Shreyas Doshi

Transitioning from engineering to product often involves identifying a personal performance ceiling in technical roles and starting to perform product responsibilities before the official title change.

"For about a year, I was doing the product job without having the title and I was also the engineer. So I was in this great state where I'd figure out what needed to be built and I would just build it..."

Career fulfillment requires aligning your role with your natural 'superpowers' rather than following a standard corporate ladder that may force you into work you dislike.

"I have to abandon the traditional path, that like, 'Oh, after this level, I'm supposed to do this, and then I'm supposed to do this, and then this is what society expects... Identify your superpowers,..."

Alignment can be achieved by cutting through technical and metric-based complexity with a single, vital, user-centric question.

"Jack was just listening through all of that... And then I remember very distinctly, he asked me one question which was something to the effect of, how does this make our users love Twitter more? Simpl..."

Stakeholder conflict often arises from a mismatch in focus levels (e.g., a PM focused on execution vs. a CEO focused on impact).

"There are three levels of product work, impact, execution, and optics... we litigate the minutiae of whatever issue we are discussing, but we never really recognize that it's because we are default th..."

Securing pre-alignment on a core strategy prevents the friction and endless meetings typically associated with planning cycles.

"I noticed that actually, if you have a real product strategy, a real one that everybody is aligned with, that you have got pre-alignment on, then a lot of this nonsense we tend to do with annual plann..."

Culture is established through consistent leadership behavior and modeling rather than written value statements.

"I learned the importance of setting the culture you want, simply by consistently being an example of the behaviors you want to replicate in the organization. So instead of talking about values, I saw..."

Many decisions framed as reversible 'two-way doors' are effectively irreversible for PM leaders due to the organizational debt and momentum they create.

"I guess what I'm saying, Lenny, is one of my other tactical tips would be sometimes it is useful to pause for two minutes, or two days, or two weeks before making that decision, right? Because frankly..."

Failing to rigorously evaluate the trade-offs of building a feature leads to a cycle of 'table stakes' requests and permanent maintenance debt.

"We use data when it favors us, we use anecdotes when it favors us... we exit the QBR, you high-five each other. Well, 'Good job, team, great job,' et cetera, et cetera. But now, you have signed up for..."

Pre-mortems use a hypothetical failure state to create psychological safety, allowing team members to voice concerns they would otherwise withhold.

"The idea is simple, which is when you are working on an important project or initiative, you get together with your team early on in the products or the projects' life to see in advance what could go..."

Effective positioning requires decoupling the internal complexity of development from the external narrative that resonates with users.

"John would often make... observations about, well, if we just talked about the product in this manner, that will likely resonate a lot more with customers. And that got me thinking a lot about how I n..."

A core part of product vision is the default habit of expanding the scale of an opportunity rather than accepting current limitations.

"Google taught me the... power of thinking really big. And I know it sounds like a platitude, but really big. And I only actually realized that when I left Google and I started working with the other t..."

Persistent execution failures, such as team misalignment, are often symptoms of a missing or unclear strategy rather than poor project management.

"Most execution problems that I encounter in a high performing environment where everybody has the right intentions are actually not execution problems, they are either strategy problems or interperson..."

A company can have great talent and network effects but still fail to meet its potential without a cohesive product strategy.

"Twitter's biggest problem is a product strategy problem. The reason they're struggling is they don't have a real product strategy. Now, of course, attempts were made to create a product strategy, but..."

Effective prioritization requires categorizing tasks by leverage (L, N, O) and intentionally reducing effort on low-leverage tasks to preserve energy for high-leverage ones.

"L tasks which are leverage tasks... when you put in a certain amount of effort, you get 10X or 100X in return... neutral tasks (N)... overhead tasks (O)... as a product manager... all your tasks are n..."

An ROI-only mindset leads to a backlog of 'quick wins' that prevents teams from pursuing high-uncertainty, high-upside strategic bets.

"You should stop doing work that simply provides a positive return on investment, ROI. And you should start focusing on work that minimizes opportunity cost... ROI mindset... end up trying to decrease..."

A robust, pre-aligned product strategy eliminates the need for lengthy, ritualistic annual planning and false precision in resource allocation.

"I noticed that actually, if you have a real product strategy, a real one that everybody is aligned with, that you have got pre-alignment on, then a lot of this nonsense we tend to do with annual plann..."

Shreyas spends a significant portion of the interview defining 'taste' not as design, but as the ability to identify quality and truth without needing to see results or social proof.

"Taste is about the ability to identify what is really good, without needing to see its results."