Shyvee Shi, Product Manager at LinkedIn

What do you do as a product manager?

As a product manager (PM) at LinkedIn, Shyvee Shi helps to find the vision for the products LinkedIn wants to build for its members. From there, she manages the process from product concept ideation, to launch, to measuring the product’s success. Shyvee works on various features that help address critical member needs from learning new skills to helping small-and-medium businesses find qualified talent. She works with many cross functional teams including engineers to build the product, the design team to see how the feature will look and interact, the user researcher team to understand the problems, the data science team to look at data and see how members are using the products, the marketing team to create a strong go to market message, and many more.

Why LinkedIn?

Shyvee has been working at LinkedIn for five years. She chooses to stay at LinkedIn because of the people and culture. She’s constantly learning from colleagues and building lifelong relationships. Shyvee resonates with LinkedIn’s mission to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful and finds meaning in solving important problems at scale. Shyvee resonates with LinkedIn’s culture and is grateful that she can bring her full self to work. Her sense of psychological safety at work and the trust she’s established with her teams allows her to do her best work.

On top of her day job, Shyvee is a creator and an influencer on LinkedIn. She has over 73,000 followers, is a published LinkedIn Learning instructor, and hosts a PM learning series with over 33,000 subscribers. She is able to build content outside of her day job, and appreciates the support and encouragement she receives from her management team and colleagues at LinkedIn to grow her side hustle as a creator.

How did you get into product management??

Shyvee’s professional career started in consulting. Though she enjoyed this, she got tired of traveling and realized she wanted to own a project from ideation to launch. After her time in consulting, Shyvee started to career interview people and map out her skills to figure out what she wanted to do next. Through this learning and self reflection, she discovered she was interested in product management. Shyvee interviewed for roles as a PM but received feedback that she didn’t have enough experience on launching a product and seeing a product through its lifecycle.?

Discouraged, but motivated, Shyvee continued her job search. She eventually found a job that fit her skills on the sales productivity team at LinkedIn. On this team, she was tasked to build a new set of internal tools and lead the change management from the old tools to the new ones. Shyvee was doing well in her role on the sales productivity team and was going to be promoted to a people management position, but she knew that she wanted to do something different. She continued to career interview and shadow product managers at LinkedIn who had successfully transitioned into product management to learn what they did day to day and how they managed their job transitions. Through this process she realized she wanted to manage a product from ideation to measuring success that would impact millions of LinkedIn members.?

In 2019, Shyvee decided she wanted to formally pivot from program management to product management. She started to learn how to tell her story, go through mock interviews, and upskill herself to fill the gaps needed to transition from program manager to product manager. Through networking, career mapping, and hard work, Shyvee landed a job in product management at LinkedIn in 2020. She had to level down to take on this role, but knew it was worth it because it put her in the right career path.

What do you like about your job? What is challenging about your job?

Shyvee enjoys having full ownership of the product life cycle. Her view is broad and she has an understanding of what each team does to contribute to a successful product build. She believes that the work of a PM plays to her well-rounded skill set. Shyvee is able to set a vision, execute on the vision, influence other teams, and communicate effectively all while continuing to learn new skills and develop her career. These skills and experiences set her up well for future opportunities in leadership or starting her own business.

One major challenge for a PM? at LinkedIn is getting alignment across multiple teams. This process takes time, especially at a company as large as LinkedIn. Between getting caught up with the day to day, executing, meeting deadlines, and “putting out fires,”? Shyvee must prioritize? finding chunks of time to map out her longer term product plans and ideas. Rather than getting overwhelmed by a competitive market and her long list of tasks, she focuses on analyzing the impact, scale, ROI, trade offs, and prioritization of the work in front of her. This is not always easy to do!

What are the main skills needed to do this job well?

Click on the skills to expand your learning on LinkedIn learning.

Communication - Strong written and verbal communication skills are needed to communicate effectively with a wide variety of teams: engineers, designers, executive team, etc. It’s important to learn how to cater your communication to meet the needs of your audience.

Leadership - It’s important to know how to influence others, especially when you are not in a position of authority.?

Execution - It’s crucial to get things done as a PM. Sometimes you need to do whatever it takes to make sure something happens.?

What advice do you have for people pursuing a career in product management??

Shyvee has created many resources for professionals interested in product management and for those already working in product management:

• Shyvee’s article, Transitioning to Product Management - This article shares resources focusing on helping early and mid career professionals to pivot into product management from a different field.?
• Sign up for Shyvee’s collection of PM resources. This includes PM career planning worksheets, PM job search readiness assessments, mastering the PM interview framework, top posts on product management, and a personal productivity workbook.
• PM Learning Series - Learn to level up your product career with advice from industry thought leaders and experts.
• Shyvee’s LinkedIn Learning course for current product managers: Personal Productivity for Product Managers
• The 10-Episode Limited Strategy Series - a new product Shyvee has launched!?

At the end of the day, Shyvee recommends asking yourself “What’s the BIGGEST smallest action I can take to get me in the direction of my goals?” Start now and create the momentum you need to make the change you want to see in the world. If becoming a product manager is one of your goals, check out the resources listed above and start your journey today!?

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