Product Management: A Lived Experience
How a bunch of PM conferences got me tripping on my life experiences...
"Otologbabukwegi on your head" is what my mom say
Gorilla on the beat, I go Harambe
Stacy Adams head-to-toe on my prom day
Two kids, life wilder than Deante
Before I die, I'm tryna get a verse from André
Lyrics from EAT - Tobe Nwigwe & FAT
Kuwait gets hot, like really hot, it averaged 60 degree celsius (that’s 140 Fahrenheit) last year in the middle of the city (this is not in the desert, folks!). The heat along with the fact that my family could not afford to buy basic spices at home meant I was left to doing things that did not cost much and would keep me indoors. Music was one of those things. Art in it’s true natural form is democratic, free, and inclusive.
Then there was “Desert Storm” aka The Gulf War that took place, and there was a large American presence that seeped through the very airwaves and landed as American HipHop and Rap in my young and impressionable ears. I grew up listening to the likes of Lil Kim, Missy Elliot, Will Smith, Nas, Wutang Clan, Baha men and much more.
I’ve had a wonderful, strange and complex upbringing, riddled with ironies and contradictions (think something along the lines of: study hard, you need to study to become something in life, but you can’t realistically become an Aeronautical Engineer or a business owner because that’s too hard for women!). That space and mentality is so hard to process for an adult, let alone understand or accept for a child that is still a work in progress literally and figuratively speaking from every angle - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.
So I kept busy, taking these statements at face value and chugging along on a daily with my music and my studies. I was shy and nothing really made much sense to me growing up, luckily, I was pensive early on, deep in worry about the meaning and purpose of life, the meaning of emotions, of relationships and more. I remember getting into a heavy argument, aged 12, with kids in my class about the existence of God and my hypothesis on how life might have come to being. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, thank you Hegel!
Sometime around the age of 7 my parents made friends with well to do doctor’s that were moving out of Kuwait and back to the US, and having just become empty-nesters, the doctors decided to drop a truck load of children and adults books at yours truly. I remember bursting through the door into the 25 square meter house that we rented out and seeing mountains of books. My joy knew no bounds, that day was magical for me, and it continues to be one of my fondest memories. This was a start of a new era, I did not only have music but I also had books to keep me company in the blistering heat that could kill.
I dabbled in academia: specifically in science, music, the desktop computer at home & reading material of any sort (digital or analog). Since we could not afford books, I kept to reading content online mostly and borrowing books from friends at school that could afford to buy them (bootlegged as often as they were).
This amalgamation of interests born out of boredom, lack of financial freedom and downright sexism & the patriarchy led to something beautiful, it led to me.
Life in it’s lived form is an absurd phenomenon, you are constantly swimming in the push and pull of events combined with ideologies. Constantly battling several demons at once - Greed vs. Selflessness? Aggression vs. Assertion? Stoicism vs. Cynicism? the proverbial Good vs. Evil?, the list of antonyms and synonyms are endless and we have more opinions than we have people. And while we are in the midst of a swim, we do not see the longer arch the wave takes, or can not even fathom which direction the ocean is taking us. We are merely a speck in endless water, layered top-down, vast and almost infinite, suspended in space-time.
What does all this have to do with the PM craft though, you must be wondering? I promise I am getting to it, just hodl as they say, the title is not for clickbait.
Through out the odd twists my life has taken, where a lot of the choices I made (think Neo) were out of constraints I faced & limited options, or the sheer lack thereof, and I, as bright as I may seem, was ignorant and blind to the trajectory possible and did not actively and ambitiously carve out this path for myself. My life has been a stack of “yes / no’s” on top of a foundation of chaos.
What many people do not realize is how poverty & affliction limit your thinking deeply. You do not even “think” in the form of opportunities or possibilities because you are so focused on keeping tabs on what you have and how you may lose it. You think of what is “feasible” and “pragmatic”, you do not “dream”. There is no vision in your mind of you achieving any form of greatness often times because that seems like a fantasy movie. And this limits us as people, it limits our ability to achieve greatness because we have already buried ourselves before we even try to live.
Eventually my journey took me to China for a bachelors degree in Electronics Engineering, and the country bursting with life and the possibility of it has been the 2nd biggest blessing in my war-ridden experience (the first being born into an educated family). In my time in China, I travelled extensively, studied and read voraciously, talked to literally anyone and everyone: exposing myself rapidly and constantly to Africans, Europeans, East Asians, Latin Americans, North Americans and more (I even made friends with people from Samoa and Cape Verde). Somehow, and in one of life’s strange coincidences during my last year in university, I crossed paths (like literally bumped into her mistakenly on a road) with a woman from a software company who asked me which languages I could speak, to which I cheekily responded with “Which language do you want?”. From that moment on, I have been on a software journey that continues to this day. I applied for and got accepted into an internship at her company, and I fell truly, madly, deeply in love with the process of build and discovery in software.
A large part of my first years in my career I was plagued with so many stifling emotions: imposter syndrome, shame, fear, anger.
I felt afraid that I was a woman in a man’s world; meek, docile, unable to say no or make someone upset
I felt shame that I could not speak fluent Chinese and I worked for a Chinese company, the language barrier weighed on me like that gripping of your chest in deeper bouts of anxiety on a daily basis
I felt like an imposter because I did not go to Harvard, MIT, Oxford etc. I constantly looked at my colleagues who had studied in these fancy schools, did amazing research and achieved so much and I had not, and on top of this, I felt upset that I was an electronics major working in a software company.
I felt anger that I was not on par with many people not because of a lack of ability, drive, hard work or smarts, but merely because I was born poor, and was from a country that was in endless war. I felt angry that I could not afford to go to ANU like my former high school mates, or Lausanne, Switzerland or Berlin.
I felt little (and big) constantly.
I spent a lot of time questioning my abilities, feeling worried and anxious that someone was about to fire me and that my work no matter how quickly I completed, no matter how well it was received, was a farce and that I will soon be informed that I was not good enough for this space that I absolutely obsessed over, and coveted. I told myself that all this was grounded in fact, and therefore, I am not plagued by “imposter syndrome”, that there is logic to my thinking and that Hegelianism & Cartesianism reigned my realms.
Moving to Australia was hard for me, I could not stomach all the privilege I saw everywhere and, most importantly, inwardly. I struggled to accept that I had come this far and that I was making this money while my cousins dodged bombs and mines in Kabul. I fell into a deep depression whilst trying to make sense of my job and the new language that I had to work in after 7.5 years of Mandarin (so much so that I had begun dreaming and partially thinking in Mandarin).
Speaking to my colleagues about my perplexing and isolated, depressive feelings and my inability to cope with the change in environment, one my peers said something that struck me:
“Just because you have travelled a lot in the past, does not mean that this time it will also be easy”
And upon the forceful urge of another colleague that has since then become a close friend, I started going to therapy and taking cardio more seriously. Soon after, I moved to Atlassian and began working with the lovely Commerce team. I also began practicing yoga in building 341 with our teacher Alice Browning every week.
I guess when your stars align
You do like the solar system and plan it out
The combination of (an amazing work place & team) + (yoga) + (therapy) + (cardio) and something about the time and weather began to lift my spirits. Over time I have come to understanding some core fundamentals in my career and, my life, and how these two are inextricably linked forever. Therefore, I am writing this blog to make a case about how lived experiences improve your PM craft.
Fundamentals of life & being a PM
My life and background does not inhibit me, it has actually boosted the following aspects in my personality (and therefore, positively impacted my career)
- Creativity
- Resilience
- Empathy
- AdaptabilityMy love for art, music and books are my secret weapons to being successful in my career.
I have learnt how to combine interesting themes and make connections between disparate systems, categories and topics through rap & hiphop. I am constantly amazed at the wicked lyrics that Frank Ocean, Donald Glover, Kendrick Lamar, J Cole, Nicki Minaj and more drop. The parables, the onomatopoeia, the combination of politics, childhood, pop culture and more are an endearing amalgamation that speaks to the craziness that I live in. Think building a product when facing so many different moving parts.
I have learnt how abstraction gives meaning to complexity, and how art is therapeutic for humans. Think design & UX in product. Think relating to and moving from tech & design into product & strategy.
I have learnt how to dream through books & I have learned how to process difficult moments through the difficulties that the protagonists/antagonists face. Think customer pain & friction.
Philosophy is not dead. We live on the edge with software, and when it comes to decision making, we must seek out philosophy to reflect on actions and the implications of our decisions.
Yoga & Therapy have taught me to accept emotions and feelings of all sorts and to feel them as a way to recover. Wanting to “never feel pain” is wanting to not be alive, and life in and of itself is an experience, it is meant to be holistic, all encompassing, contradictory and perplexing.
This has also helped me understand how emotions can really impact an experience, or a relationship in any form: software, stakeholder management, customers, communication.
The more range I have in my hobbies, interests and time spent outside of of work, the better I get at understanding and being a Product Manager.
My electronics background, my mixed race self, my travels through a foreign land multitasking in different languages, my contradictions and more have helped give me a really wide and broad range, that according to a heck ton of research consolidated in David Epstein’s book - Range is what helps scientists, artists, sportsmen get better at their craft.
When previously I felt fear, shame, anger and like an imposter, I have since then come to a realization that I am unique the way Kendrick Lamar’s voice is in his music, and that uniqueness helps me every day be a better person & a better PM.
I would like to end this with a parting quote from the greatest, Bob Dylan:
I'm just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones
And them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones
I go right to the edge, I go right to the end
I go right where all things lost are made good again
I sing the songs of experience like William Blake
Everything's flowing all at the same time
I live on a boulevard of crime
I drive fast cars, and I eat fast foods
I contain multitudes
I'll keep the path open, the path in my mind
I’ll see to it that there's no love left behind
I'll play Beethoven's sonatas, Chopin’s preludes
I contain multitudes
P.S. - I hope you noticed all the easter eggs I peppered in this blog post. There are tons of references to music, art, philosophy, smilies and puns and I hope for the ones that you did notice, it made you smile.
Your ideas here are beautifully pulled together. The depictions are vivid and sharply contrasting: past limitations against potential and possibility. Thank you for sharing this inspiring perspective.
Ola Ms. Nido,
Wishing you the very best from the Great White North!!!