Bill Watt’s Blog

Well… it is Friday and this week has flown and I still haven’t sent out my “new job!” email. So- here’s the info.

On 2/21 I got an offer from Current TV to join as Director, Online Product Management. I accepted that night and started on Monday 2/25. My job is best described by looking at the job description and I’ve copied it to the bottom of this post for when I convince them to stop interviewing other people and remove it from the site.

My first week has been really fun and I’m trying to jump right in. It is amazing how I’d forgotten what it is like to be the “new guy” in an organization. Even when I joined eBay I started with 16 friends (and 1 Hikade) and a firm grasp on the technology. Now it is all questions, new technologies, and many names to memorize.

People have been really nice and amazingly helpful. Since this is not a work blog I’m looking forward to many more posts of a non-work stories that happened at work to show you the personalities who get the joy of working with me. (You’ll need to read their blogs to see how they feel about it. )

Department: Online

Position: Director of Product Management

Location: San Francisco

Description

The Director of Product Management will be responsible for deeply understanding market direction and requirements and driving those requirements into the core technology architecture and product/services for the company. This person will play a critical role in driving our product roadmap. Core functions will include conceiving new online features and optimizing existing ones, developing project specifications, managing projects through the development lifecycle, and working with a wide cross section of stakeholders across the organization.  The Director will take ownership of new and existing products, identify requirements, define the product vision, create design specifications and lead the implementation of the product roadmap.  

Responsibilities

• Lead the full product lifecycle, including concept, specification, design, launch and maintenance phases
• Work closely with technology leadership to manage all stages of the product development process
• Work with multiple cross-functional teams to elicit, understand, rationalize and prioritize requests for new functionality
• Design functional specifications and make tradeoff decisions between functionality and resources/timeframes

Skills

• Strong blend of business acumen, technical knowledge, and strategic perspective. Able to balance business and product interests of the company
• Familiarity with highly interactive, web-based business and social networking products
• Ability to drive cross-functional collaboration and build consensus without clear authority
• Driven, high energy level, and strong commitment to driving results
• Strong interpersonal and facilitation skills. Diplomacy, tact and relationship building skills, especially the ability to develop strong, effective working relationships in situations where team members have conflicting goals and objectives
• Strong product/project management skills. Proven experience managing complex projects to successful completion
• 8+ years relevant experience with 3+ years as a product manager in a web-based environment

I don’t understand why Blizzard hasn’t figured out a better way to do login in the years the service has been live. I’m logging in now (3:56 PM Pacific) and there is a line of 250 people trying to login and the estimated time is ~10 minutes. Seems like something they could improve.

Hmmm… maybe they need a PM lead to prioritize it?

Well, I think it is pretty clear that Seth Godin’s blog now has a place of prominence in my blog reader. When his new post shows up I generally will read it before anything else, even my friend status updates from Facebook.

Anyway, today he has a post about Workaholics that struck a chord with me. Here is his post but you should go and check out his blog:

Workaholics

 

A workaholic lives on fear. It’s fear that drives him to show up all the time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record.

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it’s a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation… because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it’s a lot more fun than watching TV.

It was hard to imagine someone being passionate about mining coal or scrubbing dishes. But the new face of work, at least for some people, opens up the possibility that work is the thing (much of the time) that you’d most like to do. Designing jobs like that is obviously smart. Finding one is brilliant.

See, when I leave a job I try to find something that I want to change and fix it. The new people don’t know all my history and instead of treating it like starting at a new school and picking a new name for people to call me (”Hi, I’m Will.I.Am”) I try to use the fresh start to fix something. It is a easy time to change and start fresh. When I left CompUSA for FairMarket in 1998 I wanted to be better about my level of responsiveness. Working at CompUSA was not fulfilling but that shouldn’t impact my delivery to the customer so I opted to take that up a notch. Some people may think I took it to an extreme but I love being known for a high level of support. Also, tools like blackberries and email became much more a part of my life which enabled the change.

I’ll leave you with a tale from my final days at eBay. I gave ~10 weeks notice to help recruit and train my replacement. I loved my job and my extended team and wanted to leave them as well off as possible. I knew many people had the PM skills to manage the team and deliver the products but I wanted to find someone who had the potential to be passionate about the platform. It had been my life for 10 years and stay or go it will always be important to me. (Thanks to my VP for enabling the non-standard overlap so I could do that training.)

Anyway- almost every exec and HR rep I met with during my long march to the door ended up asking me the same question, “Are you sure you’re leaving? You seem really passionate for someone on the way out.” My response was similar in most cases and tempered in some but it went along the lines of, “instead of asking why I’m passionate about my job, why aren’t the people staying more passionate?”

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t passionate people there…this was mainly in response to people and a set of “issues” right at the end. In the context of those issues it was funny that anyone would ask me why I was leaving. Can’t really go deeper into that in a public blog but buy me a beer and I’m sure to share.

I know, I know… the people in my immediate circle just groaned at the thought of me trying to take the social up a notch but that’s the facts folks. I’m got to take it past 10 and work on finding a new gig.

• Send out more LinkedIn invites - check
• Dial up the Facebook pleading for leads - check
• Start calling people who have VC connections - check
• Talk to every person at every party about how big their startup is and if they need a PM lead - oh yeah, I’m that guy now

Looks like I need to go buy some interviewing clothes and maybe get a haircut too. Sigh.