interview prep no. 50
Waiting Game | LLMs are Processor-esque | Baby Cry Translator | Common Comms Mistakes | Risk-Based Search | Choose Your Own | Dives Deep
This Week’s Highlights
Job Search The Waiting Game
Strategy LLMs are Processor-esque
Product Sense Baby Cry Translator
Communication Common Mistakes
Getting Your Foot in the Door Risk-Based Search
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Insider Info Dives Deep
Job Search
The Waiting Game
This week is all about stress and how I managed (or failed to manage) it during the interview process. I am sharing more to show you that you are not alone than anything else. I don’t have a secret that works for everyone, if I did, I would be much richer. Stress undoes many of the best candidates. This doesn’t mean we aren’t great product managers; it just means we have something complicating our ability to get the next great role.
To read the details, check out this post.
TL;DR - I felt like throwing up for four hours after my first round. I was so demoralized I just gave up (and drank to relax that night) and had a great second set of interviews. In the second round, I was myself. However, the first round was the most difficult as it had a technical round about tech I had not dealt with within 5+ years. My superpower in tech is not being technical but helping very technical teams, so I knew it would be the worst.
Strategy
LLMs are Processor-esque
What I loved about this article from Ben Thompson on Stratechery was the discussion about getting back to the basics of product development: build for the users (not the technology). Ben talks about how it will be impossible to build for the LLMs, they change too quickly. Solve the users problems. (Music to my product manager ears.)
The AI Platform Question
Microsoft is making the case that models are not platforms; they are — at least in this analogy — processors. To the extent they are right, that means that for most developers, building directly on top of models may be a bit of a fool’s errand: you run the risk of spending most of your time simply trying to adjust to and incorporate model improvements, instead of building features for end users. What is needed is an additional layer of abstraction that is much more stable and incorporates model improvements for you...
If you hit a paywall, pull out your credit card, reading Stratechery is a requirement in product. It pays for itself 100 times over.
Design
Baby Cry Translator
An app that deciphers baby cries seems like a perfect use of GenAI. The use of large amounts of data to identify commonly repeated patterns. I love this from a product standpoint. Adults struggle to understand why baby cries. If this app works, it could have a huge impact on parenting and childcare generally.
Here’s how it works: Parents can record a few seconds of their baby’s cries and ask the app to analyze the audio. Nanni will then give some tailored recommendations for how to comfort them. With 150,000 downloads so far, the algorithm is getting even more accurate now that more parents are feeding their recordings into the model.
What’s next? Nanni wants to eventually give recommendations about a baby’s ideal sleep patterns, while also flagging certain health issues. Onu began his research by trying to detect certain neurological issues with cries, and he thinks that’s only the beginning. “We believe that the sound of a baby’s cry is as important a vital sign as their heart rate, blood pressure, or temperature and is key to improving infant care,” he told AI Business.
Want to geek out: This video on AI for Kids might also be of interest.
Communication Tip
Common Mistakes
Deb Liu wrote a piece that felt as if it was channeling much of the advice I give clients. Even if I have told you all about these things in the past, it is great to hear about the concepts from a different poit of view. The key concepts focus on common communication errors. Without reading it, you should avoid:
Too Much Detail
Inside Baseball
Lack of Context
Clear Blind Spots
Dive into Deb's article if you want to learn more.
Getting Your Foot In the Door
Finding Your Next Startup Gig
A newly discovered way to search for jobs: Prospect. It lets you search for open opportunities based on risk, rating, employees, industry, investors and primary office location. One really nice feature is the equity calculator. The team behind the product has extensive startup experience.
Find startups worth betting your career on
Prospect uses the same data VCs use to give you an independent third party projection of what your equity is likely to be worth. Find the next Stripe, Airbnb, or Coinbase today.
If you are interested in jobs in the startup world, this might be helpful.
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