Brandon Chu

Brandon Chu on building product at Shopify, how writing changed the trajectory of his career, the habits that make you a great PM, pros and cons of being a platform PM, how Shopify got through Covid

Source 0402022-06-2710,245 words

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Opening
Lenny (00:00:03): If you're a product manager, you've almost certainly come across one of Brandon Chu's Medium posts. His writing about all aspects of the job is some of the best writing out there on the skills of being a PM, and has informed a lot of my thinking on both product management and writing....

The opener starts with biography before advice. That order makes the guest legible as a person before the listener extracts tactics.

Low-ego framing
Product at Shopify, where he's been for seven years, and in our conversation, we talk about what it's like to build product at Shopify, what Shopify has learned about being effective working...

Uses we/us, uncertainty, or learner framing instead of performing authority.

Accept praise cleanly
all while saving valuable engineering time. Your engineers will come and thank you for using Stytch, because Stytch keeps you from having to build authentication in-house, and the integration process...

Accepts praise without shrinking from it or turning it into a performance.

Name the work
. Literally every week a new PM messages me and says like, "Hey. I just joined. Your post had a lot of influence on me or whatever. And I'd love to meet up and blah, blah, blah." But that has been amazing...

Names a concrete strength, artifact, or contribution instead of offering generic praise.

Low-ego framing
Brandon Chu (00:25:31): I don't know the exact answer, but I would imagine. So we also use trip actions inside of Shopify and I'm pretty sure they have an...

Uses we/us, uncertainty, or learner framing instead of performing authority.

Accept praise cleanly
Lenny (00:49:28): Awesome. Thank you so much, Brandon. Brandon Chu (00:49:29): Thanks, Lenny. It's been a blast. Lenny (00:49:33): That was awesome.

Accepts praise without shrinking from it or turning it into a performance.