GeekMBA360

I don’t envy any product management professional who work for any of the online advertising networks.
There are tremendous amount of hype in the online advertising network industry. But, I’m going to make a controversial statement today: most ad networks are ad agency in disguise. They’re essentially ad agency for the digital world.
Two groups of people [...]

[Read more →]

The Secret of Profitability (SOP) is a high profile start-up in the Silicon Valley.
It’s "high profile" because

it has two of the most famous venture capitalists on earth sitting on its board.
it had received $100 million in venture funding.
its senior management consists of super stars from major internet companies such as Google and Amazon, [...]

[Read more →]

Jake called me yesterday morning. He informed me that he just gave notice to his boss. He was leaving his employer. Jack called me because I was one of his customers, and we had collaborated for the past three years.
Jake was a member of the senior management team in his company. On the surface, he [...]

[Read more →]

After I graduated from business school, I took a job at a medium sized Internet company in Southern California.
I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area at that time. So, I packed my belongs and drove to the L.A. area. For some reasons, instead of finding an apartment, I chose to stay in [...]

[Read more →]

"Therefore one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful. Seizing the enemy without fighting is the most skillful." — The Art of War, Sun Tzu.
Jack is a hard working software developer. Like many of us, he works for a highly dysfunctional organization. He is part of a major software project that [...]

[Read more →]

When I was an impressionable college student, I bought into the notion of "team work". As a computer science student, I did many projects in a team environment. I tried hard to be the team player, was willing to sacrifice for the team, and never hesitated to take on tedious tasks for the team.
Professors, recruiters, [...]

[Read more →]

I met a very unusual shuttle driver last Thursday.
It was time for me to bring in my car for a regular maintenance service. Like many auto repair shops, this particular auto shop provided a shuttle ride to where I worked while they worked on my car.
The shuttle driver was a lady in her fifties. There [...]

[Read more →]

In the past few weeks, I keep hearing the same complaint from hard-working and stressed-out product managers: product management is being marginalized in their companies.
Case #1: The company is run by sales people. It’s extremely deal driven. The company is doing well. Closing deals. Sales people are becoming more powerful as a result of [...]

[Read more →]

I met Caleb my first day in college. Caleb was a sophomore while I was a freshmen. We ended up taking at least one class together every semester until Caleb graduated.
I was a computer science major, and Caleb studied economics. But, computer was Caleb’s hobby since he was a little kid. So, he took [...]

[Read more →]

My phone rang. Looking at the number on the phone display, I knew it was from Jeff, director of the group I was going to transfer to. We last spoke exactly 48 hours ago. In the end of our meeting, I officially accepted his offer to join his team and reported directly to him.
Somehow I [...]

[Read more →]