Kassen Qian

You’re a janitor: You do as much of the dirty work as possible so everyone else doesn’t have to (so the team operates more efficiently)

Cross-functional teams: people can work on different parts of a system in parallel.

There is just the feeling that it should all be exceptional. We should push for an extreme quality bar on all of the fronts.

But an orientation toward storytelling and vision can sometimes cause challenges with execution : The only new product launch that succeeded was Airbnb.com. Every other big launch over the last eight years has actually been a complete flop.

Another thing is a sense of urgency. The company is especially dedicated to moving very, very fast .

1. Know Your Team's Dunbar Number : Building real relationships both broadly and deeply within the company while not overextending. Engineers should have a keen and current understanding of not only what the work is, but also the decisions behind each product feature. Context is king for cross-functional teams.

The flow: Think It = figure out what type of product we are building and why. Build It = create a minimum viable product that is ready for real users. Ship It = gradually roll out to 100% of all users, while measuring and improving. Tweak It = Continuously improve the product. This isn't really an end state; the product stays in Tweak It until it i... See more

You’re an inventor : Great PMs are usually creative types, who can generate and churn through many ideas all at once, to arrive at solutions to difficult and multi-faceted problems.