Mock Product Manager Interview: Improve WhatsApp (Google PM)

[@tryexponent]

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[@imerareru]

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[@zeewang]

Notes: 1. Product goal 2. User segment 3. Pain point 4. Solution/vision 5. Pros and cons Tip: Make sure to point out how solution addresses the pain point, check whether it's creating more pain points

[@tigerrx7]

Waaaahhhh you’re a champ! Took the same notes. 😃

[@20sclub40]

I got my dream internship after watching this video! Thanks a ton! ♥♥♥♥♥

[@Rakshit_singla]

Company?

[@maryambacchus8147]

I love that he's actively using his environment in the interview, when he's going through users, you can hear police cars outside and he throws a curve ball user group out: policemen. From my understanding, it's good to have some outside the box answers when enumerating different users and problems - great job

[@stinkykitten]

Haha I noticed that too! It's a great way to show that you are aware of the encryption feature in Whatsapp

[@z5m2]

Imo its a terrible idea to mix first responder usage with personal usage. Using a random environmental factor, is well, random. All imo.

[@greanbean001]

I'm very impressed that he starts with punchy clarifying questions across goals and customer segment.

[@sydneyzhang1035]

The interviewee is so smart, he is using framework, but most amazing is how he answered the interviewer’s questions. And the interviewer asked several really good questions. A great mock interview.

[@pksingh3232]

Problem statement is to improve User Engagement so rather than going into ideating a new feature to increase time spent on WhatsApp, focus should be is there scope to increase usage of existing features like a. Increasing number of chat messages b. Increasing number of video calls c. Increasing number of voice calls d. Increasing number of status updates Such questions could have been asked whether we want to improve existing features for any particular target segment to increase usage, also in which age group or gender user engagement has been observed to be low. There can be usability issues with existing features which can be improved to enhance user experience

[@tigerrx7]

You’re onto something here. 🤔

[@user-jp7ni5xv1r]

Yes exactly. He shouldve dived deeper to understand what is the objective (in this case increase engagement) then understand what are the core features of the app. Who is using each feature (segmenting), which features are lacking usage then diving deeper into the pain points as to why those features lack engagement. Once you identify this, then talk about the solutions.

[@eveningrice]

I think focusing on UX for the elderly is important. In China for example, where the generation didn't learn how to type (similarly in the west), they draw out characters with their fingers on the screen which translates to text. This is one way they have focused on this problem.

[@sumitarora9930]

One of the the point Sushant suggested that AI would read all the messages and based on it, it would give suggestions. One of the KPI he could've added was, number of times a person click on the nudget so he can track the "No. of suggestions asked by person and offered by AI." This might help to track the success metrics of the AI.

[@eisgavajs]

5 years later...we have copilot, apple intelligence, etc. that do exactly what sushanth was picturing. Great insights!

[@sreekanthchandramouli5489]

Can we have some sessions on product teardown for B2B products with complex workflows so we can understand how PMs thought process ?

[@pksingh3232]

So now let’s assume that goal is to increase User Engagement across all features and across all target segments , 1st step should be User Research where we can have focused group discussion of different target user segments to understand what they feel is lacking in Whatsapp, for any PM it’s best not to assume pain points rather we should interact with our target audience to get insights

[@sidvarma2004]

The challenge with wildly popular consumer products is that you may not have access to target audience to interact with. Let's assume you do have a focused target group but given the scale of these products (~1 billion whatsapp users) it may not be representative of the entire user population. Also, while your approach is more practical i.e. to discuss with target audience to really figure out pain points, it does not allow you to come up with any solutions in an interview/conversation setting. It's like saying, I'll design the solutions after I figure out what they are - conversation ender and not fun.

[@yurenaghm]

I love how the candidate approached the process, although one important pain point that I've observed with my elderly relatives is that they don't even know how to browse between conversations, read images or use the phone's keyboard. They manage much better video calls when they just need to respond as they do with a regular phone call to connect with other people. Probably I'll go for some voice assistant to help them calling whoever they want, or making easier for them to call their favorite contacts.

[@paddy0028]

Agree, I think the typing part is the most difficult for them. While I would also add that the photo/image capture and send feature on WA can be further optimised by adding some image stabilization. So they won't have to worry too much about their shaky hands taking blur pictures.

[@user-jp7ni5xv1r]

Probably I'll go for some voice assistant to help them calling whoever they want, or making easier for them to call their favorite contacts. Yeah but you have Siri and other voice services already made... lol. So if you segment based on devices then what? Youre at a dead end.

[@user-jp7ni5xv1r]

One of the biggest pain points elderly folks could have is storing memories: e.g. video calls they could be having. If whatsapp provided a mechanism to record the screen and store this, this would be a viable solution. Whatsapp could also charge for local storage-> increasing revenue.

[@aalap03]

This is like a gold mine for anyone who is preparing for PM interviews. I had in my mind that I am asked a question and I answer that, but how beautifully Sushant counter questioned and tried to break the question down to a specific goal. He then started answering in step by step as well, I learend that how deep you have to go into any thought process of creating a product or solving a problem. Simply AMAZING

[@niveditya]

First of all, Sushanth I really liked the structure of your answer. You "Think Big" rather than focus on minor tweaks to the product and this is great to listen to. One reason, I prefer Whatsapp to other messaging services is because it offers end to end encryption. What this means is that no one but the sender and receiver can interpret the message. The feature that you are suggesting would however change that because Whatsapp would have to read through and understand the message in order to be able to make suggestions. I would suggest stating that as a tradeoff. A possible mitigation could be to make the suggestions feature optional

[@maheshy1]

good point. Gmail has TLS encryption. but they still somehow recommend possible replies. I think whatsapp also does the same thing - only encrypting during transmission. So, (may be?) we can still anonymously gather the info of a message and suggest a reply. The app doesn't need to know who sent the message to whom. Just that someone is asking someone to attend a birthday party. So what could be the possible responses.

[@rvssoumya4961]

I love people who pitch in ideas with full perspective ❤️

[@avinashmohan6228]

Half way into the video, engaging elderly people on WhatsApp. First up, I really appreciate the candidate for thinking from the heart instead of the brain, getting into the persona/emotional side of people and delivering a delightful User experience. I have one question, regarding the text assist, expressing/Understanding the messages. WhatsApp already have a voice message option, Wouldn't that solve all of the above mentioned problems. However I still like your idea of synchronizing event onto a calendar & sending timely reminders. Overall pretty impressive thoughts. Thanks!

[@Prateekag1987]

These mock interviews really help me understand how to handle these questions. Even I know the solution but handling the question in right manner matters a lot. I recently cracked one of my product manager interview which was on problem solving. My question was somewhat similar to your Flipkart problem solving mock interview, so thank you so much for this informative content. You guys are doing really good work.. keep it up. 👏👏👏

[@shyama5612]

Emoji interpreter and abbreviation/slang translator would be something my grandma actually asked me about! I'd add them as a key FR for the elderly.

[@AdityaTumma_inducedfreak_]

Great interview. Really liked the way Sushanth articulated every point and conveyed it with brevity. Thanks for sharing.

[@tryexponent]

Thanks Aditya!

[@obaidbaig2058]

I was interested by the question: "do you see any resistance from a younger audiences to being understood by the older audiences?" I think we can take this possible end user objection into consideration from a solutioning perspective. It might be helpful to have an on/off toggle for this product feature where the older adult can choose to constantly have it turned on, and that simply means that if the younger person they are speaking to is ok with it (i.e. the younger person also switched it on) the interpretation feature can work. If the younger person switches it off, the older adult wouldn't receive this interpretation even though they have it turned on from their side. ^ as I listened I was thinking this could address this potential pain point.

[@ritikthakur2891]

But i have one more question why would younger audience have a problem in the first place the older people only get a message that younger people send them. The sole purpose of whatsapp is for conversation and it should be easy to use.

[@ericlee1872]

this is basically a case interview but less calculation and specifically for a product. Interesting how the case structure has migrated over

[@ihatejpmorgan]

Yeah apparently tech companies are interviewing thier PMs like consultants

[@woow14610]

Hands down one of the best interviews that I have watched. Sushanth thinking is super fast, creative and he knows how to use the opportunity. Amazing job.

[@indianaaaz]

I like the approach - how you started from acquisition and went into engagement to solve for WhatsApp. But the idea itself feels like a Language Correction Program :) Do PMs get assessed on the quality of ideas too or is it always just the approach? If it is the former, this interview was not great. If it is the latter, it feels like a psychology+Comms test. What do others reading this think?

[@mehulgoel5875]

I think that the quality of ideas was not good. The approach wasn't good either. He is a Bachelor's kid so maybe that's why.

[@EV-wp1fj]

Exactly this. The presentation was flawless but the core ideas weak. That being said, I think the interviewee showed excellent clarity and structure, ageist preconceptions aside.

[@bhaskar0903]

do you have pointers on how to answer KPIs for the success of a feature , like the one asked here, number of messages sent or received may not be a good indicator .

[@donikian2]

Two areas I wish he addressed or at least acknowledged. 1) The idea seems to break WhatsApp's end to end encryption. Would both users need to opt-in to this feature--seems like it would be required for the idea to work. 2) Would the target population want to download and use something called WhatsApp?

[@ashotmm]

Re: 2) If gandparent truly wants to interact more with grandchildren, seeing that they use Whatsapp, he/she will download and use WhatsApp.

[@Hades112012]

I’m 3 years late to this comment, but if the assistant was computing these responses on device instead of on the cloud, we should be good for end to end encryption.

[@RajithaMuralidharan]

I had the same thought!! Bringing in this conversational assistant is contradictory to WhatsApp's privacy/ end to end encryption. This should not be a default feature as the power users of whatsapp would not want this feature in their app for all obvious reasons. There are high chances that the elderly might get anxious if the chatbot is misleading

[@meharsridharuddandam6415]

A good interview. He expertly fielded the questions like a pro. Just one point: if there are any features that are being introduced and if one is not too sure of the reception, then TEST. Always have some sort of beta testing built-in, especially when dealing with large-scale customer-facing products. The responses will be a litmus test for the product enhancements being proposed.

[@puneetporwal]

With the end-to-end encryption, will the prompts work?

[@AymaneShuichi]

For an undergrad, great structure of answer, but you jumped quickly on user's segments and you identified children and elders which is a dangerous assumption to make. How do you know that elders are not using the app? Or that they are in fact power users? You're taking a risk of solving a problem that doesn't exist. What you would generally do is list few KPIs, then focus on one, and based on that KPI you create segments based on the activity on that KPI, and you try to design a funnel to move users from low activity, to medium activity, then to high activity. This way you don't care about qualitative personas since you don't have the data and it's dangerous to make these assumptions. Nevertheless, brilliant guy

[@EntaroAoV]

Good points on not making assumptions, however how do you proceed to actually making a feature suggestion or product vision from that?

[@AymaneShuichi]

Hi, @@EntaroAoV I prefer to keep the product vision intact. It should remain WhatsApp's product vision. Any new product feature should relate tightly to that vision, otherwise, scratch that from your list. A feature suggestion solves a stated problem. So unless your interviewer states the need or the problem, you shouldn't be looking at any new feature. In the case the problem is stated within a product, then you look at how you can grow that product horizontally to solve the stated problem too. Example: Product is Facebook events. Statement: I want to create an event to go to a venue with my friends. Question: What new features would you suggest? You can see where this is going. The immediate adjacent product feature is Booking the venue. This is the feature you might want to focus on and expand on.

[@Jc-do5xg]

@@AymaneShuichi So i totally agree actually that you need to know the problem to provide a feature suggestion. The thing is, I've done a couple mocks and have read a couple responses to these questions from PM books that suggest the answer should have some specific product feature. But unless you know what the strategy is and what metric to solve for, you can't come up with a feature. The way some interviewees are proceeding with this such as in this video is that they keep on assuming things such as, let's target "X" demographic and presume they have "Y" problem. If the interviewer wants to here specific feature ideas, a lot of assumptions have to be made. And that's if the interviewee is familiar with the product.

[@arpana86thakur]

@aymanesuichi I would like to get some training on PM interviews . I am ready to pay, can we connect please?

[@fishonfishingadventures3719]

This kid is brilliant. Breaking down the problem systematically/structured thinking and speaking was top notch

[@jazztomatoes6679]

While the interview has insight into the hiring process, it also points out how FAANG PMs think about user engagement metrics (e.g., how often they use WhatsApp and time spent on WhatsApp). Guarantee no WhatsApp customers would say my life is better because I spend more time on WhatsApp. These metrics are measuring FB's desire for people to increase time spent on the apps, simply because more time = more $. So perhaps the more brave PMs should start thinking differently about what good user engagement means.

[@tryexponent]

Hey Jazz! That's a great point (And worth bringing up in your interview!) What metrics would you look at instead to determine a properly "good user engagement"?

[@beefchampion2792]

@@tryexponent Ease of use and ease of integration with other services would be a good start. (having a sleek interface is also a good idea) The faster I can communicate with my friends the better. Which is the opposite of spending more time on the platform.

[@msarosh]

This was a fabulous interview and kudos to Sushant for answering so well. You should upload more such videos to help the community. There is no right or wrong way to answer a case and you can only try to use as much structure as you can to put forth your best shot at answering the question. Something that I like to do to add more structure to segmentation is to first think through the axes on which I want to segment. There are cookie cutter axes which stem from demographic properties like age, income, gender, marital status, tech literacy, country, profession etc that can yield some generic customer segments for all products. The key really is to find the axes that yield segments that exhibit diverse needs for the product in question. In this example age was actually a great axis to choose. There are some other great axes as well like nature of use - business or consumer, endpoint - desktop or mobile, engagement type - stories or chat etc that give very diverse user needs for Whatsapp.

[@AdityaTumma_inducedfreak_]

That's very true Sarosh. The more you dive into segmentation, the more you get personas and it'd be difficult to address every persona. Sushant did a good job by considering all these subsets into one major union. Moreover he gave a more generalized solution which was easy to relate and understand.

[@user-jp7ni5xv1r]

@@AdityaTumma_inducedfreak_ the term youre looking for is minimum viable segment.

[@aniketmi1]

great, practise interview. Thank you for uploading it. Wanted to share a few thoughts which echo some of the earlier comments. An on machine-based ML-powered assistant to help elderly and other segments of users understand and reply to messages is great but would it be better to provide simpler ideas such as collating all the previous unread messages and providing a contextual summary either in words or audio (of your preferred language) to the user? This summary could also tie in contextually with earlier messages and take into account the relationship between the sender and receiver (another additional parameter for the app to collect with user consent). Within this brief, it could also highlight events/reminders/other important keypoints and suggest the tone of brief, similar to what Gmail does? At the end, it could provide suggestions for replies.

[@BenjaminBoster]

I'm new to this format but not to product management. I'm curious about the benefit gained by asking the product manager what solutions he can come up with. Is it common the product managers present solutions in addition to problems that need to be solved? Coming with a solution has often backfired for me from the developers and I'm curious if this is just for the purpose of the exercise or if PMs are really expected to come up with solutions. Thanks for doing this!

[@apt_intervention]

how about analyzing quality of conversations as a metric, whenever you remove friction in a flow - generally the quality of the metrics go down?

[@vinodpimple946]

Can you please schedule a mock interview with experts on payment based app and security softwares along with gaming apps ?

[@sulmanafridi5079]

He is super structured and polished-well beyond his years, but man that shows with his responses. Apparently parents are elderly people. 🙂 He is going to be a great PM though.

[@varsha_agarwal]

2 points that come to my mind when thinking about the elderly population - 1. be able to integrate voice transcripts where a user can translate a text to audio message when they are unable to read 2. ability to add details to calendar or create a calendar on the app itself for events/people that plan to meet up in the week

[@apt_intervention]

I would have liked if he had talked about the data/distributions he would looked at before restricting his focus to elderly people + He could have talked about how he got the pain points of elderly people - surveys, talking to elderly, any data points (message received is much greater than message responded, typos in their responses, etc)

[@carpedium140]

Hi Arpit

[@lipstickmanager40]

@Priyanka Upadhyay Agreed, and interviewing is way harder than sharing critiques online. But I wished you were the interviewee based on your awesome remarks! Firstly, seems he didn't know a ton about whatsapp and you are spot on in regards to market share; it is a known fact that whatsapp is used more in Europe where penetration is over 80% vs US with only 20M people using it. He should have asked questions towards that direction. Instead, he jumped into the customer segments that seemed really generic: kids/adults/elderly. I lost him there. Also, why elderly I didn't get either. He could have elaborated on the population that is aging fast. Also, geography plays a major role: there are countries where the elderly live with their kids and countries where they don't - these sub-segments will have different needs in terms of communicating with family. Lastly, his pain points for old people...they are rather strange. Talking to elderly people, they mostly complain about usability: receiving messages (miss notifications) and sending messages (difficult to type). The feature of adding a message-based reminder was a more adequate use-case.

[@ayeshahettige7863]

That was fantastic! Loved the structure and easy flow of the interviewee! Clear and concise!

[@saranyaananthakrishnan7752]

I really liked how Sushanth answered the question of "youngsters who want to be ambiguous". I was wondering how we could go about if you have no product management experience

[@pksingh3232]

If we are able to address such usability issues which exists in a platform it will not only increase usage , it will also increase user onboarding.

[@Ashok_Venugopalan]

loved the suggestions at the end especially with regard to customer segmentation

[@stevenspellberg]

Liked Sushant's clarity of thought and on the feet thinking (assuming it was not preplanned )

[@UpNoLoad]

Can you all separate interview section from when you talk to us as users? Something similar to Frank Underwood from House of Cards when he acts and then turns around and talk to us.

[@TheAdammonster]

Are you designing "Clippy" for Whatsapp? j/k

[@stushapiro2745]

Shouldn't we also point out the metrics and impact measurements?

[@IamKartikeyanegi]

How will end to end encryption of whatsapp be ensured in a conversational interface that reads the texts to give suggestions?

[@J0CKNANE]

Models could be applied on the clients device without breaking E2EE. The model couldn't be applied on WhatsApp servers as the encrypted messaged is passed through as it's not readable by WhatsApp. The models would have to be trained by WhatsApp using non-WhatsApp conversation data as again they don't have access to it.

[@tobiasfrierson7814]

Sushanth gave very structured responses and physically wrote his thoughts down. Is that typical for a PM interview? I've never heard of a candidate doing so in an interview.

[@tryexponent]

Writing thoughts down is recommended! Writing on a whiteboard is encouraged.

[@shelbysir3421]

Tobias Frierson I’m going to make a PM interview video soon if you’re interested in following me along!

[@mehulgoel5875]

@@tryexponent What about 'structured' responses. They were so structured that they felt template answers.

[@tryexponent]

@@mehulgoel5875 We definitely don't recommend sounding overly rehearsed or too structured - Worth checking out this article: blog.tryexponent.com/why-move-beyond-pm-interview-frameworks/

[@goddessvibes08]

Very satisfying interview, thanks for the brainstorming questions- it was cool to see the candidate's POV.

[@tryexponent]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@nitinrao7637]

Stakeholders conflicts to be included and what's up been product.. may be taken to start monetary benifit goal

[@RushiKale-k4i]

If interface is giving suggestions based on chats by other people to elderly once, it means interface is actually reading chats, right? What about privacy concerns??

[@pro100olga]

Great interview! I was impressed how Sushanth went with these interesting user segments! Each of the segment was worth attention and could lead to an interesting feature, it did not look like something made up. I wonder if Sushanth just came up with the segments spontaneously, or it was based on some previous experience? :)

[@tryexponent]

Glad you liked it! Sushanth came up with these during the interview!

[@pawankumarchauhan1332]

Please remove red lines on screen in future video. Because its is creating disturbance.

[@anshumansingh7531]

The question that Stephen asks at 14:49 is a good one. It's a good challenge to the pain points and can easily make the interviewee nervous.

[@abcdef-zb7qs]

He is really smart and very well prepared. I am not surprised by the fact that he got google PM offer

[@GauravYadav-km1yz]

One of the point Sushant suggested that AI would read all the messages and then convey the younger user's messages to the elderly user, raises concerns about privacy. WhatsApp, with its core value of ensuring private communication, contradictory to its fundamental principles. This approach contradicts the platform's commitment to private communication, potentially compromising user confidentiality.

[@Nexatek]

whatsapp can integrate with something like google pay, to transfer amounts instantly though whatsapp window. Also wow about integrating something like amazon store with whatsapp..

[@mansigunwant8904]

Lovely Interview so insightful. Thanks. I practiced it on my own, before watching the video, and targeted the business use case of WhatsApp, where a lot of businesses, and startups are now moving to WhatsApp as their primary form of communication within their work teams, and even forming groups or communities with their customers. However, while the chats tend to remain active, WhatsApp doesn't have any great features for storing important announcements (other than group descriptions, which is ineffective). Maybe they should focus on adding options like "pinning messages on top of chat" and storing these pinned messages, similar to Telegram or discord so that an important update is not lost in chatting.

[@tryexponent]

Awesome that you practiced before watching the video, Mansi 🔥🔥! Really glad that you are interacting and engaging with our content!

[@zoechrysostom4050]

Thanks for these videos, it helps so much! I have a few question: 1) How does one go to determine and choose a specific user segment? Since we usually have to look at customer feedback or quant data to see what the main pain-points are. 2) For this type of question, is it more expected to add a feature or could we also suggest improving an existing feature? Thanks a lot :)

[@tryexponent]

1) Generally you can list out a few ideas and pick the one that you think aligns with the vision/objective the best. 2) You can do either! No one direction is better - pick the one where you have the best ideas!

[@dariusneidhart1068]

I have seen several of exponents videos on Product management. Although, I am not a product manager but I seem to have a similar line of thought as to identifying several aspects into improving anything. Calendar was one thing I could think of immediately as a means of improving whatsapp for several user groups including businesses and companies. Besides, there are several other things that can improve WhatsApp. Some of those are listed below. 1) Improving the experience during device change (people buy new phones all the time and the experience is not as good; I don't have all the messages from my 2nd or 3rd last mobile device on my current device, those chats may be on cloud but they should be on the device too after 'n' device changes if I want it) 2) Improving the WhatsApp calling experience by simply allowing recording of audio and video calls And a few others. I would really appreciate if any one can share any feedback or follow up questions, I will be happy to answer or get corrected. I don't know how to get into this field and I am really interested to switch and start my career in Product management. I believe I can do well here. Please advise.

[@kizitookorowu9296]

I agree with your thoughts @Darius on improving call features. there are calls that i have that i need to record and i find myself using another device to record manually.

[@devanshojha2654]

How does one go about User Segmentation? Sushanth went towards demographics (age) but he also put in police officers. Is that a good way to do it? Any good tutorials on this?

[@productcareer]

Love the Interview, found the overlay a little tricky because the goal was to make it a little more engaging and expressive, adding overlay may lead to confusions which is what we want to solve in a situation where our product is for the elderly. Overall, loved it though.

[@tryexponent]

Glad you liked it, Yash!

[@donolushgroup3426]

These videos are really helpful, can you add Scrum and Agile project manager videos?

[@KhalilNajjar]

Fantastic interview. Sushanth rocked it totally! Steve, you mentioned briefly the PM Interview answer structure around 36:00. Could you provide that in more detail here or post a link to it? Thanks for the great content!

[@tryexponent]

Hey Khalil! The structure is included in our course at www.tryexponent.com/courses/pm

[@MsVaibhav90]

It was fantastic really sushant deserves the 5 start rating amazing job✌✌✌✌

[@srinivasprabhunv2313]

Hi Stephen, Thanks for the amazing video!. I had a question on the technical capabilities of the product feature discussed in the video. As a PM in the interview, how can we confidently say that we will have the feature which will provide suggestions that change from person to person? Does the PM need to have the knowledge to confidently say this is technically possible in version 1 or later iterations? As per my knowledge, the PM on the job will probably consult with engineering team specifically with experts in Natural Language. Hope my question was clear. Would love your thoughts on this! Thanks!

[@tryexponent]

Hey Srinivas! In an interview, I'd recommend that you brainstorm more and be more "10x" about your product features - it's hard to know exactly what's feasible, so providing a future vision can be more effective, and caveating or mentioning that you could discuss technical feasibility if desired by the interviewer. Does that help?

[@srinivasprabhunv2313]

Yes thanks a lot Stephen!!

[@SidhyaIyer]

For the time given for the interview i think he was great. And i apologize in advance as I am pretty new to the PM space. Wasn't the vision too far fetched( it could get there iteratively). there are so many more easy enhancements that can generate user engagement for the targeted segment. examples would include hearing back the texts received. Whats app has the ability to record and actually hear and or read your recordings before you send it. Things like that.

[@vaibhavbhatt7065]

I use to think like that apparently Google doesn't want iterative answers. They want moonshots

[@ihatejpmorgan]

The kid idea is excellent. The cop idea is definitely interesting.

[@tryexponent]

Thanks!

[@abhishekh402]

I would work with airlines to make sure Watsapp is available everywhere on land and sky. There should be no downtime with respect to user engagement. Users should not buy internet. Watsapp must be a default service made available.

[@pksingh3232]

After User Research let’s say we came across some pertinent pain points which are faced by elderly people who are not tech savvy, let’s say we got below pain points a. I find it difficult to type a chat message b. I find it difficult to search for a person to chat or call c. I want to share interactive content like articles and videos with my friends and family d. I want to host a group video call seamlessly

[@user-jp7ni5xv1r]

I want to share interactive content like articles and videos with my friends and family d. I want to host a group video call seamlessly -----> but why? you need to reframe this to articulate the STRUGGLE the user has. This is important as one of the key analysis points should be how the solution is going to be better than competitors.

[@shivvasampath]

Good Interview.. after leaving google, he joined as an engineer in other organization, why ? is there anything we need to know about PM Role, why didn't he join as pm again ?

[@ankursaini4361]

Great answers Sushant...I really liked your structured thinking and responses.

[@nehaGk210585]

People using wats app are not restricted to using English language and they can use their own mother tounge and slang.. interpreting becomes difficult..

[@superwiseman452]

12:21 great what's app is now telling grand parents what to say . just what we need. lol. how about voice to text? grandparents simply struggle trying to type into a 3" iphone.

[@parvati02]

Do you Product ideas need to be feasible? I am not sure Sushant's is, isn't Whatsapp message encrypted? Doesn't that mean Whatsapp is not allowed to read to understand messages shared by users?

[@thetarunjain88]

All suggestions given need some sort of reading and interpreting the text messages. Wont that violate "end to end encryption of whatsapp"

[@haribkss]

Whatsapp is an end-to-end encrypted messaging service. When everything is encrypted, won't it be impossible for WhatsApp to suggest gifs, add to calendar without breaking encryption

[@Theartsygalslays]

One bit missing was upfront or even subsequent prioritization amongst the user problems - since in real development process, you might be forced to build a roadmap rather than every feature you want.

[@tryexponent]

That's definitely something we could have talked about with more time! How might you have thought about the prioritization of the different user problems?

[@user-jp7ni5xv1r]

Well the key here is, what is the job to be done and what outcomes are we focused on? Improving which JTBD in particular moves the engagement metric the most?

[@pksingh3232]

Based on the pain points observed possible solutions can be defined for e.g we can redesign landing page of WhatsApp to show people with whom you chat or call frequently, tapping on their picture will give option to chat or call or video call , this list will be populated based on past usage record of the user and will get updated real-time, users can also create a list of favourite contacts which they can customise This redesign will address problem of searching a contact by typing their name which is a major pain point

[@satisharjani]

To the best of my knowledge, WhatsApp does solve this pain point through its pin feature (where you can shift your favourite conversations/ people to the top and you no longer have to go through the pain of scrolling or searching)

[@satisharjani]

Secondly, WhatsApp has its brand image of being the simplest conversational app with exactly three non-confusing pages (chats, status, calls). The addition of an home page would add to more complexity and thus increase the chances of losing its differentiating point.

[@pksingh3232]

@@satisharjani You might be correct so to check that we can do A/B Testing for this UI and see if DAU drops or not , I have observed this issue in Elderly users who are mostly not aware of Pin feature

[@aayushchawla7736]

@4:20 You could also say that my favorite product is xyz, however, I have already talked about this in the previous interview with. I also like abc product, should I talk about that or should I stick to xyz?

[@richaupadhyay]

Hi, great video. I have one doubt wherein Sushant, with this feature, Whatsapp, needs to be very cautious. With all the data so that information is not misunderstood. My question is how Whatsapp would get that data to decipher what is being said and how it will be interpreted.

[@sushil0809]

Can someone point a link for the framework that fits here

[@apoorvashrivastava9377]

Hi can you do one video on product marketing manager role at Apple !

[@tryexponent]

Hey Apoorva! We'll add it to our list!

[@jerryanyu8467]

Is it normal to spend 40 minutes of the interview on just one question?

[@vijayantpratap7315]

For Sushant it's kind of, for me it's you know...

[@DikshaJainIITD]

How will the assistant look through whatsapp chats since whatsapp chats are encrypted 12:45 ?

[@purplemonkeys11]

5:53 "Emojeez" - Legend

[@anupgurav5908]

Can someone please throw light on the feasibility of the features proposed? Since Whatsapp chats are end-to-end encrypted is it possible to deploy any models on the messages in real-time ??

[@tryexponent]

I'd focus less on feasibility here! This is a brainstorm / interview so it's not meant to be perfect!

[@mohitb5230]

great insightful interview video. I also conduct mock interviews to help people prepare for their actual interview.. I specifically have Indian context incorporated in my questions and suited for Indian Product Managers

[@jingjingzhang3079]

Great video! Can you share a link to his blog post about trade offs? Sorry if I missed it.

[@tryexponent]

Here you go! blog.tryexponent.com/the-key-to-a-successful-pm-interview-answer-tradeoffs/

[@nishantmohan3609]

Where can i get case study pdf with solutions

[@dhavalpatel338]

any thoughts people ? Trade off: What if whats app messages are in different language and how will system interpret that or in other word if someone is using what’s app in different language(non-english) then what ? isn’t it increase cost for extra man power to build AI models in different language and also add extra labor to execute this change ? < Any suggestions ? or am i thinking this in wrong way

[@tanmaysinghi1868]

good problem to solve but very low business impact

[@ajayghorpade9607]

Can you please do the mock interview on sales and business development roles

[@tryexponent]

Hey Ajay! What types of questions have you seen in that area? Would love to support you!

[@rafaelleto152]

Great interview! Thanks!

[@joelpriyanth]

A person who is new to this topic may think PM interview is just random thinking and how well do u believe and support ur thoughts. This is just like playing situations game

[@thefockinfury7497]

This dude slayed

[@Raahulseith]

How about adding a payment option for p2p and p2m transactions like a wechat.

[@tryexponent]

Neat idea! Why do you think WhatsApp hasn't done this so far?

[@Raahulseith]

@@tryexponent Regulatory restrictions across different countries could be one of the main reasons.

[@jessy9801]

Hi Stephen, thanks for sharing this. Your videos conducting mock interviews are very helpful! I had one question about how much time we should spend on Product Design questions and also the amount of detail to provide in each segment (i.e. Clarifications, Identifying goals/users/use cases/etc..)?

[@tryexponent]

Hey Jessica! We really appreciate the kind words. In general, product design questions are around 30 minutes in length, but they can take much more or much less time depending on the interviewer. We recommend focusing on answering questions in a way that spends more time on the "interesting" parts of the question (e.g. don't spend too much time on user segmentation if there isn't much to talk about there). Does that help?

[@jessy9801]

Yes, that’s very helpful. During my mock interviews with friends. I tend to spend too much time and give too much detail around customer segmentation and goals. Probably because I was a Data Analyst for a couple of years previously, and so I end up “living” in those sections. Probably best to focus more on the design and solutions. Thanks, Stephen! :)

[@tryexponent]

@@jessy9801 That makes sense - good luck on the interviews!

[@japanboy31415]

i got my dream job !! im working at a company called nvidia now !!!

[@tryexponent]

Congrats! 🥳🎉 Save some of those 4090s for us 😎