The Hard Parts of Growth
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Making it through a work fire
When I’m in the middle of what feels like a fire — whether it’s a small crisis at work or navigating how fast our industry and world are changing — I…
Ami Vora
Jun 22
42
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Making it through a work fire
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Recognizing the tradeoff between a tangible benefit and an intangible cost
One of the hardest trade-offs we make as product managers — and as humans — is between a tangible benefit and an intangible cost (or vice versa). When…
Ami Vora
Jun 16
27
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Recognizing the tradeoff between a tangible benefit and an intangible cost
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Reframing “Giving myself what I need is selfish” to “Giving myself what I need is a service to the people around me”
This past winter, I was exhausted. Having a third kid during the pandemic, working through another eventful year at WhatsApp, and scaling our teams left…
Ami Vora
Jun 8
34
1
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Reframing “Giving myself what I need is selfish” to “Giving myself what I need is a service to the people around me”
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Making my calendar work for me
When I first started managing, I expected that I’d magically have more time since I could delegate important problems to people on my team. But team…
Ami Vora
Jun 1
50
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Making my calendar work for me
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Find your central product metaphor
When I’m building a product, I think a lot about what it should feel like. What’s the best analogy or metaphor I can come up with to describe that…
Ami Vora
May 18
31
5
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Find your central product metaphor
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Onboarding a new leader onto your team (or joining a team as a new leader yourself)
How many times have you seen a senior industry leader who's done amazing things in their past roles come into a new company or team and...struggle…
Ami Vora
May 11
54
4
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Onboarding a new leader onto your team (or joining a team as a new leader yourself)
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Leadership hack: Upgrade my self-image from "1.0" to "2.0" (and repeat)
One of the most useful self-hacks I’ve found is to think of my skills in terms of upgrade cycles — shipping a “new version” of myself frequently, with…
Ami Vora
May 4
37
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Leadership hack: Upgrade my self-image from "1.0" to "2.0" (and repeat)
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Lessons I learned from becoming a manager
When I first became a manager I thought it’d be an easier, better version of my individual contributor role. I’d get more done, and everyone would…
Ami Vora
Apr 27
57
6
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Lessons I learned from becoming a manager
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Turning “What a failure” into “What a useful experiment”
A few years ago, I was in a big meeting with a ton of senior execs, and I was trying to point out a weakness in our product. I could feel the group…
Ami Vora
Apr 20
41
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Turning “What a failure” into “What a useful experiment”
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It’s not prioritization until it hurts
Early in my career, I remember asking the most senior engineer I worked with to join an urgent meeting that week. They agreed. But when I sent the…
Ami Vora
Apr 13
51
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It’s not prioritization until it hurts
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6 ways to get user empathy without leaving your house
I always feel more confident making product decisions when I have a clear picture of the user. If I can feel what they feel, I know I’ll make better…
Ami Vora
Apr 5
25
3
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6 ways to get user empathy without leaving your house
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If we can make a product work for *anyone*, it usually works better for *everyone*
One of the hardest things about building a product like WhatsApp is that, as a development team, we’re primarily not building for ourselves. Instead we…
Ami Vora
Mar 29
33
3
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If we can make a product work for *anyone*, it usually works better for *everyone*
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