Sep 20
Getting Turned Down By Google Helped Me Get Hired At Etsy —
A product manager explains how trying to oversell his technical chops to Google helped him switch gears while interviewing at Etsy.
Aug 25
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging —
I recently finished reading Sebastian Junger’s excellent new book Tribes: on
Homecoming and Belonging
[https://jason-shen.ghost.io/%22http://amzn.to/2bqyqJL/%22]. It’s a slim volume
that addresses something really important: how hardship builds group cohesion
and solidarity.
In my keynote speech
[https://jason-shen.ghost.io/%22https:
Aug 17
An Open Letter to Managers of Women —
This article first appeared on Medium
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180929094629/https://medium.com/@JasonShen/an-open-letter-to-managers-of-women-58b1655943ce#.i9jvjj4kq]
, where it has received over 205,000 views. It has been republished to Quartz
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180929094629/http://qz.com/771448/managers-its-time-to-pay-women-what-theyre-worth-with-titles-to-match/]
, Upworthy
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180929094629/
Jul 20
Product Insights from Pokémon GO —
As you probably have heard, Nintendo has partnered with game developer Niantic
to launch a wildly popular game for iOS and Android called Pokémon GO. The game
has already reached over 21M daily active users
[https://www.surveymonkey.com/business/intelligence/pokemon-go-biggest-mobile-game-ever/]
, dominated the in-game purchasing market
[https://intelligence.slice.
Jul 11
What the Black Lives Matter Movement Means to Me —
The events of the last week have been horrifying, infuriating, and deeply
saddening.
Two black men, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile, have been shot dead by
police officers. Men who were not resisting arrest, not posing a threat, and who
should not be dead. Their final, awful moments, filmed on
Jun 15
Beyond the 10,000 Hour Rule —
We’re all familiar with the 10,000 hour rule, which was made famous by Malcolm
Gladwell in his 2010 bestseller Outliers: The Story of Success
[https://web.archive.org/web/20171128084400/http://amzn.to/1ZMKchl]. In it,
Gladwell makes the argument that 10,000 hours of practice is a
Jun 01
Delivering My First Keynote Speech —
The story of my first major paid speech and what I learned
May 31
30 —
Photo by Martin Reisch on Unsplash
About a week ago I celebrated a major milestone and turned *gasp* 30. Over the
last few years, I’ve kept very careful track of how much time I had left until
thirty, which was the age I thought I needed to have “made
May 24
The New Napster —
There has been an explosive new development in how scientific research is read
and distributed. It’s name is Sci-Hub
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181007100235/https://sci-hub.cc/].
Founded in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan (who was, at the time, a 22 year-old
graduate student based in Kazakhstan), the site
Jan 30
What Makes Effective Problem-Solving Teams —
We all want to work in teams that exhibit high performance and solve problems
effectively. But while it’s often easier to understand what drives individual
performance, team performance is a more complex activity.
There is some great research done by folks at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Google
that shows
Jan 24
Readership Survey —
Since it’s been a few years since my last readership survey
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180407231456/https://www.jasonshen.com/2011/results-of-the-2011-readership-survey/]
, I decided to poll members of the Art of Ass-Kicking insider’s list to see who
they are and why they read the blog.
Here are
Jan 15
Play to Your Strengths —
Why you'll never win by staying on defense
Jan 11
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else —
I recently finished reading The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps
Everything Else
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160921075050/http://amzn.to/1VCM2PO] in business
by Patrick Lencioni. You’ve definitely heard Lencioni’s other books: Death by
Meeting [http://amzn.to/1La6Uxa] and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
[https:
Jan 04
Learning from Volkswagen —
Volkswagen has been eviscerated after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
announced in September that VW had installed “defeat devices” to cheat on their
emissions testing
[http://qz.com/507767/volkswagen-admits-that-its-cheating-software-is-in-11-million-cars-worldwide/]
.
It turns out least 500,000 diesel cars made by VW were rigged with software
[http://www.nytimes.com/
Dec 22
The Biggest Challenge With Building Products is Uncertainty —
I was recently asked to share my views on three questions around product
management for the UsabilityTools [http://blog.usabilitytools.com/] blog. My
answers are now published along with thoughts from 46 other product managers
[http://blog.usabilitytools.com/how-to-be-an-amazing-product-manager/] and I
thought I’d share my response here as
Nov 16
The 10x Job Application —
The 10x job application is when you get creative and build something potential employers can't ignore. Here's how to do it.
Oct 28
The Rise and Fall of Product Lines —
I’ve noticed a pattern when it comes to the growth of certain popular products —
both physical and media [1]. The pattern looks like this:
Company Develops a Breakthrough Product
A unique product hits the market. It looks or operates in a way that feels
distinct in an important way.
Oct 02
First Impressions at Etsy —
Since first publishing this post in October, our team has shipped the first
product I had a hand in (in November). It’s called Shop Updates
[http://etsy.com/shop-updates]. You can read more about how the product came to
be from this blog post
[https://blog.etsy.com/news/
Sep 24
The Value in Ongoing Conversations —
When I was in DC working as a Presidential Innovation Fellow
[https://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows/meet-the-fellows#section-round-2],
one of our objectives was to drive adoption for President Obama’s Executive
Order
[https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/09/executive-order-making-open-and-machine-readable-new-default-government-]
to make all government information open, freely accessible, and
Sep 24
The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age —
My reading notes The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1625275773/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1625275773&linkCode=as2&tag=helpyour-20&linkId=QLOVYSURY5HDAKLQ]
by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh.