Liked the way she went about with the root-cause analysis, bucketing her questions into general, internal and external. Goes to show that you can be successful in solving these issue-identification types of questions with a structured thought process.
I dont mean to be off topic but does anybody know a tool to log back into an instagram account..? I was dumb lost my account password. I would appreciate any help you can give me.
She interned in TH-cam 1-2 years ago which means she is still very new in PM role. I can’t believe she is this great!!! A lot to learn from you Selena!
Omg I’m so glad you did another interview with her. She is one of THE BEST PMs you’ve created content with. The last mock interview was super helpful. I’m excited to watch this one now 😊
Celena is definitely one of the rare PMs. She is so structured, lays out right in the beginning and it all makes sense. Both of the video (Product Design - FB Movies and this Execution) and one with Or (Coinbase PM) is just exceptional. I have watched those videos a couple of times and learned something new every time. The feedbacks from Stephen Cognetta were really great too. Please keep 'em coming.
The precision with which she articulates her thoughts is truly remarkable, and her ability to craft responses that encompass a wide range of solutions is truly impressive. I would greatly appreciate it if there were additional mock-ups featuring Celena.
If it's possible, can you please show the interviewee notes to a corner of this video so that we can have a better track of the structure? I tend to sometimes forget the flow.. It'd be really nice to see how an interviewee comes up with the notes and the flow.
complete respect to celena. however I was a bit surprised she didn't respond right of the bat with any clarifying questions on something as broad as 'how would you set youtube's goals?' ie... what kind of goals? financial, product roadmap, optimization, the business unit, M&A, technology integrations, content strategy, ...
I think (session time - watch time)/session time can be a good counter metric. Because if this ratio is high, then it means users spend a lot time on exploring the site, but did not watch many videos
@@terrybatman 1. Shows that the algorithm isn’t that good at recommending videos to users and 2. TH-cam makes money primarily off of ads that run before monetized videos, so if users aren’t watching many videos, they don’t make much money
I'm interviewing for PM roles, and I am finding these videos super helpful. I can see myself improving with every video I watch. She is an awesome panellist, and you are an awesome host.
by far the best interview example i've seen. specifically because the interviewer isn't giving a softball question and the follow ups on the decline, making it very hard to figure out the why. all the other videos people just say yes great but this showed her depth in the space and breaking down considerations well!
These videos have been incredibly helpful. I used them to help me in my interviewing process and was able to land a new PM job! Thanks so much for the help!!
I really like the way she takes the flow of the interview and makes it seem so seamless! While keeping all the important points in mind. She is one of the best PMs that you have interviewed!
This was a great interview! I had paused the video to frame my solution first and there were few things that I believe should have been asked such as youtube definition of watch time. According to Google, Watch time is the total accumulated amount of time people have spent watching your video on TH-cam. All this while, I was thinking the overall time spent on youtube platform per user. I think Interviewer meant the same as well. Correct me if its the other way. Another addition to what Celena mentioned in the end could be Walk-through of user journey on youtube. This would have also helped to understand the user drop-off.
this is a really good interview. however the part that i sometimes have to ask is that there are a lot of people who can crack these pm interviews but it does not always correlate directly to being a PM in an actual setting. Because the way that these responses are constructed is the perspective of being the complete CEO of a product. when in reality, it is that you will be owning a small feature that rarely often moves the needle.
My personal learning is the one where I see the interviewee providing actual insight on usage or product or industry shows better empathy and would have higher chances of selection . Celena ticks all the boxes and would definitely be selected anywhere
Why dont people define the dropped metric before debugging that thing (have seen so many mock interviews). Like average watch time= number of users*number of sessions*number of videos seen per session*average duration of each video seen. Now debug which of these is causing the drop.
Great call out! This would be my preferred approach too - break it down to a mathematical function and once we identify the dimension causing the drop, list potential internal and external factors to identify root cause.
Wonderful job! Really loved how she broke down the problem and defended those answers. I have something to add - it is very common and easy to forget there is another side of the problem especially in a two-sided platform. Some of the questions such as the following can also be asked: 1. Is the decline connected to any particular content creator? Say MKBHD - It is possible that the content creator may have stopped creating videos in YT and they have their own website or moved to different platform. 2. Did any of the major content publisher, say Marvel Entertainment or Universal pictures moved somewhere else? Is this related to the said timeline of 1-3 months?
TH-cam is a mature product with a mature monetization model. I think she correctly identified engagement would lead to monetization. I’d prioritize monetization if there was an intent on changing the way TH-cam monetizes. Running experiments on new monetization models (pricing) or if I were building a new feature on TH-cam that had new monetization opportunities.
That is a great question. There are two approaches I would take: 1. explore the current revenue models and how youtube could expand on this. 2. explore how a new feature could potentially increase revenue. In brief, 1 would involve ad placement experimentation, ctr performance optimization for ads, and price testing on ad buys. And also funnel optimization for TH-cam premium. 2. I would look for ways to build value on top of existing revenue-generating features. Maybe premium ad publishing and analytics (a subscription-based youtube crm), youtube education (youtube masterclass, youtube skillshare), youtube wirecutter (google's apple tv). I don't know this is a tough one. Honestly I will need to think a bit more. And also more than likely I would flunk this one haha.
Another question I'd ask as a PM about that gradual decline of the North Star watch time metric would be did we historically experience this drop at any point in time? Could it be due to seasonality as in more folks are vaccinated and going back out there to socialize, hence causing watch time to drop.
Very helpful! Celena is a thoughtful PM. As far as external factors that could affect engagement, I would think that the weather would play a role. When the weather is nice, people get outside more, and they probably watch less TH-cam. There may be other systemic factors that affect all video services similarly (holidays, other big events drawing viewers, political situations, etc.), and ratings services would see these changes across the board.
That's a good point, however it would only be relevant for a sudden change in watch time. A few hot days, big events or political situations would not lead to a gradual change in user behavior.
Question about your advice to Celina at the end. how does youtube's api users seeing a decline/embedded videos seeing a decline indicate a competitive problem? Does it mean that users are now using other video products?
Watched a lot of videos on your channel in the past days as I dive into PM during the pandemic. This, by far, is the most well rounded interview I came across. ✌🏻
Maybe she could have asked about this important metric during the question session - (Avg. Watch time / Avg. time of all videos opened). In case of cannibalization, this metric would have served ready purpose as there would've been a increase in this metric as against an expected decrease, pointing to the fact that the avg. time of videos opened has reduced due to the launch of short videos on TH-cam. Feel free to comment. Assumption - Shorter videos have greater watch time than longer videos.
She's obviously wicked smart and gave a great answer. However, she also (if my facts are right) was working directly at a competitor (Facebook video) when she did this interview. So her answer is likely greatly informed by observing how the FB organization prioritized and measured. Not saying it's cheating or to take away from her great answer, but if I were an interviewer, i would steer away from asking questions that are OBVIOUSLY going to be right in the center of someone's current domain expertise. It's like interviewing at Google Docs and having a Microsoft Word PM apply and asking them how to measure success of GDocs.
It would be interesting to see an interview on a product that is not as well know as facebook, youtube, twitter or such. How to ace an interview where company and its vision is not as clear or publicly known, thus the questions tend to be a bit more abstract, focusing more on past experiences, hypotheticals; where the interviewer cannot not assume that the interviewee knows about the product or it's ecosystem.
I think the the example where we wont be concentrating on engagement but monetization, would be when the content would be from studios- and content is created by the studio/service rather than the customer( like youtube does)
Thanks for the video, I really like the terminologies and explanation by her. The one issue which I found little interesting was, goals of TH-cam is a very broad question, I was thinking in terms of revenue, engagement, retention, UX, performance, quality metrics for the entire organization, I think engagment alone is not making justice to the question, just my 2 cents, correct me if my thinking was not in line with the expectation
youtube shorts was made available for only Phones , how did we see a uniform decline over all the platforms? i would have brought this up ! But great content for aspirants like us , Thanks Much
Great Job Celena on a stellar response. You rock! I like how you structured your thoughts, and especially the metrics drop part where you considered in the external factors around the partnership of You Tube with TVs and there could have been an older deprecated version of a TV that is not supported attributing to this drop. I never would have thought about that!! And Thanks Stephen for sharing content like this. They are awesome and great quality. Keep up the good work!
One of the best video from your team. Great job. Just a suggestion, I m not from a tech background but still I watch these interview to gain perspective on how to answer such impromptu questions. May I request you to do ateast 1 -2 videos on how to answer basic interview question and behavioral questions. It is be really helpful to see how PM from top companies answer these questions. These questions almost comes in all job interview so it would be helpful for everyone. Looking forward to your inputs
I felt there was no conclusive evidence that the decline is because of TH-cam shorts. It would have been more definitive if we could comparing it with user engagement on shorts. For example, it could be because there is a gradual decline due to poor quality of youtube videos or increasing buffer issues. Thoughts?
Hello Stephen, Thank you for your efforts, means the world. :) I see a few concerns with the approach Celena resorted to. I am laying them out, kindly state if they make sense or if I am overthinking. 1. Normally when it comes to goal setting, they are set initially at an organisational level, which is the overarching goal, and then they are trickled down to individual teams where these goals are worked upon in cohesion by the teams under the overarching goal to achieve a common consensus. These can be measured through OKRs or other frameworks. She could've cleared off any ambiguity by checking if the goals are to be set at an organisational level or a team level instead of diving right in. 2. Organisational goals are annual whilst team goals are quarterly(generally speaking). If an assumption around wanting to tweak the engagement lever and monetization lever is being considered, they seem more like individual team (revenue/growth & engagement teams) goals. If thats the case, how do you define engagement? youtube defines engagement differently from how netflix or spotify does(just quoting names). Ambiguity around defining what these metrics actually are could've been cleared. 3. Even if an assumption around these goals being org level goals is made, some numbers in terms or percentages from the previous years couldve been thrown(for ease of calculation). Example being, engagement was around 15% last year, this year we improve it to 20%. then define the engagement metric and then map the customer journey, analyse the customer journey funnel and sort of narrow down on areas that can be improved that affect the engagement metric on the whole. This clears off the ambiguity around "why" the engagement or the monetization metric is chosen over other metrics. 4. A major part of her answer circumvents around metrics and KPIs, which ideally should be the case. But I didnt follow for the most part of it because the WHY behind choosing these metrics over other metrics was missing from the beginning. 5. Finally, goals in my experience should always be quantifiable/measurable and time bounded. Some mention around the timeline within which these goals are expected to be achieved would've been more practical. Apologies in case the feedback is too long, My humble thoughts. Open to feedback in case you think I'm sweating it out a bit too much. Peace :)) best, AB
It seemed like she asked the 1st clarifying question just for the sake of asking. He already began the prompt with info on how long they have been seeing this.
There was great structured approach used in the question, the provided clarifications plus giving context were definitely the biggest takeaways for me. One more thing I would want to add is while handling the decline in watch time - especially for internal bit - looking at number of active viewers, active creators, plus new sign up and churned viewers/creators - since this would serve as a primary input to understand if users on both sides of the marketplace - viewers / creators are also dropping.
The issue with only focusing on engagement and not monetization, is it ultimately results in data sold for Ads. Because it's hard to change consumer behavior later to pay after something has been designed free. E.g. this is why TH-cam Red / Premium has not been successful. So by ignoring monetization, you're deciding early on.. this is free and "You Are the Product". It's not that consumers are not willing to pay. Other business models work e.g. Netflix, Disney Plus, Patreon.., or Amazon Prime.. Apple TV.
How about measuring the percentage change in the the number of "TH-cam Short" users? Is there a correlation with the chronic decline to suggest cannibalisation? Are we seeing a surge in user engagement on the "Short" platform(likes, subscription etc) enough to suggest a change in user behaviour? An awesome personality I must add.
Great content thanks a lot! To be honest the longer I watch these, the more questions it raises about Product Management. I am realising how superficial and approximative PMs are. I get that it's an interview but many people taken off the streets at random would give not too dissimilar answers to these questions. They would probably be less structured in their answers but the content would be similar (And is any great product built by structured communication anyways? What's the value of that?). I really don't feel there is much depth around product thinking. (Nothing against her, in general, across all these interviews) It makes me want to transition to product management less. If anyone has resources around Product Management that are actually insightful or paradigm-shifting please drop a link here
@@highvoltagee the real challenge with product management is not coming up with these answers and ideas. The real challenge is managing very different sets of people to accomplish that goal or idea.
@@highvoltagee These interviews reflect the easy/tactical role of a PM. For the difficult side of PM I would recommend to read the article "Good PM, Bad PM" by Ben Horowitz. If you are still interested, his book "The hard thing about hard things" it is a good follow up. Also, Marty Cagan books and conferences (you can find them in YT)
I have to agree here. There's not really depth, however, the question is all about metrics and so there's a limited amount of depth you can go. I agree with the whole structure thing, its kinda overrated. It's helpful for interviewers, but doesn't necessarily make you a good product manager at all.
I have an upcoming interview at Microsoft for PM role and this intense structure requirement is making me nervous. It seems like an AI is speaking and there is hardly any fluid thought process which more than often chases the sinister rabbit holes. Guess the structure does help good communication over a call and that is why it is required as a necessary soft skill to work in current environment.
Amazing video..loved the way she structured her answers. I believe another question that could have been asked - was there any decline in the content from the channels to which the viewers have subscribed to?
It was an excellent session, but I have to clarify what you mean by asking counter metrics? And if you can give an example, I am sorry, I never heard about those metrics.
Wondering why she didn't bring up the recommendation feature when talking about engagement... in my opinion the only one feature on youtube that decides whether i keep watching videos or not - when there is no recommended video i like recommended on the side of the video or after the video ends i leave the site
I have a question, for the northstar metric, why did we notgo for avg % of video watched per session? For example, if the person is watch 2 minutes out of 3 minute video, then it is 66%. Will such metric hide any of the actual problems?
Why is 'Watch Time' the NS Metric and not include Ad Conversion per unit of 'Watch Time'? Any thoughts or input on that? As the task itself was a little ambiguous for her, so maybe this a question for the interviewer.
In the beginning he said that he noticed a decline from 2 weeks and then when she asked a counter question, he said that it has been happening over 2 months. Please maintain consistency
I have a general query here. When you talk about sessions, do you consider the user logged in to TH-cam because a user can see a video with out signing in. How do we take that non logged in user into account who are still watching the videos and has a watch time attached to their views
Was I the only one who found her decision of focusing engagement over monetisation confusing ?. Sinve TH-cam is a matured product shouldn't the priority be monetisation?
"Watch time".... minus the watch time of the last video the user played to the end before timing-out in my case, 'cause that's the viddy I fell asleep watching. Also, my guy, try to make it less obvious you fancy the guest next time.
![ILLSLICK - KILLSHOT REMIX [FULL VERSION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RIK8RrqIAzE/mqdefault.jpg)
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I was looking for a similar question to practice. This interview provides great insights. Enjoyed watching this one! Thank you.
@@anuradhatempe9033 Glad it was helpful! What did you love about this interview?
Liked the way she went about with the root-cause analysis, bucketing her questions into general, internal and external. Goes to show that you can be successful in solving these issue-identification types of questions with a structured thought process.
I dont mean to be off topic but does anybody know a tool to log back into an instagram account..?
I was dumb lost my account password. I would appreciate any help you can give me.
@Nathaniel Matthias instablaster :)
She interned in TH-cam 1-2 years ago which means she is still very new in PM role. I can’t believe she is this great!!! A lot to learn from you Selena!
Omg I’m so glad you did another interview with her. She is one of THE BEST PMs you’ve created content with. The last mock interview was super helpful. I’m excited to watch this one now 😊
More to come! Definitely subscribe to see more!
Already done! :)
Couldn't agree more. Celena is a real product rockstar. I would definitely want her on my team.
Celena is definitely one of the rare PMs. She is so structured, lays out right in the beginning and it all makes sense. Both of the video (Product Design - FB Movies and this Execution) and one with Or (Coinbase PM) is just exceptional.
I have watched those videos a couple of times and learned something new every time.
The feedbacks from Stephen Cognetta were really great too. Please keep 'em coming.
Where can I see the Coinbase PM one? Thanks
The precision with which she articulates her thoughts is truly remarkable, and her ability to craft responses that encompass a wide range of solutions is truly impressive. I would greatly appreciate it if there were additional mock-ups featuring Celena.
She's absolutely amazing. Calm, thoughtful, composed, and great communicator. She's going to go far in her career for sure.
First goal for TH-cam is to stop bugging me to subscribe to TH-cam Premium at every page refresh.
😂
I actually like that though. It helps me remember I shouldn't be on TH-cam and to go play outside
@@TaigeZhang Even better. you are an excellent stoic in the making.
That's what happens when a product manager chooses monetization over engagement
haha
If it's possible, can you please show the interviewee notes to a corner of this video so that we can have a better track of the structure? I tend to sometimes forget the flow.. It'd be really nice to see how an interviewee comes up with the notes and the flow.
complete respect to celena. however I was a bit surprised she didn't respond right of the bat with any clarifying questions on something as broad as 'how would you set youtube's goals?'
ie... what kind of goals? financial, product roadmap, optimization, the business unit, M&A, technology integrations, content strategy, ...
Celena is awesome! To me, she is the best PM and a true professional!
I think (session time - watch time)/session time can be a good counter metric. Because if this ratio is high, then it means users spend a lot time on exploring the site, but did not watch many videos
Why would that be a bad thing?
@@terrybatman 1. Shows that the algorithm isn’t that good at recommending videos to users and 2. TH-cam makes money primarily off of ads that run before monetized videos, so if users aren’t watching many videos, they don’t make much money
That's a great counter metric
I'm interviewing for PM roles, and I am finding these videos super helpful. I can see myself improving with every video I watch.
She is an awesome panellist, and you are an awesome host.
How is your prep going? In a similar boat right now.
@@swamagic2525 same amigos. Any advice will be appreciated.
Wow Celena Tyler absolutely nailed this interview!
by far the best interview example i've seen. specifically because the interviewer isn't giving a softball question and the follow ups on the decline, making it very hard to figure out the why. all the other videos people just say yes great but this showed her depth in the space and breaking down considerations well!
For someone who has been preparing for a product execution interview tomorrow, videos like these have been extremely helpful! Thank you so much!
You got this! Glad it was helpful!
How did the interview go?
These videos have been incredibly helpful. I used them to help me in my interviewing process and was able to land a new PM job! Thanks so much for the help!!
Wow! Congrats
That’s great! Question on the the resume, did you use any specific template to revise it based on the approach and JD
I really like the way she takes the flow of the interview and makes it seem so seamless! While keeping all the important points in mind. She is one of the best PMs that you have interviewed!
Great analytical & strategic thinking from this PM!
First thing I'm doing after watching this interview is to look for her previous one
This one was far better than any other PM interview out there
Love her thought process this is one of the best PM content i have come across in a while. Just loved it. Thank u
So glad it helped!
This is one of the best interview prep videos i've come across, super helpful
You should get more from her! She has a very structured approach and it really helps!
Loved Celena's thorough approach
Yay..she is back ! Thanks for this
Glad you liked it!
This was a great interview! I had paused the video to frame my solution first and there were few things that I believe should have been asked such as youtube definition of watch time. According to Google, Watch time is the total accumulated amount of time people have spent watching your video on TH-cam. All this while, I was thinking the overall time spent on youtube platform per user. I think Interviewer meant the same as well. Correct me if its the other way.
Another addition to what Celena mentioned in the end could be Walk-through of user journey on youtube. This would have also helped to understand the user drop-off.
Celena rocked it! So impressive. Thanks for making these videos, they’re so helpful for the product community!
Glad you liked it!
Celena rocked this Metrics interview! Awesome interview.
I think it will be helpful to have more interviews with her.
19:48 that sense of relief when you get to the root cause hits home so hard lmao
From Nigeria, y'all are kicking arse with these interviews. Thank you.
Thanks Emeka!
this is a really good interview. however the part that i sometimes have to ask is that there are a lot of people who can crack these pm interviews but it does not always correlate directly to being a PM in an actual setting. Because the way that these responses are constructed is the perspective of being the complete CEO of a product. when in reality, it is that you will be owning a small feature that rarely often moves the needle.
My personal learning is the one where I see the interviewee providing actual insight on usage or product or industry shows better empathy and would have higher chances of selection
. Celena ticks all the boxes and would definitely be selected anywhere
She's definitely my favourite!
We love Celena too!
This one is scary good, something to aspire towards.
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Why dont people define the dropped metric before debugging that thing (have seen so many mock interviews). Like average watch time= number of users*number of sessions*number of videos seen per session*average duration of each video seen. Now debug which of these is causing the drop.
Great call out! This would be my preferred approach too - break it down to a mathematical function and once we identify the dimension causing the drop, list potential internal and external factors to identify root cause.
Please upload more such videos, I couldn't find recent videos on your page related to mock product interview cases.
Hey Sakshi-lo9dx! You can check out this playlist: th-cam.com/video/3MsWDQJmYOE/w-d-xo.html
Wonderful job! Really loved how she broke down the problem and defended those answers. I have something to add - it is very common and easy to forget there is another side of the problem especially in a two-sided platform. Some of the questions such as the following can also be asked:
1. Is the decline connected to any particular content creator? Say MKBHD - It is possible that the content creator may have stopped creating videos in YT and they have their own website or moved to different platform.
2. Did any of the major content publisher, say Marvel Entertainment or Universal pictures moved somewhere else? Is this related to the said timeline of 1-3 months?
TH-cam is a mature product with a mature monetization model. I think she correctly identified engagement would lead to monetization. I’d prioritize monetization if there was an intent on changing the way TH-cam monetizes. Running experiments on new monetization models (pricing) or if I were building a new feature on TH-cam that had new monetization opportunities.
What types of monetization models would you explore?
That is a great question. There are two approaches I would take:
1. explore the current revenue models and how youtube could expand on this.
2. explore how a new feature could potentially increase revenue.
In brief, 1 would involve ad placement experimentation, ctr performance optimization for ads, and price testing on ad buys. And also funnel optimization for TH-cam premium.
2. I would look for ways to build value on top of existing revenue-generating features. Maybe premium ad publishing and analytics (a subscription-based youtube crm), youtube education (youtube masterclass, youtube skillshare), youtube wirecutter (google's apple tv).
I don't know this is a tough one. Honestly I will need to think a bit more. And also more than likely I would flunk this one haha.
I have a 2nd round Content Design interview with Meta early next month. Celena sure sets a high bar.
Another question I'd ask as a PM about that gradual decline of the North Star watch time metric would be did we historically experience this drop at any point in time? Could it be due to seasonality as in more folks are vaccinated and going back out there to socialize, hence causing watch time to drop.
Very helpful! Celena is a thoughtful PM. As far as external factors that could affect engagement, I would think that the weather would play a role. When the weather is nice, people get outside more, and they probably watch less TH-cam. There may be other systemic factors that affect all video services similarly (holidays, other big events drawing viewers, political situations, etc.), and ratings services would see these changes across the board.
That's a good point, however it would only be relevant for a sudden change in watch time. A few hot days, big events or political situations would not lead to a gradual change in user behavior.
Question about your advice to Celina at the end. how does youtube's api users seeing a decline/embedded videos seeing a decline indicate a competitive problem? Does it mean that users are now using other video products?
Watched a lot of videos on your channel in the past days as I dive into PM during the pandemic. This, by far, is the most well rounded interview I came across. ✌🏻
Maybe she could have asked about this important metric during the question session - (Avg. Watch time / Avg. time of all videos opened). In case of cannibalization, this metric would have served ready purpose as there would've been a increase in this metric as against an expected decrease, pointing to the fact that the avg. time of videos opened has reduced due to the launch of short videos on TH-cam. Feel free to comment. Assumption - Shorter videos have greater watch time than longer videos.
She's obviously wicked smart and gave a great answer. However, she also (if my facts are right) was working directly at a competitor (Facebook video) when she did this interview. So her answer is likely greatly informed by observing how the FB organization prioritized and measured. Not saying it's cheating or to take away from her great answer, but if I were an interviewer, i would steer away from asking questions that are OBVIOUSLY going to be right in the center of someone's current domain expertise. It's like interviewing at Google Docs and having a Microsoft Word PM apply and asking them how to measure success of GDocs.
Just would like to say, this is a helpful video for learning some concepts in product management that are quite helpful to hear defined! love this!
It would be interesting to see an interview on a product that is not as well know as facebook, youtube, twitter or such. How to ace an interview where company and its vision is not as clear or publicly known, thus the questions tend to be a bit more abstract, focusing more on past experiences, hypotheticals; where the interviewer cannot not assume that the interviewee knows about the product or it's ecosystem.
I think the the example where we wont be concentrating on engagement but monetization, would be when the content would be from studios- and content is created by the studio/service rather than the customer( like youtube does)
Thanks for the video, I really like the terminologies and explanation by her. The one issue which I found little interesting was, goals of TH-cam is a very broad question, I was thinking in terms of revenue, engagement, retention, UX, performance, quality metrics for the entire organization, I think engagment alone is not making justice to the question, just my 2 cents, correct me if my thinking was not in line with the expectation
I guess retention could be under the umbrella of engagement. Users don't really leave TH-cam if you think about it.
Amazing interview and top notch presentation. very organised and well put.
youtube shorts was made available for only Phones , how did we see a uniform decline over all the platforms? i would have brought this up ! But great content for aspirants like us , Thanks Much
Great Job Celena on a stellar response. You rock! I like how you structured your thoughts, and especially the metrics drop part where you considered in the external factors around the partnership of You Tube with TVs and there could have been an older deprecated version of a TV that is not supported attributing to this drop. I never would have thought about that!! And Thanks Stephen for sharing content like this. They are awesome and great quality. Keep up the good work!
One of the best video from your team. Great job. Just a suggestion, I m not from a tech background but still I watch these interview to gain perspective on how to answer such impromptu questions. May I request you to do ateast 1 -2 videos on how to answer basic interview question and behavioral questions. It is be really helpful to see how PM from top companies answer these questions. These questions almost comes in all job interview so it would be helpful for everyone. Looking forward to your inputs
Noted! We actually have a ton of behavioral interview question videos here: www.tryexponent.com/questions?type=behavioral
This was super helpful Interview tomorrow. 🙏🏿
Monetization's success is a function of engagement. Those who prioritize monetization over engagement do so at their own peril.
Yes it makes no sense to put monetisation in its own bucket..
Could you please share the google cloud Technical interview on storage and computing
This is great, had a clear insight after watching it.Just a suggestion you should also add videos Aspiring PM's.
I felt there was no conclusive evidence that the decline is because of TH-cam shorts. It would have been more definitive if we could comparing it with user engagement on shorts. For example, it could be because there is a gradual decline due to poor quality of youtube videos or increasing buffer issues.
Thoughts?
Hello Stephen,
Thank you for your efforts, means the world. :)
I see a few concerns with the approach Celena resorted to. I am laying them out, kindly state if they make sense or if I am overthinking.
1. Normally when it comes to goal setting, they are set initially at an organisational level, which is the overarching goal, and then they are trickled down to individual teams where these goals are worked upon in cohesion by the teams under the overarching goal to achieve a common consensus. These can be measured through OKRs or other frameworks. She could've cleared off any ambiguity by checking if the goals are to be set at an organisational level or a team level instead of diving right in.
2. Organisational goals are annual whilst team goals are quarterly(generally speaking). If an assumption around wanting to tweak the engagement lever and monetization lever is being considered, they seem more like individual team (revenue/growth & engagement teams) goals. If thats the case, how do you define engagement? youtube defines engagement differently from how netflix or spotify does(just quoting names). Ambiguity around defining what these metrics actually are could've been cleared.
3. Even if an assumption around these goals being org level goals is made, some numbers in terms or percentages from the previous years couldve been thrown(for ease of calculation). Example being, engagement was around 15% last year, this year we improve it to 20%. then define the engagement metric and then map the customer journey, analyse the customer journey funnel and sort of narrow down on areas that can be improved that affect the engagement metric on the whole. This clears off the ambiguity around "why" the engagement or the monetization metric is chosen over other metrics.
4. A major part of her answer circumvents around metrics and KPIs, which ideally should be the case. But I didnt follow for the most part of it because the WHY behind choosing these metrics over other metrics was missing from the beginning.
5. Finally, goals in my experience should always be quantifiable/measurable and time bounded. Some mention around the timeline within which these goals are expected to be achieved would've been more practical.
Apologies in case the feedback is too long, My humble thoughts. Open to feedback in case you think I'm sweating it out a bit too much. Peace :))
best,
AB
It seemed like she asked the 1st clarifying question just for the sake of asking. He already began the prompt with info on how long they have been seeing this.
Great video! Thanks a ton for making it. My only feedback is that the audio quality was a bit uneven and perhaps could be normalized in the future.
There was great structured approach used in the question, the provided clarifications plus giving context were definitely the biggest takeaways for me.
One more thing I would want to add is while handling the decline in watch time - especially for internal bit - looking at number of active viewers, active creators, plus new sign up and churned viewers/creators - since this would serve as a primary input to understand if users on both sides of the marketplace - viewers / creators are also dropping.
The issue with only focusing on engagement and not monetization, is it ultimately results in data sold for Ads. Because it's hard to change consumer behavior later to pay after something has been designed free. E.g. this is why TH-cam Red / Premium has not been successful. So by ignoring monetization, you're deciding early on.. this is free and "You Are the Product".
It's not that consumers are not willing to pay. Other business models work e.g. Netflix, Disney Plus, Patreon.., or Amazon Prime.. Apple TV.
This was too good. Loved the take on internal and external factors e.g. negative press release. Looking forward to more.
Thanks Aniket! Be sure to subscribe and check out 100+ videos like this one at tryexponent.com
@@tryexponent done.
How about measuring the percentage change in the the number of "TH-cam Short" users? Is there a correlation with the chronic decline to suggest cannibalisation? Are we seeing a surge in user engagement on the "Short" platform(likes, subscription etc) enough to suggest a change in user behaviour? An awesome personality I must add.
Great content thanks a lot!
To be honest the longer I watch these, the more questions it raises about Product Management.
I am realising how superficial and approximative PMs are. I get that it's an interview but many people taken off the streets at random would give not too dissimilar answers to these questions. They would probably be less structured in their answers but the content would be similar (And is any great product built by structured communication anyways? What's the value of that?). I really don't feel there is much depth around product thinking. (Nothing against her, in general, across all these interviews)
It makes me want to transition to product management less.
If anyone has resources around Product Management that are actually insightful or paradigm-shifting please drop a link here
This interview is packed with cliches, assumptions and blanket statements. Do PMs really work this way?
@@highvoltagee the real challenge with product management is not coming up with these answers and ideas.
The real challenge is managing very different sets of people to accomplish that goal or idea.
@@highvoltagee These interviews reflect the easy/tactical role of a PM. For the difficult side of PM I would recommend to read the article "Good PM, Bad PM" by Ben Horowitz. If you are still interested, his book "The hard thing about hard things" it is a good follow up. Also, Marty Cagan books and conferences (you can find them in YT)
I have to agree here. There's not really depth, however, the question is all about metrics and so there's a limited amount of depth you can go. I agree with the whole structure thing, its kinda overrated. It's helpful for interviewers, but doesn't necessarily make you a good product manager at all.
I have an upcoming interview at Microsoft for PM role and this intense structure requirement is making me nervous. It seems like an AI is speaking and there is hardly any fluid thought process which more than often chases the sinister rabbit holes. Guess the structure does help good communication over a call and that is why it is required as a necessary soft skill to work in current environment.
Excellent video , Stephen pls do more product pricing , execution, monetization videos on Facebook, google and other top-tier companies
Great content! I like how the info was methodically broken down.
MECE and Porter's 5 forces. Of course.
This is awesome! Thank you both for creating.
Wish I could see her notebook as you brainstorm.
Amazing video..loved the way she structured her answers. I believe another question that could have been asked - was there any decline in the content from the channels to which the viewers have subscribed to?
Kudos to you both! Another educational AND entertaining interview video!
please can you do UX mock interviews
you told about monitization with ads but how we deal if the products are direct advertising by the creators, if these goes to downward of profit.
Wow, she is badass, I need to re-watch! Thanks.
It was an excellent session, but I have to clarify what you mean by asking counter metrics? And if you can give an example, I am sorry, I never heard about those metrics.
Wondering why she didn't bring up the recommendation feature when talking about engagement... in my opinion the only one feature on youtube that decides whether i keep watching videos or not - when there is no recommended video i like recommended on the side of the video or after the video ends i leave the site
I have a question, for the northstar metric, why did we notgo for avg % of video watched per session? For example, if the person is watch 2 minutes out of 3 minute video, then it is 66%. Will such metric hide any of the actual problems?
I did not understand about the distribution of watch time length. Can someone please explain?
10/10. Very helpful!
Why is 'Watch Time' the NS Metric and not include Ad Conversion per unit of 'Watch Time'? Any thoughts or input on that? As the task itself was a little ambiguous for her, so maybe this a question for the interviewer.
In the beginning he said that he noticed a decline from 2 weeks and then when she asked a counter question, he said that it has been happening over 2 months. Please maintain consistency
one word " AMAZING"
Celena - that was awesome! May I please clone your brain and plant it to mine for my upcoming interview?
I have a general query here. When you talk about sessions, do you consider the user logged in to TH-cam because a user can see a video with out signing in. How do we take that non logged in user into account who are still watching the videos and has a watch time attached to their views
Very good interview
Was I the only one who found her decision of focusing engagement over monetisation confusing ?.
Sinve TH-cam is a matured product shouldn't the priority be monetisation?
Didn't get what and how will u define "time well spent"?
why do corporates always look so stiff .. i don't wana become like this
amazing and thank you
too many ads
Thanks for doing this.
Why her video is so blurred?
0 metrics on the creators side ?
"Watch time".... minus the watch time of the last video the user played to the end before timing-out in my case, 'cause that's the viddy I fell asleep watching.
Also, my guy, try to make it less obvious you fancy the guest next time.
when David Schwimmer met Mila kunis
18:00 , things escalated quickly !
Is this Samantha Mumba?