To Be A Product Manager | Week 58

This journal helps me improve 1% every day…

Welcome to Week 58 of

To Be A Product Manager

This is the second week I』m at ByteDance, and I have to say so far I don』t think I』m fitting in the system yet. The division I』m at is not that big, but I still find it hard to do things as the way I』m used to.

Different departments are separated in different areas, as a product manager, you need to walk around in the building to find related people, it』s good for your health, but productivity wise, not good. If you walk 30 secs each time, 20 times a day, that』s 10 mins, and it could be up to an hour in a week.

The information sync is not always up to date, maybe because I』m still not familiar with the online system, I found tasks and stories hard to track and follow. Working on it.

As for the division I』m in, I don』t think product team are taking charge of most of things, at least it』s different from what I』ve experienced and heard of in other companies. This causes many problems, for example, some departments are fully responsible for some parts of product features, and when they add new features, they won』t start with the product perspective as a whole, which in the end makes the product less logical, kind of messy in a way. And I don』t think this is something I could change.

Maybe they changed a little about the workflow based on the product, but this is something I need to verify.

What I』m thinking

The past 2 weeks, I don』t have specific tasks need to do, I appreciate the time space we provide, but I』m also afraid of being lazier, in the long term.

People always say 「why me」, but I』d love to say 「why not me」.

With a bunch of things I』m not used to, I』m actually happy to be here, and see them as challenges:

The structure may not be perfect, but they are definitely not the worse. And being in a big company, this is something I should learn, experience and review. What if one day you are running a company like this?

The people around may not be 「ideal」, no judge, but you can still learn different things from them. The teams are super young, so lack some experience and a professional and smart workflow, but what if you are asked to build a healthy and positive environment and share with them what you are good at?

Those are all challenges, and I don』t have a great answer yet. So taking that 「why not me」 attitude and work hard.

My name is Zake Zhang, a product manager based in Shenzhen, China. I write weekly product journal and reflection.

Thanks for reading and let』s keep on hacking!

Warm Regards,

Zake

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