Introduction
We recently sat down with Flexport Product Lead, Boris Logvinsky, to discuss navigating new product jobs and challenges. It’s a great listen for anyone who is curious about know when it’s time to take the next step in your career in product management.
When is the right time to pursue new product jobs? According to Flexport Product Lead, Boris Logvinsky, you’ll feel when it’s time for a new challenge.
You can listen to the full episode of Product Talk or read the highlights below.
On how he knew it was time for a new challenge
Sometimes, you just know you’re ready to solve a new problem.
“It’d been almost six years at Twitter. After six years of working in that space and working in Ad Tech and delivering products to those users, I really just felt it was time to do something else. I don’t think we solved all of the problems by any means. There’s definitely more runway at Twitter. But intellectually, I think I just wasn’t as excited about working on that problem anymore and was ready to come tackle a new challenge. Part of me was also sort of interested in being part of a smaller organization again.”
On how to learn quickly at a new project job
Logvinsky listed several ways he’s been able to overcome new product jobs, but this one especially stuck out:
“You’ve got to spend time with customers. There’s no substitute for that. In my case, they’re both internal developers at Flexport and end-users. I’ve really focused my time on the developers initially.”
On understanding the stakeholders when you take on a new role
Surviving in a new product job, and becoming a great product manager, requires asking a lot of questions and finding out who are the right people to ask.
“So figuring out who is the stakeholder. Who cares about the thing that you’re working on has required just a lot of asking questions. A lot of asking for advice from folks who’ve been here and understanding. Trying, as much as possible, upfront to ask the question, ‘hey, if we’re going to work on this thing, or we’re going to touch this piece, who are all the people who you think we should involve in this?’”
About the speaker
Boris Logvinsky is the Director of Product Management at Flexport. At Flexport, Logvinsky heads up the application platform product team which is responsible for building tools and products that enable Flexport developers to more quickly deliver products to their end customers. Prior to that, he worked as the Head of Product at MoPub, which is a mobile ads platform acquired by Twitter. Logvinsky began his career building products at Demandforce.