I didn’t wear a bikini in a very long time. I have always worried that if I dared to put on a two piece bathing suit, I’ll get side eyes for having had one doughnut too many. Clearly I should have spent more time at the gym and less time in the kitchen, people would think. Or at least I worried they would. And this worry, about what other people might think about me, or the negative reaction they could have over what I’ve done – has followed me around for as long as I can remember. When I was…
Kax Uson Posts
A few weekends ago, I got talked into going on a ski trip with my friends. I, who have never had real winter experience, much less have affinity for doing any winter-related sports actually agreed to go on a ski trip. I was excited, of course. It’s a new experience. We were renting an amazing cabin up in the mountains. I also bought ski gear that I was excited to wear. Sure, they were from Decathlon. But they were new clothes and I’m definitely that kind of person. I was also terrified. Skiing represented so many fears for me. Specifically…
At the end of 2018, I made a promise to myself, after much urging from my former manager slash coach, Anna Cosic, that 2019 would be the year I conquer my fear of speaking in front of strangers. I’m not exactly afraid of being on stage or being in front of a crowd. On the contrary, I enjoy it immensely. I did theatre when I was younger and I have unrealized pop-star dreams. So whenever you put me on stage (or just in the front of a meeting room) with a microphone, I’m pretty much in my element. But I…
I’ve always wanted to go to Web Summit. It was 2015, and the company I worked with back in Manila, who made it seem like traveling to Europe was just like going to the supermarket on a Saturday, was closing. I was devastated! I didn’t want to give up my European jet-setting life just yet. So I started entertaining the idea of just moving halfway across the world. And for that, I needed a tech company who will hire me and who can sponsor my visa. Enter, my stumbling upon Web Summit and finding out that it was the biggest tech…
When work started using OKRs to plan for our quarters a few months after I started with the team, I had a minor panic moment. I didn’t know how to define OKRs nor use them. I knew roadmaps. But roadmaps, as we’ve discussed before, have only caused us problems with the other teams that we work with. Unfortunately though, so do OKRs when they are not done correctly. Note: The guys over at Google can do a better work at explaining what OKRs are than me. When we first started using it, our problems with OKRs manifested in several ways: Our OKRs…
When was the last time you used your own product? Probably the 2nd most embarrassing question to answer, right after “When was the last time you talked to your users?”. By now, we have established that I work in a central capacity building a Messaging product that is integrated into 17 marketplaces around the world and that this comes with a whole world of drama, complexity, and fun (of course). A while back, I was having a conversation with a colleague about how the performance of our product according to our success metrics, vary so greatly across the different marketplaces.…
I wanted my first blog post to be a classic – like one of those “Things I Wish I Knew Before I Became a Product Manager”. Always popular, those ones. A crowd pleaser. Problem is, I have about 1 Million things, AT LEAST, that I wish I knew before I became a Product Manager, and I’d very much like to publish something before I’m 60. So let’s start with something different. Let’s start with a story of failure – because this blog is for sharing learnings, and not just glories. Let me start from the very beginning. I heard it’s…