>Actually, take a minute to think hard, and come up with one product manager that achieved anything comparable to these folks.
Andy Jassy started as a product manager at Amazon and is now CEO of Amazon. Product thinking and working backwards from customer needs (and not forward from technology), is not just a big-tech concept, but applicable to every business big or small.
i came back to HN to thank you for putting this service. As a product manager often times i want to test ideas and i was able to put together something that looks nice using your product within an hour. I customized a template but the tools were pretty intuitive.
It was so easy and pain-free that i immediately wanted to prototype another idea but seems i can only do one per account.
Anyways, thanks and keep up the good work.
Great read and sums up a lot of my experiences.
As a product manager who launched a niche consumer hardware product recently, I came up with the same analysis. Plus, manufacturing state-side (boston) had its own perks (quality control) and cons (labor cost and freight from china for components).
Even after you factor in all the costs, there is cost of acquire customers which can be quite a lot for a product that is new in its category, where a lot of startups aspire to be.
What is tricky is seeding customers, organic growth through hackathons, co-marketing, and customer stories.
Thanks for the post.
PS: Full Disclosure, i launched a robotic haptic device (cubify.com/touch).
wow! A lot of things hit home. I am glad OP posted this. I wasn't aware of the psychological aspect and always thought my procrastination was just a form of laziness. I esp agree with the "hit"i get of letting myself off the hook, only to be in more stress. Thanks a lot again.
I believe discussions like this will improve both the attitude and work ethics of professionals as well as of the employers who might be exploiting the workforce.
Both sides need to concede some ground for a much more productive and stress-free work environment.
> I believe discussions like this will improve both the attitude and work ethics of professionals as well as of the employers
As a side note (speaking of work ethics), this reminds me how an American company hiring Indian programmers.
Indian programmers, I presume, due to not having strong cultural bias against openly discussing and comparing salaries among themselves, did exactly that. And found out that the American company was paying them widely varying amounts even thought they all had equivalent training, job duties and qualifications.
They promptly contacted their managers and everyone who felt they got screwed got a raise to match the highest one.
The higher ups were not happy and try to guilt the Indians into felling uncultured and uncouth, how dare they break such a sensitive American corporate taboo. I am sure they guilt the felt over this "terrible" breach of "ethics" was made up by what I hear was an almost 20% salary increase for some.
Pretty sure at some point the company explicitly added a clause in their employment contract prohibiting divulging or discussing compensation except with one's higher-ups.
But I thought that was an interesting "ethics" hack they did, and it was interesting how the company tried to guilt them into feeling uncultured and un-educated once they got caught with their pants down and found out there wasn't anything illegal or contract breaching in what they did.
Andy Jassy started as a product manager at Amazon and is now CEO of Amazon. Product thinking and working backwards from customer needs (and not forward from technology), is not just a big-tech concept, but applicable to every business big or small.