From Product Marketing to Product Management & 20-year-journey at Google with Sandy Ko

Please see the full YouTube video Podcast here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j86TWyiVdCE

Can you please introduce yourself with recent updates as if you were catching up with an old friend?

Yes, I'm Sandy Ko, currently based in London. I've actually been based in London for a long time, even though I haven't gained a British accent yet. But I've been here for almost 18 years. And the big milestone, another big milestone that I reached recently is I celebrated my 20th anniversary at Google! In fact, as we’re talking about it today, my role as a PM [Product Manager], is my third career at Google. So, it’s a really exciting time for me, and I look forward to talking to you more about that.

Out of curiosity, what was your first career?

So my first career was not at Google, but I was an electrical engineer at a telecom company. So I’m actually trained in that and that was my degree, electrical engineering, which I barely used. But it's helpful in other ways, like problem-solving, which is the root of all that we do. That was my first career and it didn't last very long. Unfortunately, when I graduated, Telecom wasn't doing that well when I first took the job, so, it didn't last very long and that’s not to say that it was my fault. But it forced me very early on in my career to think about what I wanted to have as part of my job; not just using the skills that I graduated with, but I really wanted, [I knew very early on then] in PMing, to have some creativity in my life. So, it was really an interesting forcing function to get sadly laid off, but, I was a new grad and the cheapest to dispose. And I went to New York to do some exploring, like a mini gap, after my first career, I did some interesting things. I worked for a photographer, a really famous photographer. And the question that I was exploring there was, do I want to be in commercial photography? At the same time, I was doing an internship at Spin Magazine, which is a music magazine, a really old one. And I was exploring the job of a photo editor, what the magazine industry was like. So it was nice for me to be able to explore different professions, and there's more there, but that was what happened before Google. And then when I started Google, that was like my one, three careers, if you will.

What made you decide to transition into Product Management at Google from Product Marketing? What was that experience like?

I want to take a step back a little bit more in history, to give some context, because my first job at Google was as a support manager. So my team would look at if your ads were not serving, which was Google's bread and butter at that time, triage, and communicate back to those large advertisers, with a turnaround time and actual solution. And that, was the first step and more importantly, the big connection with the problem-solving that I built from engineering. And I would say the constant theme of my career progression at Google has been: look at what you're good at, look at what's valuable to the organization, the company, and really scrutinize what you like and dislike and where you want to go from there!

So even actually within my ad support manager role, I started from solving troubleshooting issues, and then I thought, let me try people managing. And then, I see that there's an opportunity with all of the data that we're gathering with all of the bug submissions to understand trends in where advertisers don't understand the product and where we can improve it, you start to notice patterns! And I evolved that mindset into, well, what am I interested in? What does the company need? What value can I provide, and progress through that. So, the reason for the big jump that I made [from being a Support Manager] was because I couldn't find anything within that world that scratched the itch of wanting to be creative too.?

And so after ten years of doing that, I came to New York wanting to be creative. What can get me there? What can get me that in Google? And so that's when I actually made the big move to do product marketing. And I leveraged my knowledge in digital advertising to do that.

So I knew the ad serving systems a lot. So now, jumping to present time, being the person that serves ads to consumers to tell the story, to get them to try our products like Google Plus, in the days I worked on that. And so fast forward, I had maybe 8 to 10 years also exploring that world of product marketing. And I kept pushing for projects that really itched my personal interests, but served what the org[anization] wanted to do as well. And luckily at that time, my managing team and I were trying to get some attention on an audience that we thought was underserved. So I worked in consumer search on Google, the most mature product on the planet.

And the target audience that my team and I were looking at was Gen Z. Questions like, are they coming to Google first? Surprisingly, no, they're actually going to social channels. So, as a marketing team, in product marketing, one of our jobs was to raise awareness of opportunities and audience needs of the product team. So I got to work very, very closely on a mini task force with some pretty senior product directors, product team members, and product managers, to really build out this business case of why we should focus more on Gen Z, what would the product look like, why are their needs unique, and really at the end of the day, why it's important for our business because these users are going to grow up and you want them to continue using Google. And that was such a great experience because I got to the point where I would ideate, what would this product look like?

And that's kind of entering the world of product management. So you've landed the audience the insights, and then what does the solution look like? And then, as a product marketing manager, your part is done. You proposed, and then now we will consider, and then it's out of your power. I could influence as much as I want. But to take it to the next level, to decide to build it, to take it to develop it was like not part of what my job was. And I wanted to be a part of that process as well. I wasn’t satisfied with when my journey ended as a product manager in that project. So that's when I knew, I was like, okay, maybe this was for me.

How long did it take for you to transition into your PM title? Could you give some insight as to what the process or journey was like?

Funny enough, I wrote a soul-bearing LinkedIn post on this because it was hard. It was really hard. And I think my significant learnings for that is doing the work to evaluate if the career is really what you want because through that and talking to you and talking to people that do the job, what is the day to day like, you then build conviction. And conviction will carry you through possibly some really difficult times where you need to decide if you're going to power through or if you're going to give up. And so, my curiosity built my conviction, and then I was super vocal about what I was looking for and got help.

But it took a long time for me. And it might be this case in today's job market, to be honest, it's really hard out there. I keep asking for help and persevere. So for me and being very lucky to be at Google and a big company, we have these programs where you can do job rotations. So it is something where a PMM can do a full-time rotation for maybe about nine months to a year as a PM to try out if it's a career move that they want to commit to!

So why it was hard for me was because I wanted to make this transition in a climate where nobody could afford to, my marketing team could not afford to lend my head count and live without me, not doing the job because it's not something they can backfill. So they said no. I asked, please, please. And they said, no. So I went to find alternative options. And so I thought, well, what if I stay on and do the job, and you give me 20%. So that's kind of what Google has been famous for a while, is, having 20% of a project. So, 20%, trying out a product management role. But, at the end of the day, what that means is you're doing two jobs, and I did that for a whole year! And it's not 20% when you're all in and want to get the most out of it.

It was a lot, but that's why I wanted to point out why conviction is so important, especially in my journey at Google. At that point, I had already done so much homework and talked to many PMs about what they disliked about their jobs. And then if I like what you said, maybe, I'm suitable for this.

And some people were really honest with me. And I thought, ok, I can deal with that. To be honest, finding a 20% project actually at Google as a PM is also not easy because some organizations find that it can be quite disruptive to bring in another PM to a set of engineers that are used to working with already one PM. And there's another one that I need to talk to for another project. Or you show up, and then you get their knowledge, and then you leave in like nine months, so, it's disruptive for the team. So I did have to cold call and knock on people's doors to try and find a 20% project. And luckily I landed a really good one, which is the current team that I'm working with - Chrome AutoFill.

I would say, it wasn't super easy, but at least to land there in a product that was consumer-facing, because I worked on consumer search, it was a natural start for me to take off my PM career. But, it was a challenge still, I did one year with them, still in Europe, and at Google, you can't transition until you have a head count. And so not a lot of teams had head counts and I really had to pull some favors to make that happen and say, and the team and I would say not me pulling favors per se, but my hiring manager believed in me that much that there was some horse trading, if you will, of headcount to help me stay on the team.

I think for me, just speaking generally, it was just such a great example of how having a sponsor that goes out of their way to make things happen for your career. I felt like I needed to return that favor to someone, someone in the future because it was not something that I would have asked for because I wouldn't have imagined anyone would go and do that.

Despite my tenure at Google, I still had to prove myself. I've been at Google for many years, but I still had to prove myself. I could not let this golden opportunity slip away from me. I worked my ass off to ace those interviews. And, I think Google PM interviews are notorious for making sure you practice every day for three months. I only had 24 days or something like that. So I did two mock interviews probably every day for 24 days. But I made some really good friends through that process, and it was a lot of fun to just problem-solve and think through like a PM on the spot. And I miss doing that actually. I love doing interviews for a PM role.

What were some skills that you had to learn and also unlearn in the process of your transition from being a PMM to a PM?

For me, I hear, from a lot of others who have transitioned into the PM role, is it's such a good fit is it actually takes advantage of many, many skill sets. And the PM requires a very well-rounded set of skills. Everything from thinking about how you talk about your product, how you're going to communicate about it, what's that headline, analyzing the opportunity and looking at the data, where is the funnel broken? Doing the user research to understand what users perceive and all this and needs, were things that I did as a PMM. And also, in my previous job, I was overlooking, and running a data insights team for the ads team. So, all of that is, I think, the skill for learning.?

The difference in the transition is that you need to learn fast as a PM, and the routine becomes study, grok what the problem is, and then where you think you should spend the time to problem solve and improve things, but do it, you don't have a month, you have a week, or you have days and be able to be articulate in a conversation with very senior PMs that have been thinking about this exact issue and are the experts in the field.

For example, right now, I'm working on passkeys, which are the passwordless. Frankly, I didn't even know what passkeys were two years ago. Now, I'm in the room with experts who have been thinking about this and have been trying to make this happen for the last ten years. How do I ask the right questions or asking articulate questions, do my homework, and really try to do my part to progress the work rather than be the person who has no idea what's happening.

When I was a PMM, I remember a conversation with my manager then and being asked, what do you like, what kind of projects excite you? And I like the new stuff, bring you a new problem because I like to wrap my head around understanding, why what is the problem, what was the challenge here, why did people have problems solving this in the past, and trying to put my dent in it. So I'm excited that that's part of my job as a PM. But now it's, too fun.

What does a typical workday look like for you as a Product Manager in London? And how does it differ from other PMs in other regions of the world?

I think the biggest correlation is where your team is based. There are two other adjacent PMs here in London, but all my engineers are based in Montreal, Canada. My design counterpart and research counterpart and manager are in Munich, Germany. So, for me, it's an interesting setup because I have my mornings with my Munich team. And then I have my thinking time, which is very, very important, you need to carve out your thinking time as a PM, deep thinking time. And then when Montreal comes on around 2/3 PM my time, they get barraged with all of my chat messages and questions that I've queued up for them. But that's also when I have my project meetings with my engineers. And if needed, Mountain View meetings would be in my schedule as well. I actually work with a few people on the East Coast time, I think with some PMs based in New York and DC. So that works well for me. So usually I can end my day by 6 or 7 PM, and that works well. But I know some other PMs work with people in California (PST) and it's much harder to coordinate, so, you can shift your hours to start later so you can work later and have more overlapping efforts.

Given that the team you work with is so geographically diverse, are there any differences, let's say, a London PM and a Mountain View PM?

Google is such a big company, I would say there's probably no standard. But I would say, I will speak from personal experience, where I worked for a very large organization in search before. And so the culture could be, it was quite different when I moved to Chrome, which is, a total of 1700 or less than 2000 people work for Chrome globally. So with a smaller org, you can always be a bit more intentional about the culture and, you know, what do you do on-site? How often do you see people? What do you do? I like that intimacy. I don't even know how many people work in search, but you're on your own essentially or there are so many layers. When do I ever get to talk to a VP? But in Chrome, it's much smaller, and I like it. It's like a little family. So, I enjoy Chrome.

Are there other PM teams based in London or is Chrome the biggest team there?

The Chrome team is super tiny in London. I don't know who is in London funny enough. I think there's Google Fit, there's Android, there's Search, and there's DeepMind. I think even just a few buildings, there are thousands and thousands of people. So, there’s a lot of teams. I think that’s the good thing about being in Europe because there are actually quite a few product hubs. The other one is Zurich, like Germany, which is where a lot of my team is based.