Hallway Studio

How to plot your next career move

Child looking at rocks in Zion National Park

I’ve spent my career wandering. When the path seemed interesting and scary, I followed it. If I needed a skill I didn’t have, I chose a path where I could learn it. It’s easy to get lost on the path. It’s easy to get distracted from what we really want by status, money or comparisons […]

Rebooting our UX and Product Management career path

Sketch with colorful lines

Last year we merged our Product Management and UX teams. We operate as a single team now with  shared management so some of our PMs have managers who are UXers and vice versa. One of the main concerns we heard from the team was the career path wasn’t clear so we got right to work […]

Why domain expertise is dangerous in a product manager

Recently I was talking with a worried head of product management whose team is afraid to ask customers how they used the product because they didn’t want to be seen as not knowing the answers. Product people need to seek answers in data, conversations, feedback and testing. We need to make decisions based on the best […]

Advice from my mom: “Make them tell you no”

NCBlueSky

After graduate school I was having a tough time finding a job. I was getting rejected for jobs I thought I was qualified for. Then I came across a fellowship opportunity at the Smithsonian and I really wanted it but I didn’t think they would ever choose me. My mom answer was to “make them tell […]