I used to log into Datalink BBS in 1994 in the 904 area code. Were you the sysop of that by chance?

YouTube | Engineering Manager, Mobile, YouTube Stories | San Bruno, CA | Fulltime, Onsite

Our team at YouTube is looking to hire an eng manager for our mobile client dev team! Ideal candidate will have front-line client dev experience, 2+ years of eng manager experience on consumer products, and love building the future. Check out the link below and apply online!

https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/youtube/engineeri...

Full disclosure: I'm a PM at Snap, Inc.

Best coverage is on Snap Map. Zoom to the Keys and the west coast of Florida and check out the first hand accounts.

I'd say we are 20 minutes away from, "If you think this hurricane is lit you should try this protein powder"

Followed by cleavage shots and duck-facing.

Well I laughed.

Best coverage is the /r/TropicalWeather live feed on Reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/live/zkadef2ttzql/

https://www.pscp.tv/Jeff_Piotrowski/ (Storm chaser of Blue Shed fame)

If you want weather news and/or official updates, tweets might be better. If you want video from thousands of people sharing their experience, there is no comparison.

I tried to figure out how to open Snap Map without googling for help.

Discover section? Nope. Somewhere at the top or bottom of my friends list? Nope. Somewhere in Ghost icon thing? Nope.

So I gave up and googled for help. Turns out you have to pinch-zoom-out anywhere.

I read your comment, opened snapchat, pinch&zoomed in-an-out everywhere. I couldn't find the map. I'm more than 30. I'm putting down my phone and reading a book.

I'm early 30s and relatively tech savvy, the snap app is the hard app to figure out.

I'm 22 and also tech savvy, but I find it quite simple to use. I think the target users are those that have pinch-to-zoom interfaces as kids (the today's teens), so the UX is meant to be "cool" instead of intuitive.

Another thing I've seen quite a lot is that you need to invest some time and have lots of friends already using the platform to know about the hidden gems, which I think the app itself promotes that behavior of friends sharing their knowledge instead of easy to use UI (not saying I think it's a good thing)

too bad I can't open Snapchat on my Nexus 5x without Android killing every other process to make room for your shoddy app's absurd memory requirements which still fail to provide enough performance to even allow swiping between activities smoothly

Hey it seems like everyone here is critiquing the app, UX, etc, and not focusing on the actual content of your post.

I just wanted to say thanks for pointing this out. Really fascinating and unique way of following Irma's progress.

First time Snap Map user too fwiw.

It's cool to see how the platform is being leveraged for this event.

I tried to check it out myself but Snapchat was bugging out and getting a bit laggy so it was hard to really view.

Snapchat has no API, thanks!

How??? I still can't find the trigger for maps

100s will die today trying to face swap Irma

Hey!

On behalf of all PMs, I'm sorry you had this experience. Good PMs tend to do just the opposite. If you are in this situation now, I encourage you to share this feedback to the person that is most likely to help change it (ideally with the PM directly?).

As a company scales, there is a tendency to embrace specializations through a division of labor. Of course, different companies adopt different models for various reasons. e.g. Do you need dedicated QA or does that fall upon the developers? With these decisions come trade-offs because you can't optimize for everything. Your proposed model can work, but is far less common in large tech companies because of the overhead of coordinating/communicating across lots of people which tends to fall upon PMs.

I'm a PM at Snap Inc (formerly Snapchat). Before that, GPM at Twitter.

how did you get there / background

For me, engineering was the path that led to being a PM. I was a decent developer, but always found myself more interested in what we should be building opposed to how to build it. Background includes BS computer eng, masters in systems eng and an mba. Did software dev for years and gravitated toward roles that increasingly positioned me for PMing while getting those last two degrees.

"junior product" positions

There are junior product positions, just very few. Google/Twitter have an APM program. At FB it is the RPM program. There are many paths that lead to being a PM. Look for stepping stones and be persistent. I know PMs that were previously a software developer, product marketing manager, project manager, technical program manager, designer, etc. If you are able to take on one of those roles at a company that also has PMs, you can probably work towards a transition.

skills

In terms of skills, this thread on Quora is good, especially Ian McAllister's response: https://www.quora.com/What-distinguishes-the-Top-1-of-Produc... Keep in mind that different companies will put more or less weight on a particular competency. e.g. Google requires PMs to have a technical background will ask technical questions, facebook does not. Facebook will ask a lot of questions around data, experimentation, data-driven decision making, etc. because they are a very data driven culture.

> I was a decent developer, but always found myself more interested in what we should be building opposed to how to build it.

This. But I want to do both and continue to improve the dev side of my game.

I'm also exactly there. I feel I cannot really excel at dev while I enjoy it, but I believe I can make a difference in PM

If anyone wants to have a quick chat (10 mins) about getting into PM'ing, what PMs do, etc., I hold office hours here: https://officehours.io/people/toddsherman

Snap, Inc. (Previously Snapchat) | Tons of Openings Noted Below | Los Angeles - New York - London - Seattle | ONSITE | Full-time

Snap Inc. is a camera company. We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. Our products empower people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.

Snap, Inc. is hiring for a ton of positions: Software Engineer, 3D UI/UX Engineer, Corporate Security Engineer, Data Engineer, Director of Engineering - QA, Electrical Engineer, Engineering Program Manager, Front End Software Engineer, Hardware Reliability Engineer, Information Security Engineer, Interactive Engineer, Mobile Software Engineer, Packaging Engineer, QA Engineer, Release Engineer, Computer Vision Research Engineer, Software Automation Engineer, Web Developer, Web UI/UX Engineer.

If you are interested in any of the roles, check out www.snap.com/jobs for full details. I recommend you apply online but if you'd like to email me at [email protected] and I'll do my best to help in any way I can.

I would love to work at Snap but have to stay in SF for family reasons. Are there any plans to build an SF office, especially after the Vurb acquisition?

Sorry, I don't have that information.