Tom Verrilli

I think one reason why prior experience is over valued (I agree with you) is because it’s so hard to interview PMs. But I believe personal endorsements like this one should matter more than interviews.

I'm sure there is a chunk of truth to that. But the idea of hiring someone you know personally vs using transparent criteria also feels like a massive privilege issue...

Risk of organ rejection from engineers is probably why we’ve gravitated towards prior experience. Not that I’m saying the success rates are higher.

I believe that, If we agree the strike out rate on prior PM hires is still pretty high, given culture differs so much co to co, if love to see someone experiment here

I think it’s bc it’s so hard to evaluate (and seemingly risky) that most scaled co’s want to just de-risk all of it via “have you done this before on a product that got something right in a big way”? The path to not need credentials/prior xp is entrepreneurship

I was hired as into a PM type role specifically because I didn't have coding experience yet understood IT. I typically recommend getting into product via UI/UX, especially UX. But it's a huge step back for a lot of people career wise.

I think the hardest part for non-devs going into product is the interactions with devs, so a really supportive Head of Engineering or such, depending on size, is super important.