So after that you went to work at Facebook on the Facebook watch team. So tell us about how that opportunity came about. Very much pursuing Shopify. And what was interesting is it was kind of the reverse for Facebook. Hello and welcome to another episode of Attila TV Our Guest for today's episode is the wonderful and he's and Andy is actually a product manager at Facebook working on the Facebook watch team. And before that she was a product manager Shopify. So she's worked for one of the coolest tech companies in America and the world and she also worked one of the coolest tech companies in Canada. And before that. She was actually the first employee at bring station and before that. She actually got acceptance into one of the top Business Schools in Canada that I could School and this blows my mind is my first ever for doing this for Having the courage to do this, but you actually turn down an acceptance into Ivy business school because wanted to do go a separate path. So hope you're going to get learn a lot from any story today. So without further Ado any thank you for joining us. So let's go back to any at 16. What were you like in high school? Yes, I think for those who didn't know me super well, they would probably say that I was pretty friendly social and extremely involved in extracurricular activities for those who were closer to me. They would probably describe me as being overly perfectionistic a little bit uptight and more introverted. So to bring more context as to what my high school life look like. I went to an arts high school and I did performance. It's in the Arts High School during High School. I was also a competitive figure skater and I was involved in a lot of other ways as well like being the yearbook editor and doing a lot of leadership opportunities. So I would describe my teenage years as a period where I actually had very deep insecurity and that points is honestly pretty depressed. And I think the reason for that was I had this sort of deep-seated knowledge that I couldn't be confident yet in myself until I was able to go through really channeling experiences and actually try on some and I know that sounds really really deep and weird, but I didn't really know what was something that was good to do or was something that was bad to do. I didn't know if something was recognized as really awesome or not. And so I really thought out that approval from the adult figures and teachers. And school and just people that are respected and that was very deep-seated in the life of a knee as a teenager and I just constantly try to push my limits and what I was able to accomplish. Well that was that was a very very profound answer. Well you seem to have a lot of self-awareness. How did you like when we do make that realization about like reflect on your high school career? Yeah, that's the time that I had in high school and honestly feeling a little bit miserable because I felt like I was kind of Trapped In This Loop of wanting to do good awesome work but not necessarily feeling like I was engaged in happy as a result of doing it and you know doing it for external factors of validation. My question is more The lines of like when did you make that realization? So like was it something realizing like first year second year like how did you like reach that level of self-awareness? Yes. It was a process where it got to a point where I knew that I wasn't doing the right thing and I wasn't listening to the right signals and its really took a process and getting better and better at it. And I think I continually try to build more and more self-awareness but starting in University. I reflected a ton about you know, what happened in high school what I was able to achieve what I was proud of and what I want to change and I think that was where you know a lot of Flexion on a constant basis started to happen interesting. So let's go to let's agree 12 so great 11 grade 12 year, you know, you're about to graduate high school thing about what to do next in University or college. Whatever you're planning on doing so that what schools are you looking at? What programs are you looking at? Where is your head at? So again as as I went to an Arts High School, which meant that my preferences and interests were significantly influenced by that environment at the time. I was just really really obsessed with figure skating and to be honest. My dream job was to be a professional figure skater also being in the environment where a lot of people really cared about the Arts and a lot of people were going to pursue music dance. Visual art what have you and college that was not really a question for me either. So for the most part I was like yeah, whatever. Maybe I'll just keep on doing music or I'll try to become a figure skater when it came to grade 12 the reality of needing to apply for universities Don much more and that was when I figured like hey, I'm really passionate about psychology and I love to watch how people operate and learn about what people are motivated by and as a I thought I was gonna go into psychology and the social sciences were what most of my friends went in as well. But what happened was my parents last minute. I think two weeks before University applications brought up the idea of Ivy and business school at the time. I had no idea really what business school and tilled my school was so artsy that they pretty much I think cut the business class and the economics class. So I really didn't know. What it was but what they told me was hey, you know, if you wanted to pursue psychology or something in the social sciences, you're probably have to get a PhD or very high degree in order to get a good job. You probably don't have the patience for that. Why don't you try a business which is a little bit more practical and if you go to Western for ID, it's a two plus two program where you can do two years of whatever you want. And then at that point if you still want to go into business school and you can go into business school. I thought that was actually a pretty reasonable ask for my Parents and that was what I ended up deciding to go into Western as a general social sciences, I think student and then it's also apply for the AO status awesome. So now let's talk about your University career and actually while we're on the topic of University I want to publicly thank you for so me and any actually met because I was interesting going to the NBT see which is I think the largest business and Tech Conference in Canada at the Time and I think it's still running and he's actually the organizers and she really went out of her way to help me attend the conference for free. So I just wanted to thank her for that and also pay back by if anyone's interested definitely check out the NBC conference. Anyway, so now you're at Western and you're currently in your year and then so talk to us a bit more about and this is what I find absolutely crazy because I feel like so many of us at Western put the IV business school. We're holding a really high regard like I'm in the program as well. We actually chose not to take up your ass. That's going to IB program. And why did you decide to go that route? Yes. so I think but I know for a lot of you who are still in school or pre IV the sounds like the craziest decision of her, I guess the context to how I made that decision was after going into Western from a very artsy background. I felt completely like a fish out of the water especially in first year. I had a lot of really interesting experiences, but they were not relevant at all towards sort of the career path that Ivy was sort of pushing me on. And comparing myself to a lot of my peers who also had a yo status everyone seemed extremely swab. Everyone was incredible at networking and you know could have the perfect networking pitch in their sleeves. They also had a ton of relevant experience with in high school to prepare them for business school and I just didn't really have any knowledge of all of that and to add on to it when I started to engage myself. Self with more of the Business Clubs and opportunities around business. I just didn't really find my stride within it. I felt that a lot of the activities and the clubs were extremely structured. They were extremely formal and it really felt like it was just pushing people along a pretty established path of like what you should do and here's the output that you're going to get from it. And that was when I realized, you know, I tend to thrive more inflexible environments where there is a lot of ambiguity and a lot of problem solving that could be involved. I tend to think a little bit more nonlinearly and I hate structured environments. And so a lot of these environments really made me feel uncomfortable and completely like a fish out of the water. So throughout my first year and second year. I was really trying to find my passion and understand whether or not going into Business Schools, actually a good idea and what really got me out of my confusion was I went to this one event that was held by the Nspire Innovation Network, which was this large Business and Technology nonprofit in Canada. And that introduced me to the world of technology on entrepreneurship something that I had known nothing about and I think it was through all of second year when I was actually leading the Western chapter of Nspire that I I realize that probably entrepreneurship and Innovation was where I wanted to go. And your question is why did I turn down IV business school? I think there's a lot of content context building to like drive towards the ultimate decision. But in the summer before going into third year, I also work for a start-up called brain station, and it was actually a company that was made up of four or I think Three out of the four Founders were IV grads. I had so much fun and the entire year with this startup. I learned so much. I really felt like that was the environment that I belonged in and I even started a Blog that summer where I just interviewed a bunch of entrepreneurs and creators and every single conversation that I had were just so engaging and I really felt like those are the people that I belong with and so I had an awesome experience at a startup that I felt super engaged in. I really learned a lot And I wanted to do more of and then I was also surrounded by three co-founders of that company that had gone to Ivy and when I had asked them like hey, do you guys think it's a good idea for me to pursue Ivy and them knowing who I was and what I was interested in what I was passionate about they all actually suggested against it. Wow, not that really yeah, not that really I was going to choose otherwise had they not suggested. That but it's more like a validation of which already wanted to do. Exactly and the final piece again. There's a lot of context and I feel like I'm really trying to wrap it in a very tightly, you know, a tight little answer is I did have an alternative to going to Ivy that I felt was even more compelling. So towards the end of summer of second year. I had worked for brain station, which is a like basically a development bootcamps company and I was able to pick up on Development web development skills and they were also thinking about expanding brain station to London and I was like, wow, that's super cool. Like maybe I have no opportunity to lead the expansion of a company towards a new city. Another opportunity was that I got the senior vice president role for Nspire, which is this business and technology nonprofit that I talked about and throughout my entire time with Nspire. It's given me so much exposure to the industry so many of the executive Embers of inspire we're working on full tech companies or ideas and like startups and I felt like that was actually providing a really good Network for me to excel my career within startups and Tech and then I was also working on really cool projects on the side because I had picked up on web development skills. Some iOS skills some design skills over the summer a train station. I was doing like side gigs and building websites for people as well. So I just felt like there were so many things that I could. Working on that was going to accelerate my career and that if I had chosen to go to Ivo and have time to pursue any of these other Alternatives and these all other alternatives are way more compelling and way more aligned to what I want to do in the future rather than going to Ivy that's awesome. That was a bit long-winded but also nonetheless Yeah. Just make it on a whim. Yeah, there's a lot of context to why that was suitable for me. I would suggest people to not go to Ivy. It's a great school. I think he'd get a lot of learnings and a lot of networking from that opportunity and you really have to understand but like in critically think about your decision before you make it well said well said, okay, so then so you don't go to Ivy you end up getting a regular Western. Three which is fine. And then so now you're at time to recruiting for full-time jobs, and then you tell it because I remember remember we went to think Vincent art gallery that time and I remember you were recruiting for Shopify, you know, remember this. Yeah, Matt McIntosh. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So one of the things I remember, I remember you're showing me like all the stuff you were doing to recruit for Shopify and your really went above and beyond. So can you tell us a bit more about how the shop of opportunity came about and we could do to get that position. Totally again need some context building and I'll try to get through it quickly. So by the end of my University time, I had tried a lot of different roles anywhere from doing digital marketing and my first year to working at Bryan Station and kind of doing anything and everything from Business Development to marketing to ideating on new ideas to Ops as well as picking up on all these web development skills and Doing a lot of freelance web development and then in my third year of University the job that I had was working as a data analyst and at pivotal software and that also provide me really good technical knowledge on data analysis. What have you and then all throughout University? I was very involved with ensberg renovation at work, which was the tech and business nonprofit that I was talking about that gave me really awesome leadership. Skills and so from all of these experiences that kind of made me into a pretty well-rounded individual really had like kind of dabbled in everything. I kind of had like some domain understanding of every function within a company but I didn't necessarily see myself playing a very deep role and like only solely doing one of those things. That was when I really learned a bit more about the product manager role and what that entailed and I really like the idea of being able To Rally a team towards a common vision and I really felt like I was good at that through my leadership experiences. And so going into job hunting after school. What I wanted to do was a find a product management role, which is very difficult for a new grad and then be work at a very high growth company that was you know, more than a thousand people or approximately at a thousand. People and the reason why I felt that was super important was through all of my experiences in internships. I had small startup experiences where you know, you're very much a generalist and you had to do anything and everything to working at a big company like pivotal where you didn't really feel like you had too much impact. I felt like choosing a company that had a really good growth trajectory as well as being at a good size where you can get Mentorship and growth opportunities and learning opportunities while still having really awesome internal company opportunities to grow and take on New Opportunities. I thought that was a really good setup. So that was why I want to work for Shopify and how I got the shop revive roll. So again, I knew that being a product manager was going to be super difficult. It was kind of not something that people are able to do immediately outside of school. And so What I did was first try to leverage my network as much as possible. And at this point I had a you know network with a lot of people knew a lot of people in the industry one of the girls that I knew worked at Pinterest and actually Pinterest is another company that I had wanted to work for. So initially I had asked her for a referral for Pinterest and when she told me that Pinterest is going through a reorg and they weren't going to actually be able to hire anybody. I was really disappointed but she told me like hey, I actually know people at shop. Five shopify's killing it. Why don't I just make you a warm intro to the product team at Shopify and she did and so that was kind of how I got my foot in the door with Shopify, but the process was honestly extremely extensive prior to me actually speaking with this product growth leads at Shopify. I had applied for basically every other role available at chop mind to me, right? I think I applied for like this is analyst role sales hacker all like growth marketing role everything under the sun just because they want to work for this company so badly and I think I was like at a certain point talking like five different recruiters at the same time. They knew none of those other roles were what I actually wanted and I knew that I just really wanted this product rule, but I also knew that this guy had wanted nothing to do with me like he liked talking to me, but he was not about to hire a new thread and so I really really hustled and try to think of creative ways to Leave make myself stand out to him and really make me feel like I could add value to the company. So at the beginning after initial coffee chat. What I did was try to extract from him any information about the current existing products and where there are areas and gaps that could be filled and you know, we talked a lot about different areas within Shopify and as a follow-up to that conversation, I actually decide to create sort of a case analysis or a case study around And a app that they had in the at the time that I thought should have been deprecated and a really good business decision. And so I created this very extensive case about what I think about this app. Like what its value is what the pros and cons were and what I thought was a really good decision to make and kind of walking through that product thinking process. And then that was how I followed up. I was like, hey, you know, it was really awesome to meet for coffee. Here's my awesome like but page analysis on why You guys to defecate this hat and I think by approaching conversations in that value-added way where you're not just asking them for their time, but you're saying that like look at what I did to prepare for our next conversation that's going to be a very valuable use of your time. I think was what brought me to second conversation. So we had the second conversation. I have presented, you know, my analysis and my case study to the sky. Why I think he was impressed but again, like there was no follow-up from him and it was really up to me to continue driving for that conversation. And so that was when I thought about the next thing I was like, okay, what if I wrote a cover letter that was a buzzfeed article about all of the reasons why Annie is going to make this company and this sorry all of the reasons why Annie is the most awesome person for this role and it was Of like a quirky witty way of walking through all my experiences and why it is that it would be relevant to this product growth rural submitted that to him kind of was able to get one more conversation one more coffee chat at that point. He still was not really giving enemies not really willing to take me on his team. And so that was when I kind of like made my final effort and what I did was Shopify really valleys entrepreneurship and people taking initiative and I knew that was a core part of their values. So what I did is I created a Shopify store and every item within the Shopify store was selling what I would do for every single day that I would be at what I would do every day. At Shopify, yeah. That was just to get an interview. Wow. Was going to be the hiring manager was pretty sold and he was going to be an advocate for me. So even then what is important for people to know? Is that like I still felt like he was worried about hiring somebody that didn't have previous product management experience for that role and what another Mentor had told me someone else did was to pull the intern card and with the intern card means is like I told them hey, you don't actually have to hire me full-time just harm. Is an intern a product management enter a product growth intern for the summer see how I do and if I do well Harmony on his full-time. If I don't then just kick me out like it's all good and by understanding that, you know, making a full-time hire is a pretty big commitment and by trying to take that commitment away from my manager needing to like taking that commitment away from the hiring manager really helped me again, get my door even further and And yeah, I guess its history from there. I worked out job by for four months as an intern. I think I did a decent enough job and then I was able to stay on whole time. Wow. I feel like that's a classic Auntie Story the fact that you probably put more effort. Yeah, because you I think you put more effort into that one job than most people I know put into their entire job application process. So that's pretty impressive. I'm glad your hard work paid off. So you internet Shopify for four months and then your work there full-time for how many How many a year and a half so after that you went to work at? Facebook on the Facebook watching so tell us about how that opportunity came about. So again actually so I was very much pursuing Shopify. And what was interesting is it was kind of the reverse for Facebook after my time at Shopify Shopify is within the e-commerce space and I think something Shopify is an incredible company and I think most of the merchants that a powers are awesome and I really love the industry that it's in but it Is really fast and consumerism to an extent interesting and I sort of had this moment where I felt like I wanted to work on something that was more socially impactful for a lack of better word. Quoting socially impactful and I had this idealistic Vision that you know, I was going to move to a third world country or developing country. I was going to work for a smaller startup in a space that was more fundamentally necessary for humans. So what I mean by that is things like healthcare or energy or education where like if people actually didn't have that than their lives would be significantly worse. And that was where I sort of started my journey, I went to I want them to keishon to Asia and I just really like the energy of it too. I felt like there was gonna be a lot more new opportunity and ability for Innovation to disrupt with in developing countries, and I was like Full Throttle looking for opportunities within that space. So what happened was I deep dived into like looking out for opportunities for like months and so He's doing a deep dive and basically I came to a couple of conclusions one. There are not that many epically good startups out there. You know, there's a lot of really awesome starts out there that are trying to solve really interesting problems. But the variables that will enable start up to succeed are complex and you know, sometimes it takes a lot of expertise and a very strong team to build a successful product especially for something that's called and quote socially impactful. So and then the other finding Is that quite honestly, I was somebody who had two years or less of Industry experience and I didn't really have specialized knowledge around Healthcare education or energy or any of that and so I needed to be a little bit more not humble but realistic about what opportunities I actually had accessibility to when it came to looking for a cool opportunities or cool startups to work. So I found this one startup that I became totally obsessed with it's called zip line. And it's a started based out of San Francisco, but they operate in Africa and what they are is a drone company that delivers blood supplies. And what's really really cool is that their drones are able to deliver blood supplies to very rural areas of Africa that doesn't really have access or quick access of what supplies and want. Oh, yeah, so they're able to deliver within like 15 minutes to anywhere in the country and 25% of their but blood deliveries are life-saving. I just thought like wow, this is the coolest thing ever. The team is also badass. They're a bunch of like X SpaceX and NASA people and it just seemed like they had really good investors to and I was like, wow, this is really good opportunity. Unfortunately, I got rejected and so that force me to look for other opportunities and that was when Facebook kind of came up. So I was at a conference that I had already signed up for months ago. It was the women in product conference in San Francisco. And I was honestly not super engaged at the conference. I didn't really know too many people either and you know, I was really bored. So I figured like whatever I'll just talk of the recruiters and see what Emerging Market opportunities some of these companies had and when I talked to Facebook they were like, yeah if you want to do, you know something related to Emerging Markets we have this thing called internet.org and our connectivity efforts and if you guys don't know what that is, basically Facebook was creating these internet drones. I would fly over developing countries and being down internet so that people who didn't have internet access could gain internet access and when she kind of told me about that the pieces kind of came together in my head where I was like, huh? I really like emerging market products. I really like the internet and I know a lot about the internet this might actually be a good fit for me. So that was when I went about going through the interview process and you know quite frankly Actually, I work really hard and practicing for the interviews and really really being able to answer questions in the nice structured way and surprisingly I got the job. So that was how I got into Facebook. You're probably going to ask me why I'm not working on Emerging Market internet products. Yes. Yes. Yeah, so what happened was I applied for the product manager generalist role and that's actually what most product managers at Facebook come in as this gives you the ability to not actually select a team to be what's the word? So basically you're not hired for a specific team and what you are able to do is come to Facebook and network with a bunch of teams and mutually find a fit. Where you want to be and when I had joined Facebook, unfortunately, a lot of the internet.org / connectivity efforts were being deprecated. A lot of it was also moving towards the Tel Aviv office and I was based out of the Sanford like the Menlo Park Silicon Valley office and because I had the opportunity to network and talk to different teams. I was really exposed to interesting problems that I otherwise would not have had access to and when I had talked to the video, too. Team, what was a really interesting pitch to me? Was that Facebook? First of all was trying to get into the video space and I never really quite Associated Facebook with video, but I was like, all right, cool. I'm intrigued second part of it was they wanted Facebook to find a way to make videos social whatever that means and I was like, huh? That's very interesting because if you think about how most people spend their times now taking an average snapshot of it. Person in North America, they probably consume on average 1 to 2 hours of video content per day like this is a significant part of their lives and honestly, probably not in a good way, right? This is pretty antisocial Behavior where instead of hanging out with your friends or like chilling at McDonald's with that like after school or something like that. You just go home and watch video and I really felt like this is a pretty big problem and you know having mentioned that I really like to solve ambiguous problems like Like social video like how on Earth do you create social video? And I guess Facebook is equipped to have social tools that help Foster social relationships, but it still seemed like a bit of a juxtaposition or was the contradiction but that was what intrigued me about being on the video team and here I am still very engaged with the problem. I like that so a couple things questions about things you said the first question I have is that Said you wanted to work for as you said quote unquote socially conscious company. Why do you put socially conscious and quotes like that? Yeah. My initial idealism two words of my initial idealistic attitude towards that. My process and understanding, you know, what are the different solutions and products out there for some of the more fundamental needs of people. I kind of came to the conclusion that A lot of the things even though it might seem extremely Noble just become a accepted facts by people. Once they are accessible. Right? So like for example the strong company that delivers blood supplies that I was so passionate about like obviously the first time it's save some of these live in a rural area and people were like marveling at this technology and like super excited and just overwhelmed by like what technology was able to do, but the matter of fact is quite honestly, Years later when this technology is readily available and everyone has access to blood it starts to become taken for granted and it just becomes the norm and the impact that a bag of blood is able to make on a person's live could be similar to the entertainment or joy that somebody experiences watching a really cool drama, right? And so At least my personal conclusion is that there is by a lot of Millennials this idea to do things that are very socially impactful and you know, helping people of need excetera, but the reality is like your life normalizes based on what you have access for and you know, no matter what you get it's going to normalize and so you don't necessarily have to be working on a lot of these very fundamental technologies that are associated. Being like the most deepest human needs in order to be impactful or an orator in order to do something of value. I mean like working on the video team at Facebook. There are times when I question like is this the best thing that I could be spending with my time and there are times when I question that but for the most part like I do think that it is a really compelling problem. And if a lot of people are spending their times doing this might as well try to make it a better experience or more engaging experience or more social experience and it's you know, not any less valuable than delivering blood supply. Using drones or at least I think so that's sort of a hot tea because I feel like a lot of people are going to strongly disagree with you, but I actually see where you're coming from. I think that's a very interesting way of looking at it. So a question I have to is that so you mentioned that you studied really hard for the product manager position at Facebook and I know specially University right now Facebook is probably the one company but that's a soft engineering and business student that a lot of people really want to work for and like it's really competitive to get a position at that company. So you tell us a bit more about how do you prefer? How do you prepare for the Facebook interview? And any advice you have and what's the process like? I'm sure so I think before we even dive into that question, like probably not everyone wants to work for Facebook. Right? It's still like, you know, some people don't want to work with Facebook. Some people might want to work for over some people might want to work for me. You know, I always say in life. There's absolutely no absolutes. So even if I said who wants a hundred dollars not everyone's going to say I want a hundred dollars, so Prerequisite to intervene for any company is kind of understanding. What is the culture around that company and a do you fit with that culture? If so, great. You should pursue it or move forward if you don't but you still really want the opportunity just be aware of how you should present yourself in a way where people who are going to be interviewing you and embody that culture are still going to pick up positive signs that you will operate well. This environment so from the culture perspective. I know it sounds like a very wishy-washy thing to say about Facebook and the interview process, but now that I am, you know doing regular interviews for product managers and hiring for them. It's quite easy to tell through very simple questions whether or not you are a cultural fit or not. And so things like things that Facebook look for are definitely argue very data-driven. And are you a very logical thinker that approaches problem very rationally and are able to break it down in a structured way. That's one thing, you know, but another thing from a more cultural perspective is like are you do take a lot of initiative? Are you extremely? Vicious are you able to tackle problems in times of great ambiguity? And are you able to make firm decisions even despite a lack of data a lack of research or a lack of support? Right? And those are very qualitative things that is very easy to identify. Once you start having a conversation with people but maybe people don't value quite as much other things are like are you super resourceful? Are you able to effectively motivate teams and Ali support around you know a common goal or a common vision and are you able to you know rally for support against competing priorities and it's another super important thing, but sort of take taking a side or aside from kind of more of a cultural stuff the interview process definitely has you know, a lot of structured questions to if you are going through the product manager interview process like Two parts of the interview or three parts, but the two more like structured formats are one product sense how well you're able to think about ideas and build products and the second is product execution. How well are you able to drive results? They might ask me questions like, you know, if you if Facebook were to go into the health care industry. What would you build huh? And that's a pretty ambiguous question. And if you just kind of Point Blank try to think of ideas of what would be a good be a good solution. And you might actually not come to the best realistic solution that Facebook Implement. So a question for you I would have sorted culture off is when you were preparing for the Facebook interview, for example, how are you preparing? So at first I went on glass door and looked at all of the interview questions that other people had put on Glassdoor through their experiences and sort of dislike had an idea of what to expect and I think I tried to do a few practice mocks at first just like without any practice or any preparation what I was able to deliver so that I had a baseline understanding of like what internally I had as my knowledge base. And then the second was actually just having a lot of discussions around relevant topics. So I find whenever you do mock interviews you tend to be in a very high-pressure situation where you're like kind of having what's the word like fight or flight responses and you're really just trying to say the perfect thing and not really allowing yourself to think through your answers get creative and you know develop new opinions or Perspectives on things so I actually had just like a lot of conversations about the industry with people like I would just you know, call somebody up and be like, hey, like let's talk about messenger. Like let's talk about why mestan is good. My messenger is bad. Like what could they be doing to make it better what our opportunities in the industry all of that? And so that really kind of got my brain fired up on just like interesting ideas that are creative and out there and it really pushed the boundaries of like what I thought about regularly so that gave me kind of a vocabulary of knowledge around the industry that could supplement, you know, a lot of my answers and then I think the final step was just looking at all the questions that people were posting on Glassdoor figuring out. What is the best structure to go about like those answers and there are a lot of like product management interview books out there and Provide you a lot of Frameworks. I think what's important is to understand the value of each framework. And what context is it becomes the most valuable and actually being very versatile and how you apply different parts of a framework to a different part of a question. So a lot of the times I wouldn't actually like answer a full question in a specific framework. I would just think about okay if somebody asked me this question, what are they? Looking for and what is the best structure in framing the problem framing the solution and like whatever how your next acute on the solution? So that was another part of the process and then obviously the practicing part which is mocking with as many people as possible so that you can not get too nervous during the actual interview and then apart from Gloucester where else can also do a mock interview. For example, where is a good place for me to find good mock interview questions? So there is this guy, I don't remember. I think his name is Jeremy limb. I could be wrong the book code and D conquer I think was one of the really good books that he wrote. He does like, you know, he has just been a button amount of books out there. What about cracking the what about cracking the p.m. Interview because I know crack in the coating material I use that for coding interviews. I find it quite as useful. I think mostly because a big portion of the book actually talks about like what to expect or you know, what are the differences amongst different companies and there's actually not that many practice questions and extensive example answers. I think a lot of the things that I think his name is Jeremy limb publishes has more dislike question answer the question answer German. I'll Google that afterwards and I'll add the link to the show. notes Yeah, and you know if I'll look it up to and see if I recorded a correctly awesome. So now so you're currently working at Facebook a company, which is Facebook is currently getting absolutely hammered in the media. And I know that in a lot of these tech companies Facebook Google they really value like Employee Engagement transparency all-hands meetings. Can you sort of walk us through or take us behind the scenes on like what's it like, you know where your company is getting like, you know strongly criticized in the media? And the next you guys are like an all-hands meeting or you have internal discussion forums. What are sort of the general mood in the company and what are people saying through this period Here has definitely been for the past year 2018 has probably been the worst press cycle for Facebook ever. And I think just generally compared to historically bad times for tech companies like this is pretty bad. I would be definitely lying to say that employee morale is not down like there is a lot of contention within the company as well and you know the same way that privacy issues or Russian involvement in elections and things That affect you know, the greater public employees will also perceive it in similar ways. They just have a bit more context the process that we tend to go through as a company is leadership is very communicative and they are very responsible and they understand how difficult a lot of these issues are and sometimes how unreasonable the Press could be but they are patient about what it is that they have to do to take control of a situation and in ensure that their employees do feel included and are able to address all of their questions and concerns. So you pretty much actually just by default Mark Zuckerberg hosts a QA every single week like every single week. So any employee can feel free to attend ask questions. What have you there's been a lot of dumb questions that's been thrown out and it's super entertaining to watch but also very serious interesting or serious good questions, but especially in terms of in times of very bad, press Cycles, they will hold a doc ad hoc committees or more extensive qas and then also bring in specific representation from leadership that actually have more, you know involvement with a certain issue to answer the questions that you have and also like the platform that we use internally as like our enterprise software is also Facebook, but just the work version of it, which means that it's incredibly open and really easy to To dice this disseminate information as well as contribute to the dialogue. So if you know, for example, you have an issue about the Integrity of our platform and how we are serving ads and whether or not we are surviving legitimate ads, for example, there are tons of groups that you can participate in raise your concerns questions and hopefully get some sort of resolve from leadership or you can figure out your own way to tackle the problem. That kind of like Segways the last piece which is that the first day at Facebook. We got the sticker like a laptop stickers saying this is your company now and quite frankly. It's true that Facebook is going through a hard time as an employee. You might not feel great about everything that has uncovered about the company, but at the same time you are actively a contributor of the company and so you can stand there and complain and you know, Like be dissatisfied or upset about maybe leadership not taking as much action or as much responsibility for a lot of things that are being called out or you can actually take action towards fixing the problem whether in a small way or in a big way if your product area is actually more overlapping so I think that's what's been happening internally at Facebook for me personally. It's actually more interested. In time and I really like being at Facebook in this time because it's where there is a lot more challenges. There's more complexity added to how we make decisions and by being at a company and Times of strain and difficulty. I think you're able to be exposed to a lot more learning opportunities as well. So yeah, I would say that's how Facebook approach is the Action, I do have good faith and Leadership of what they think is right and always taking the best action to do is right and as an employee, sometimes it is upsetting when I hear about certain things, but at the same time it's a really interesting time to contribute back to the company and fix some of the problems that have been called out. That was very well said if you ever decide to make a pivot from p.m. I think you should consider PR but I don't I'm just joking, but that is true. So it's like PR for products. Yeah, that was actually very well said answer. I like that answer. So I was actually thinking back. I think all three jobs you had right? I think you could say it was the result of almost like who you knew which is sort of a theory. I have to wear like networking in the people you have is like so important in life in general for people want to like get into the tech industry. You have any advice for them on how to network effectively? I would say death. I wouldn't actually say other than the Shopify job that it was really based on who I knew but actually presenting myself in a situation where yeah, it does actually appropriate way better way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah, like for example this brain station gig the reason I had met these brain station guys was I was trying to host the first-ever startup and Technology career fair at Western. It was super small and I feel like if they still have on there it's probably much bigger. It was like 13 companies or something and I happen to be talking with these green station guys. I was telling them how I didn't really feel like I had a competitive Advantage going into Ivy because There's no skill sets that made me stand out and they were like, hey come work for brain station. We can teach you how to code and that was a very organic conversation. That just came up. Yeah, but obviously I was able to present myself in that environment. Let me rephrase the question based on what you said. I guess the question could be how can someone put themselves in more opportunities? to succeed or is that is that what you said something about anyway, you know, I'm trying to say you can answer the question. I think going back to what I said about how I approached the Shopify opportunity, which is that in every interaction. I had with that hiring manager. I approached it in a value-added way where I didn't think about where I didn't really talk about what I was getting out of the opportunity. I didn't really bring out the fact that I wanted a job from him for the most part and I Is kept on trying to do things that were helpful to his day today and would actually add value to his job overall. I think that is the best way for you to present yourself and it's not necessarily the volume of people that you know, are you network with that? You're going to get opportunities from or for some people that is how it works. But for me, I'm very much a quality over quantity person and I try to ensure that for the the opportunities I'm really chasing after I do everything that I can to provide to present myself in a way that is clear that I have value to add very well said is like Facebook and that opportunity like I didn't really know anybody from Facebook. I didn't get the opportunity from any referrals or anything like that. I was at a networking event. I was deeply interested like the recruiter could tell and just like wanted to move to freaking Asia so badly to work with internet project and then they really about like saying hey, I really want to interview. I think what I said in the email was like hey, it was super awesome to talk to you about. You know, what Facebook is doing within the internet and Emerging Market areas. Like I am so passionate about emerging markets and I love how the internet works and I think it's been apparent through our conversation here is a portfolio of all the other things that backs that my passion around this kind of area and whatever and you know, I'd love to More I don't think I actually I don't think I asked for an interview opportunity at all. But I think by presenting yourself in a way where you're not trying to extract from people and you're trying to figure out how you can add value to another person's live or another organizations life that naturally presents you as a candidate that people want to accept or like engage with more so that would be my number one. The other thing I would say is just don't get yourself into situations where you're pursuing opportunities that you don't actually enjoy. Oh major key major key especially for Our Generation. Yeah, and I think especially being an IV if you already in IV, this is school, like there's huge pressure to get all the Consulting and like Investment Banking roles and there's not really an ample amount of that either and also to be quite Frank there shouldn't be an expectation that everyone wants those opportunities, but I think you know, I know a lot of people who just chased after those opportunities because it was accepted and they thought that they should want that even though it didn't actually make them happy or satisfied. So that really clearly shows and even if it doesn't clearly show like you're just not going to be able to exert as much effort pursuing opportunities that you don't actually like or feel passionate about then the opportunities that you really care about. So if you are just Frank with yourself and you know start early on moving the direction towards a career path that you're actually going to enjoy that's going to save you a lot of energy. Very well said I like that so now shifting gears a little bit. I have a question. I called the one the five and the 25. So he says the the idea behind this question is what would you like to be doing? Where do you see yourself a year from now five years from now twenty five years from now. Okay. So first of all, I would like to say that earlier on say in high school or early University. I was pretty like Calculated and what I was working on what was going to be the output of what was I what I was going to be working on and sort of devising my plan and strategy around like how I was going to attain what I wanted or the job that I wanted and that has shifted quite significantly in the past couple of years where I'm actually not very active and thinking about like what I'm going to do with the future. I don't necessarily go with the flow, but I Like listen to myself better and just be more aware of opportunities that come up and then seize the opportunity if it is something that's worthy. But to answer your question in an Ideal World currently, I think in a year or two, I definitely want to try something within the realm of startups and Entrepreneurship. I don't think that I can sustainably work for people. I love working with that. Facebook right now and I love the problems that I'm tackling and I honestly don't see myself believing in the short term but I have always had Nate desire to do something of my own and honestly to not have to work for anybody the for the rest of my life so might try startup of some sort in say five years or ten years. I think you know if I am somehow able to create a successful startup or You know try a bunch of times and fail to that's okay. I wouldn't actually be surprised if I change Industries so very big driving principle of how I operate is just that I'm pretty curious and I like change and I like to be exposed to new things and after a while I see patterns within certain industries or certain lines of work and then I got bored and I want to try something else so I would be surprised if I actually moved into a different. Current career. I've always been super interested in investigative journalism interesting work on Vice on HBO and they just go to like the coolest places not even the coolest places like sometimes it's really really dangerous like this girl went to war-torn Syria and was in the middle of the action trying to capture was going on and I just thought that was super interesting so investigative journalism, maybe somewhere in my life roadmap. I love food, so I've always thought that I would somehow be involved in the food industry whether it is that I like become a chef or like I own a restaurant or what have you that might be in the line too. But to be honest, I haven't thought that much about my life plan and I'm not super concerned about it either. Very nice response. So second last question I have is I got this question from the Gary vaynerchuk channel YouTube channel, and the question is what are you currently obsessed with? So this can be anything. It can be a YouTube channel Instagram account book activity and you devised a new exercise you've discovered at the gym anything. What are you currently obsessed with? hint, Sausalito Come on, I love that answer. I think you have to say that is he something else? Okay, okay. So that not only made us get really creative with the things that we could do. It also forced us to do really really dumb things that did not need to be done. But just for the sake of completing the pun we would do it. So one example is we thought marinated basically what we did was we went across the bridge to Marin Headlands for a hike and then we went to the Marina District. San Francisco to get marinara sauce on our pasta and then we went to a salon or like a hot tub and we like got marinated so that I think they running out. Hyundai so we have to figure out something else fun, but I would stay another late latest obsession is You know, I have expressed the fact that I am interested in pursuing a start-up in the future. I think that right now the market for startups is pretty saturated to be honest, like some of the most successful startups that are up and coming right now are all trying to solve very very Niche problems. Like, you know, another Facebook is probably not going to be coming out within the next Market cycle, but things like, you know, Better Insurance Solutions or like how to you know, optimize the real estate industry is kind of where the startup movement is going and I'm really having a hard time finding interesting problems that have not yet been solved yet. So my latest Obsession has been honestly just like diving into as many things as possible talking to random people and having random conversations. You generate ideas about like what are still certain problems that are not being soft mild unconventional needs that are not being met Etc and just kind of accumulating it. So that's my new obsession. That is very interesting. And the final question now is just general advice or anything you want to tell people maybe like reflecting back on the last 20-something years of your life. What would you say is probably like something you want to tell your younger self. I just general advice. Throughout our conversation is just to develop good self-awareness and critical thinking skills in. approaching the decisions that you make in life, right think good self-awareness is going to allow you to like prevent yourself from doing things that are not either good for your well-being or just a good use of your energy and it's going to allow you to go on the path that you should go on much more earlier and obviously like you're not just going to know what you want to do off the bat and then takes a lot of experience and sometimes I'm questioning what I'm doing and Always question you if I'm doing the right thing, but to have that constant reflection process and taking back your Reflections and applying it to your life is super important. The critical thinking part is just uniform. Contrary to what everybody is telling you is good or contrary to what other people believe is true really analyzing whether or not that is showered true to you and really really making sense for you. And if it's not then you know take your own lens on it and really create your own perspective on things. I would say the other thing that I would suggest to people is really be a good person in. General I know networking is a huge thing for people of in school or early career folks, but quite frankly, you're not going to engage with everybody that you've like had a networking and chat with or you had a coffee with I think it's better to develop lasting relationships. And I think the best relationships that are formed are situations where you actually have to work with somebody towards a common goal. Goal or interact with someone in some way. So people that you're working together on through projects or your manager at work or you know, somebody that you've seen is doing really cool things and you just decide to follow them around like I think those are more of the more meaningful and interactions that you can have and I would push you to Foster more of that and continue to maintain those relationships rather than constantly sinking out and trying to develop new but maybe Not as strong of networks anything else? Yeah, if you have any things okay, I was going to say that um the point where about self-awareness is very is a very good point. I don't know if the question I'm about to ask actually has an answer, but how can someone develop self-awareness or improve their self awareness? question because the space but I work in you know machine learning and like artificial intelligence is actually becoming big part of video video recognition, you know in classification all of that and For those of you who are Geeks out there self-awareness is actually one of the hardest principles to crack within computer science because you know, once a entity is able to gain self-awareness. That's kind of what we Define as reaching almost humanness, right? And I feel like I'm really going on a tangent here, but Yeah, the question is meant is more of a conclusion that they go on another tangent. But no like if you have something out of that I like you're going a really good point though. I feel bad for cutting you off now. That are not representative of the world correctly, but I would say to develop more self-awareness. I think you just need to Tried as objectively as possible. Look at situations and experiences that you had and you know, identify all the variables that were part of the situation and just think about like what you did in that situation and like what were the results of that situation and then also if you were to play that scene over again, and if you tried something differently what would have changed given similar variables or if a different variable? And just like just playing stimulations around your stimulations around your life and scenarios that have happened in your life is one good way to start. I think the other way is just I versifying the signals that you get from like understanding yourself and your actions, right? Like even though maybe you can be journaling at a coffee shop for like six hours about this recent interaction you had up with a co-worker that was negative. You know, you only have your perspective on like how you perceive that situation may be in that situation. You have a third party who is able to give their perspective on the situation. They can offer another perspective that is also valuable and has more noblin sites. Right? So that takes away from you. Just thinking about what you're doing and also getting other people to tell you what you're doing. But that is I think a very overly analytical way to approach the situation but quite frankly how I try to be better at being self-aware. I like that and I wouldn't say it's overly analytical I'd say it's the right amount of analytical And also to build on your your question to something else you can do that. I try to do to help me develop. My self-awareness is just reading up on cognitive biases. So like this is book influence by Robert see aldini. There's also someone I love called Charlie Munger. So just Google like different cognitive biases see which ones you use when you make decision the past and that's another great way to develop self-awareness. But anyway any thank you for your time. If someone were to reach out to you because they loved or you're saying they wanted to ask you questions. What's the best way for people to reach you? I would just message me on LinkedIn just search anything Facebook or something. There is three of us at Facebook name. Danny Zhang's just search like Annie Zhang Facebook product manager, and then I think I'll get get me. I'm not the best at responding, but I will try to get to people as quick as possible awesome and you thank thank you so much for your time.
Annie Zhang is a product manager at Facebook, working on the Facebook Watch team. Before that she was a PM at Shopify and the first employee at Brainstation. Annie graduated from Western with a Philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) degree after declining her acceptance into the Ivey business school program at Western University. We talk about how she landed the Facebook and Shopify PM roles and being the first employee at a high growth startup. What it was like working inside Facebook during the fake news controversy, why she declined her acceptance into prestigious Ivey HBA program and chose a regular Western degree, how to develop self-awareness and much more. Here are some highlights of the interview. Note: This transcript has been summarized for brevity, if you would like to help transcribe the full interview, edit videos or help Atila TV in any way, please send an email to tomiwa@atila.ca. [1:24]  Why did you decide not to go into Ivey? [7:45]   How did the Shopify opportunity come about [14:37]   How did you get the job at Facebook? [35:05]   How to prepare for product manager interviews and the best books to use? [39:07]   What’s it like inside Facebook during the fake new controversy? [43:29]   What is Annie currently obsessed with? [58:14]   How to develop self awareness and reduce cognitive bias [1:04:10]   Final piece of advice [1:02:00]   Links:      Annie’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annie-zhang-ab254472   Annie’s blog post about her Shopify Role: https://medium.com/inside-shopify/shopify-you-mean-spotify-1-2-b7469e9d7e4d    The PM Book Annie mentioned during the episode to help her prepare for the interview:             Decode and Conquer: Answers to Product Management Interviews by Lews Lin: https://www.lewis-lin.com/decode-and-conquer/        Decode and Conquer on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2sXQMZX            Cracking the PM Interview: http://www.crackingthepminterview.com/    Cracking the PM Interview on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Bdtd3S    Charlie Munger’s 25 cognitive biases to help develop self awareness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqzcCfUglws  Summary of Charlie Munger’s talk: https://www.allencheng.com/25-cognitive-biases-charlie-munger/ 