of…
This is a story of a customer psychology analysis. It led me to choose less precise language in a product UI, and achieve better user experience. It started when my dev partners found an internal API limitation in a web app we own. This API limitation was causing a data visualization dashboard feature to throw…
This is a story where I had to re-think why my product was successful. A few months ago, I created a web app at Microsoft. It was designed to host internal service documentation for a large org in Windows team. I built the business case and product roadmap, then worked with a team of engineers…
In this post I share my experience as a remote PM. Being a remote PM is both a bundle of challenges and a passport to a lot of opportunities. Working remotely is without doubt a trending topic in the tech world today, but in my observation most remote workers (in long-term remote arrangements) are engineers….