Trust but Verify with Tony Tao

Tune in to listen to Tony Tao, Product Manager at Zulily share the stories behind some of his best product wisdom & career tips for new and aspiring/pivoting product managers.

Tony's product wisdom & career tips discussed in this episode

1. It's possible to become a PM out of college through an APM program (associate product manager)
2. You don't have to be a software engineer coming out\ of college, you can become a product manager
3. Things will not always go according to plan and your career, and that there are going to be a lot of setbacks along the way, so that doesn't mean you should give up on your goals, but it means that you have to be adaptable and how you accomplish your goals
4. When joining a startup, what is your value-prop, what are you bringing to the table 
5. Pivot in the same company, find a mentor if you can who has a similar story
6. There's a lot of preparation that goes into a good career pivot outcome
7. Trust, but verify - you are always one quest away from a different outcome
8. Use a fake door test or proxy metric to test the outcome before building the solution
9. Ask the question, what can I do that my immediate team can't do
10. Your career is going to be very long, they're going to be opportunities you want to run after and they're going to be opportunities you want to steer clear of, but in the end, you are judged by the effort you have applied along the way

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