Shweta Shriva

AI products should leverage human behavioral data to mimic natural interactions and social norms rather than appearing robotic.

"We're using a lot of human driving data to train our deep models. So it's important to make sure that the behavior of the car doesn't seem robotic... we have deep learned models that can understand wh..."

Promotions should be treated as a byproduct of business impact and skill development rather than the primary goal of self-optimization.

"I'm going to say something that might sound a little cheeky, but I think the way to get promoted is to not want it too badly. It is about you have to focus on the impact. It's about having an impact a..."

Alignment is built by understanding the specific constraints and definitions of success held by cross-functional partners.

"When you're working with let's say an engineering leader, being able to understand what are his or her constraints? Where is he or she coming from? What does impact look like to that person? And then..."

Set a strict threshold for asynchronous communication to prevent endless, non-convergent email threads.

"I would give you an interesting one that I use a lot in my prior company and then I use a different form of it here in Waymo is what I used to call as the rule of seven. If there have been seven email..."

Measuring PMF in service-heavy industries requires balancing usage growth with operational unit economics.

"We're tracking the commercial metrics in terms of the trips per week, the daily or weekly active users and all the funnel metrics that you can think of. Also, the operational metrics, the cost, right?..."

Use the 'failure' question to assess a candidate's seniority, self-awareness, and genuine depth of experience.

"Especially at the senior levels, I always ask them, when was one time that you failed and what did you learn from it? I've seen that folks who has either say that they've never failed or they're tryin..."

Proactively communicating your career ambitions allows leadership to align your growth with upcoming business opportunities.

"Making your ambitions known to your manager, to your leader, is a good thing that you should. And so, when the right opportunity comes, at least your leader or manager is aware that, hey, this person..."

Product success often requires balancing two opposing but necessary metrics, such as safety versus progress.

"The driver performance metrics, they span across safety, the compliance to the road rules, our ability to make adequate progress as in not get unduly stopped or stranded in dense traffic situations......"

A strong product vision is rooted in the specific problem being solved for a specific user, rather than the technology itself.

"In terms of the product, whether you're working for a big company or a startup, the core product management tenant is still the same, which is, you have to work backwards from the customer problem or..."

Effective prioritization requires being explicit about what is excluded from the roadmap to avoid building a diluted product.

"The other big lesson... it's also very important to know what you're not building. And this one is not only in big companies, I would say even in startups, it's extremely important to know what you're..."

Drafting a press release before development begins forces product managers to clarify the value proposition and user benefits early.

"Amazon has this great process where the PMs have to write a press release for the finished product even before they start building the product. That's the first thing that they have to do is to write..."

User feedback can reveal subconscious human expectations that contradict purely logical or technical optimizations.

"The human brain is trained to, or the human drivers are sort of in subconsciously, they slow down when they go downhill in those slopes. The autonomous vehicle doesn't necessarily have to do that if i..."