Honestly, define key terms and make anki flashcards. Not gonna give you deep understanding BUT will make the roadmap lf terminology and probably thw structure of the company and the product very concrete very quick and so the nuance will come much faster.
Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?
61–70 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?
#62Are you Product Marketing or Content Marketing/Demand Gen? First - recognize that there is a significant difference between the two. Second - chat with peer PMMs, Field Marketers, Growth PMs, etc to get good tips and advice. Finally, I recommend reading Monetizing Innovation [0] in order to understand the Packaging and Pricing portion of Product Marketing. For Content Marketing/Demand Gen, I found Hacking Growth to b…
OP isn’t new to marketing, just this particular industry.
Re: Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?
#63[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?
#64When i have joined a new project, i have asked for a "safari" from one or a few senior people. Show me "the big five" of your area. Pretty simple to find time and willingness for generally, and it's been a good amount of info to digest at once.
Re: Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?
#65I start taking notes and have endless questions for everyone.
By the end of the first days it is clear to me that most people there, even some veteran product managers have a very incomplete ideas.
By the end of the first few weeks I generally end up being the most knowledgeable person in the team (or at least among the top) because generally most people don't give two damns and are there for the paycheck so I'm reminded of how low the bar is in pretty much any environment.
A nice side effect of my approach is that you end up learning a terrific amount about the other team mates and you force people into questioning their knowledge themselves.
Re: Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?
#66I have a very specific (and pretty easy) strategy for this when I join a new org. Technically you could do this at any time, but you generally have a "grace window" when you're new where people are happy to go out of their way to meet you and teach you. First, meet 1 on 1 with every member of your immediate team. This of course serves as a "get to know you" meet, but your real goal is to get them to explain their wor…
> Put aside whatever ego you may have, and just get into a beginner's/learning mindset. Ask all the stupid questions.
This so much.
Play fool to catch wise sung Bob Marley and it works wonders.
Re: Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?
#67[dead]
Re: Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?
#68You should always be aligned to the revenue mission of the company. The mission is to earn money AND enhance the reputation of the company.
Scenario 1:
My first job out of college was developing automated pretty HTML for emails for this marketing company in the hospitality industry. It was still start-upish at that time, so the business was centered around account management and business relations. I was hired to be a developer, so I found problems to solve. When those solutions saved business relationships I could walk on water. I got good at task lists and account management even though account management was handled elsewhere.
Scenario 2:
I once did cyber defense for the US Army back before Army cyber was a thing. I started getting pretty good at it until I was promoted out of that organization into a logistics organization. All that cyber expertise didn't matter so much anymore, I had to be a manager in a group that different things. I was basically a people manager of a help desk plus other stuff. In order to protect my staff I had to learn logistics. I had to know how to do other people's jobs so that I could push back with better answers when leadership made decisions or other managers tried to poach my people. I have now been in logistics long enough I know the management of logistics operations better than many of the logistics managers even though I am just the IT guy. This provides me a lot of pull.
Scenario 3:
I spent a lot of time as a developer in the online travel agency space. I learned a lot about the retail side of e-commerce and the behavior of travel planning. As a junior developer I was promoted to a senior in about 2 years because I the A/B test guy for this major .com brand. I learned to master DOM traversal without abstraction layers so I could write tests really fast that did amazing things and were often more durable than the actual real code later released to production. Because I had also learned the business of e-commerce and the travel industry I could also design better tests and than many of the business owners recommended. So long as velocity, durability, and quality of test remained high I could walk on water.
Re: Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?
#69Controversial take from me. Also this was more in the context of legacy finance tech whereas you are in fintech. I used to work in tech at an investment bank. When I first joined I was all starry eyed and eager to learn about the business, even to the point of trying to get a CFA (which some of my colleagues apparently had done). Fast forward many years, I came to the conclusion that the limited time I had was best s…
I think this isn't controversial on the tech side, but on the business side it is absolutely 100% more important to deeply understand the business and build a meaningful, useful network than it is to half-ass your way on the tech side. As careers advance in business, doors to new opportunities open primarily based on one's reputation & network, so it pays dividends to focus on cultivating those starting as early as possible. "Managing up" should not be an epithet, but a way of life.
Re: Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?
#709 years and you consider yourself a „senior” and you still think about how you „feel” left behind? What do you expect? Processes take time - all of them.
I ventured into a new domain 3 years ago and got comfortable within one year. Then found out I know nothing around year two. Then again. Back and forth. True seniors, experts, whatever you call them - they don’t get comfortable.