Snippet 4: Product Jobs, Pudding, Languages, and Learning to Negotiate
Updates on next longer form posts, PdM roles, and fun media
Hey folks,
If you’re here for the product jobs, scroll down to the "Product Roles" section!
I’m back on the East coast yet again for the holidays! Although the weather has been spookily warm, it’s been great to reconnect with a lot of friends and family I haven’t seen in awhile. I even got a chance to head back to Philly for a little bit to see some folks. I would not recommend riding mass transit for more than 8 hours in a day though…
Aside from life updates, I have a few updates for my newsletter before I move onto the normal stuff for snippets.
Updates
First off, I’ll be adding product management job listings in my snippets. If you read my last post, you’ll know I started my Product Manager Recruiting Coaching Consultancy and I want to ensure that all my readers have ample opportunity to apply to jobs that use the skills they learn here. I’ll be adding in 5-10 internships and 5-10 full time jobs so read on to see any opportunities that may be interesting to you : )
The other update is that my next two longer form articles will likely be a bit delayed. The first piece will focus on using GenAI to create “new” music from retired artists. All I’m going to say is that you should listen to some of lyrical lofi rapper Samsa’s music to prepare.
(If you liked this song, you might want to check out my piece on dating apps ; p)
The second longer form article is likely to be more of a series of articles (similar to my second brain article series which you can read parts 1 and 2 in the linked numbers). I’m planning on learning full stack web dev and Azure in the context of web dev to build a tool to help people move more easily.
I decided it’d be a fun way to both learn for the job (I am a product manager in Microsoft Azure) and get some hands on experience going from zero to one with a product. The generative AI article should come out sometime in January and the timeline for the moving tool is TBD.
Now onto your regularly scheduled programming!
Product Roles
Some product roles I found on the internet. If you’d like coaching on how to get these roles, click the button below to check out my coaching services.
Product Internships
NVIDIA - Go-To-Market Product Manager Intern - Posted ~7 Days Ago
Adobe - 2024 Intern - Product Manager - Posted 10/30
Intel - Product Manager Intern
Dropbox - Product Design Intern (Summer 2024)
HP
2024 Summer Product Marketing Internship - Posted Oct 9th
Business Product Management Intern - Posted Dec 1
Business Product Management Intern - Posted Dec 6
Cisco - Product Management Intern (MBA) - Summer 2024 Internship (Meraki)
Visa
Walmart
Product Jobs
Google - Associate Product Marketing Manager (APMM) (CA role, NY role)- Rotational program (2 rotations) for college seniors through early in career professionals; Posted ~2 days ago!
Atlassian - Associate Product Manager (APM) - 2 year rotational program (1 rotation per year) for those graduating in 2024
Microsoft - Product Manager - Role based in Microsoft Security’s Customer Experience Engineering (CxE) Scale Enablement Team; Email me if you know me and would like a referral
WHOOP - Product Manager I - Ecommerce focus for fitness wearable startup
Snippets
[Digital Publication] The Pudding
In their own words
“The Pudding is a digital publication that
explains ideas debated in culture with visual essaysmakes cool shit on the internet.”
From having AI roast your music taste to tracking the hottest days of the year, this publication captures the zeitgeist of our time. There are so many great pieces to explore on the site but I’ll list my top 3 below:
How Bad Is Your Streaming Music? - Plug in your Spotify and receive (painfully) specific roasts on your individual music taste. Highly recommend doing this with friends and coworkers. Share your roast with me as well! For reference, here’s mine below:
How Artists Get Paid From Streaming - An overview of how exactly artists like Snoop Dogg, Taylor Swift, The Beatles, and more make money from Spotify.
WONKY - If you’re familiar with the lofi legend J Dilla, this piece is an interactive breakdown of what made his music so revolutionary and why the impacts of his pieces still resonate today.
[YouTube Video] How I learnt Norwegian on my own - Norwegian with Ilys
Ilys was born and raised in France but became fluent in Norwegian to the point that, in the three years of living there, people are surprised she hasn’t lived there longer. In this video, Ilys breaks down her language learning techniques and what had helped her to achieve fluency in Norwegian in a few short years. These techniques are also quite transferable and, since most of us can barely speak Spanish or French after a decade of learning it in school, her approach seems to fare far better.
Finding the right motivation is essential to this process. If you don’t really want this, it’s likely not going to happen. Ilys knew she wanted to move to Norway and wanted to engage with Norway in a way that would make her a part of Norway. Not a visitor, not a Frenchman, but as someone who is becoming Norwegian. Find your why and make sure it’s a STRONG why.
Focusing on the process, Ilys approached learning the language like a child. She focused on listening to Norwegian as much as possible (kids don’t worry about what they’re listening to when they’re a baby, they just listen) and doing things that feel natural to you (watching shows, not doing grammar exercises). Below are a some of her tactics:
1. Read the Same Lines Over and Over Again
Kids know books by heart and you should try to do so as well. Take the expressions, lines, and sentences from the media you’re consuming in your target language (books, movies, tv shows, podcasts, etc.) and make them your own. Write them down, read this collection of phrases out loud, and try to see what the words mean and learn those that you don’t know. Do this often and earnestly!
If you have friends who speak your target language, have them record these sentences as well so you can hear them spoken by a native speaker. If you’re not so lucky, Google Translate is also suitable. If you can find podcasts that read out text, this is another great avenue for gaining a greater understanding of the language you’re learning (Ilys describes this segment of the video on her instagram here).
2. Learn the Building Blocks of Sentences
Make a list of all words that are useful and are used in everday conversation (i.e. alone, tall, etc.). Once you have your list, every time you see the word in a sentence, write that sentence down and compile a list of these sentences and read them before you go to bed. Don’t be afraid to make it phonetic as well (i.e. phonology = fone-ah-low-jee). These practices will help you learn the words IN CONTEXT and with proper form!
The goal is for you to be able to speak these sentences, not just read them. As you get these sentences down, your brain should be able to swap the words in the base sentence to more context appropriate words for the scenario you’re in. At this point it may also make sense to look into learning grammar formally. Due to Ilys’ childlike acquisition-centered approach, focused more on communication than a deeper understanding of the formalized rules, this may be a good spot for you to deep dive into grammar if you so desire.
3. Keep a Journal
Write stories about what you did for a day or what you want to do tomorrow in your native tongue. Use Google Translate (just make sure to provide context for what you’re writing) or a friend to translate these sentences into your target language. Then read it out loud to yourself.
Next try to write your journal entry in your target language and then start correcting it with Google Translate to see how well you can communicate in the way you want. As you do so, you’ll get more and more “reps” in and make less mistakes along the way. (i.e. write 5 sentences of your day and then have Google Translate read it and then read it out yourself).
4. Read and Listen to Books
Instead of reading children’s books, Ilys focused on learning books that everyday Norwegians would read. Although harder, you can find words you already know and find new ways they’re used in the everyday of your target language. Ilys’ method was to open the book to a random page and see if there were words or sentences she saw and could recognize.
As you get better at your target language, you’ll be able to pick out more and more words and phrases. Ilys also recommended using audiobooks by first listening to the book or a chapter and then reading it while listening to really hammer it home.
5. Use TV Series and Movies
Movies and TV shows are another great avenue to practice your target language. Ilys would watch an episode or scene with no subtitles in Norwegian, then once again with Norwegian subtitles, then with English subtitles, and then with the Norwegian subtitles again. You can do the same. Throughout this process, you should also take some time to copy down a scene or two or a few useful sentences to continue building the sentences you practice.
6. Write Stories About Your Day
Remember, you’re not just learning a language for academic pursuit; you want to connect with others! Writing stories about your day in English and having target language speakers translate and record them for you in your target language can help you get better at talking about the little things in your day. Take the time to memorize these vocal recordings until you can get them down by heart.
As you improve with the language, start writing it in your target language first and also try to see how well you can rewrite the entry in your target language from the recording. This will help you learn to speak in your target language in longer sentences without taking breaks allowing conversations to come more naturally as you speak your target language with others.
7. Talk to Yourself
Talk to yourself and try to imagine you’re the best at speaking your target language. Although you may not sound the best, it will help you keep confident and also take advantage of the Dunning–Kruger effect.
Some topics for self-discussion that Ilys recommends are to:
Tell yourself about your day
Speak about a movie you just saw
Take a person from a photo with a lot going on (like this one) and describe them and their life
[MasterClass] Chris Voss Teaches Negotiation
On my series of flights back and forth, aside from watching the 1998 version of Blade (imo better than the MCU movies), I also watched some MasterClass videos on negotiation. Although my former professor Gad Allon may have some personal disputes with the value of the service, I enjoyed it quite a lot and was able to pick up some interesting negotiation tactics that I’ve been testing out in everyday life.
Know their rules and let them have your way
Learn to negotiate in the “language” and rules of someone. Chris gives a great example from a hostage negotiation he did with a terrorist organization in the Middle East.
To set the scene: a religious terrorist group had kidnapped a female journalist who was doing reporting on the region. Chris worked with media outlets to point out how the kidnappers had broken their own religious rules in the first video they released of them with the hostage.
Chris then had the journalist’s father speak on why they should release his daughter in a public forum. Contrary to what you might expect, Chris advised the father not say to speak on his daughter’s innocence in the conflict. Instead, the father spoke on how her work reporting on Iraqi lives and events was helpful to the local people and helped bring both perspectives to the conflict.
This not only avoided activating the terrorists frustrationg but Chris was also able to take advantage of the religious traditions (honor flows through the father) to help the daughter shine in a very honorable light. The increasing cognitive dissonance Chris created caused the terrorists to question their actions and eventually release the journalist with no harm done to her.
This is just one poignant example of why you should make it clear why the person you’re negotiating with should have your way. Be aware of what the other person wants and how they convey that want.
Mirroring
Mirroring is a technique to gain information and build rapport with the person you’re negotiating with. Essentially, you repeat back the last few words someone says in a question with genuine curiousity about what they’re talking about. Your goal is to show that you genuinely want to collaborate with the person you’re negotiating with.
Here’s an example of a conversation where B is mirroring A:
A: Man this yoga retreat is really good.
B: This yoga retreat?
A: Yea ya know I’m getting a lot of time to reflect and think about things. And the food is amazing I’m eating really healthy.
B: You’re eating really healthy?
A: Yes I mean they’ve got everything out there for you and take a lot of care with the food.
B: A lot of care with the food?
etc. etc.
Remember, the recipe for mirroring is not just parroting the last three words but also an effective pause after. After a mirror, you need to let the other person think and let your skill sink into their head.
Labeling
Whenever someone brings out negative emotions, observe it and describe it: “It sounds like you’re feeling ____.” That’s all that labeling is.
Though simple, it’s one of the most useful tool with some of the broadest applications most to solve some of the trickiest problems. Why is labeling effective?
Every time someone self-labels a negative emotion,
they decrease the amount of brain activity in amygdala for that emotion.
To be effective at labeling:
Be aware of the emotion and dynamic from the other side. Listen to your gut
Simply label it - “It sounds/feels/seems like you’re feeling ___.”
Efective labeling:
Triggers the contemplation of the emotion, decreasing sad negative emotion
Builds relation and decreases negativity
Creates trust based influence - one of the most durable type of influence
There are wrong ways to label however:
Do NOT say “What I’m hearing is…” - by saying “I” you take the focus off of the person you’re negotiating with.
Don’t try to temper the label either. Don’t say “I’m not trying to be rude.” Say your label and pause to let it sink in. Let it fully deactivate the negative emotions and then follow up with a good question.
Another important note is that labels are cumulative. This means labeling negatives diminishes them every time. This can sometimes have a big impact or a small impact so it will likely to take a few times for it to work as well as you’d like.
Don’t be afraid if you receive silence as a response as well. It isn’t that the label didn’t work but instead that you just need more labeling. You might need to follow up with like “Sounds like there are some feelings you have that I haven’t quite touched yet/I haven’t gone far enough/There’s more there than meets the eye.”
Putting Them Together
Putting mirroring and labels together is incredibly effective for gaining information and building rapport. Mirrors leading into labels will help you get a grasp on the dynamic and emotions the other side has. On the flip side, after a great label there may be a part of it that you want to expand on and you can mirror two or three words out of that response to learn more.
As a final note, remember that trying these techniques may be awkward at first. That’s OK! It takes time to get them down and making them your own will take some time and practice.
That’s a wrap folks!
Thank you for reading and happy holidays!
Frank