About The Product Execution Interview
1. Introduction to the Series on Product Execution Interviews
Product execution interviews have become more prevalent over time, increasingly adopted by top companies like Meta, Google, Lyft, DoorDash, Pinterest, and Coinbase. These interviews are expanding across the industry, becoming a critical part of the hiring process for product manager jobs. In this series, we will delve deep into what these execution interviews are, why they matter, and what companies are looking for. We’ll explore different types of product manager interview questions you might encounter, strategies on how to answer them, and provide real examples to illustrate key points.
2. Why Product Execution and Analytics Matter
2.1 The Importance of Metrics at Facebook
My first encounter with product execution interviews was at Facebook, and it quickly became clear why these interviews are crucial for product manager positions. Facebook operates on metrics; it’s one of the world's top companies in terms of using data to run their business. Imagine a dashboard for your car, but for the entire company. Every team at Facebook has a flat-screen TV above their work area displaying their key metrics, showing trends over days, weeks, and months, and how these metrics perform against expectations.
Every morning, whether you’re an engineer, designer, product manager, or data scientist, you can instantly see how your product is doing. Are we on track to hit our goals for the quarter? Did something happen last night that drastically changed our metrics, requiring immediate investigation? If we have an experiment running, we’re closely monitoring its progress to understand what it’s telling us. Metrics are infused into the day-to-day lives of product managers at the world's big companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Figuring out the right metrics and how to use them is an integral part of the product manager job role.
2.2 Metrics for Long-Term Planning, Goal-Setting, and Motivation
Teams at big companies usually set out to accomplish some mission, such as building the world's most successful podcast platform or creating a social network to connect people across the globe. These missions drive the formulation of North Star metrics to measure success. For instance, if your goal is to be the best platform for podcasts, you might track the number of listeners, the number of podcast creators, and even their monetization on the platform.
Setting the North Star and then defining ambitious goals happens regularly during quarterly, half-yearly, or annual planning sessions. Teams look at their North Star metrics and set ambitious targets for the next period, which motivates them to innovate and find new ways to achieve their goals. This goal-setting process cascades throughout the company as the success of the broader organization is disaggregated into the success of individual teams by using metrics that add up. For example, if you’re trying to get total listening time to go up as a North Star metric, you might look at total daily active users times the number of sessions per user times session duration. Then imagine three different teams trying to drive each one of these metrics.
This goal-setting process also ties back into performance, where the team's performance and everyone's individual performance evaluation is tied to the team's success metrics. If the team succeeds in achieving its targets, there may be bonuses. If not, the outcomes might be less favorable. If a team sets its metrics wisely, it aligns everyone's incentives with delivering more value to their products. However, if vanity metrics or poor indicators of long-term success are used, team members might game the metrics for personal gain, which doesn’t help and may even harm user value. For example, encouraging accidental clicks or sign-ups just to drive up one metric can lead to poor user retention and a negative overall experience.
2.3 Experimentation
Metrics are also vital for product decisions, especially through rigorous experimentation. At any given moment, a big tech company is running thousands of experiments worldwide, testing everything from button colors to new features. These experiments affect millions of users, and teams use metrics to detect even small yet statistically significant differences between test and control groups to decide how best to improve their products.
For example, if you believe changing the wording of a button will increase clicks, you run a test with a number of different options to see which one performs the best. It’s not just about tracking clicks; it’s about measuring the right metrics that indicate success without negative side effects. If a change increases engagement with one feature but decreases overall usage or revenue, it’s not a win. Coming up with a balanced set of metrics that give a holistic view of the product's value is an art and a science and part of the daily cycle of experimentation.
2.4 Monitoring and Maintaining Performance
Finally, metrics are crucial for keeping the trains running on time. If there’s a sudden drop in a key metric in a specific region, like the Philippines, a subset of the team will immediately investigate. Similarly, unexpected increases are scrutinized to understand and replicate the positive change. Data science teams and product managers constantly monitor these metrics to keep their finger on the pulse of the product’s health.
2.5 Mimicking Real-World Scenarios in Interviews
Product execution interviews aim to replicate these real-world scenarios. They test how well you can use metrics to set goals, conduct experiments, and keep everything running smoothly. These interviews assess your ability to think critically about metrics, make data-driven decisions, and ensure the success of a product through effective execution.
3. Overview of Product Execution Interviews
Product execution interviews aim to mimic the day-to-day experience of working with metrics within a limited 30 to 40-minute session. You will face scenarios that a product manager regularly encounters, such as setting goals, managing trade-offs, making product decisions, and understanding unexpected metric movements. These interviews test your ability to handle data-driven situations effectively.
3.1 Which Companies Use Product Execution Interviews?
Several leading tech giants have adopted product execution interviews as a core part of their hiring process. Officially part of the Meta and Google interview cycles, these interviews have spread across the industry. Execution-type questions are now common at companies like Lyft, Uber, LinkedIn, Instacart, Pinterest, Coinbase, DoorDash, and even at startups with product managers who have big tech experience, such as OpenAI, Brex, Carta, and more.
Here are a few examples of product execution questions asked by these companies:
3.1.1 Example Meta Product Interview – Execution Questions:
You are a Netflix Product Manager. Netflix is about to launch a podcast product. Why would Netflix want to launch this product? How would you set goals and success metrics for it
You are the Product Manager for Facebook Jobs - a product meant to help people find jobs. How would you measure success? What are the pros and cons of different metrics?
Imagine you are a Meta Product Manager responsible for the Workchat app. What metrics would you track? If engagement goes up but adoption goes down, what do you do?
3.1.2 Example Google Product Manager Interview – Execution Questions:
You are Google’s Product Manager for Workspace. How would you set goals and metrics? How would you increase engagement?
What is one product you use often? Which top 3 metrics would you track for it and why?
You are a Senior Product Manager at Google, working on Search. An Engineer has come up with an algorithm to improve Search snippets - the text that shows under text results. How would you evaluate whether to ship this new algorithm to production?
3.1.3 Example Lyft Product Manager Execution Questions:
Imagine you were hired as a Lyft Product Manager responsible for a bike/scooter share program. You are testing out a new one-month free trial geared towards students. How would you evaluate the success of the trial?
You are a Product Manager at TaskRabbit - working on a freelance marketplace. What metrics would you use on your dashboard to track performance?
How would you design a dashboard for the C-Suite at Spotify?
3.1.4 Example Coinbase Product Execution Questions:
You’ve been hired for a Product Manager role at Coinbase, responsible for the homepage. What metrics would you track, and how would you set goals for the team?
Imagine you’re a PM for AirBnB Experiences. How would you set success metrics and goals?
You are the Spotify Product Manager responsible for podcasts. What success metrics and goals would you set for the product?
4. What Companies Typically Look For in These Interviews
Companies are looking for candidates who can navigate metrics skillfully. Key attributes include:
Aligning metrics with mission: Define metrics that align with the mission and are meaningful indicators of success.
Familiarity with metrics definitions: Clearly define your metrics. For example, what counts as an active user, a session, or a meaningful interaction?
Understand different types of metrics: Discuss the pros and cons of different types of metrics, such as averages, total values, medians, and V90.
Long-Term Goals and Motivation: Use metrics to set ambitious long-term goals and motivate the team.
Informed Trade-Off Decisions: Make data-driven decisions when faced with trade-offs - e.g., launch decisions, cross-functional conflicts.
Root Cause Analysis: Analyze data to identify and resolve underlying issues.
Product execution interviews will present questions that touch on these scenarios, providing opportunities to showcase your data-handling skills.
5. Coming up next in the Series
In the upcoming chapters, we will examine the specifics of product execution interviews in detail. We will cover various types of questions, provide frameworks to help you think through these challenges, delve into specific question types, and offer example questions and answers.
Our goal is to equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to excel in product execution interviews and secure your next product manager job
