# Ep.8 Sid Unnithan: on changing jobs at Microsoft, preparing for informational interviews, imposter syndrome and autonomy in the PM role MAY 30TH, 2022 | 01:07:08 | E8 [Play](https://jlampodcast.z19.web.core.windows.net/episodes/008-sid-unnithan.mp3) ### EPISODE SUMMARY Sid Unnithan is an early in career Program Manager 2 on my team whose career spans both Windows and the Python team in DevDiv. We talk about the importance of having autonomy in your job. How product building is a team sport, how to deal with negativity from others and how to interview to move laterally within the company. ### EPISODE NOTES ## Table of Contents - How the Customer Driven Playbook influenced how Sid thinks about PM (14:34) - How Sid prepared for his informational interview with our team (15:49) - The importance of preparing for your informational interview (17:23) - How we structure our PM interviews in DevDiv (19:40) - Imposter syndrome and what we can do about it (24:05) - On rubrics and career progression (28:54) - Side-hustle entrepreneurial thinking while working at a big company (34:20) - Learning about customers via jobs-to-be-done and customer interviews (41:52) - The lack of respect that PMs face when working with some engineering teams (46:24) - On the importance of autonomy and agency in the PM role (55:52) - Building products is a team sport (57:00) - Travel bidets, cultural barriers and friction in experiences (1:00:36) ## Transcript [Link to the full text transcript (with audio player!)](https://share.descript.com/view/9v08vPX5q5q) ## Links - [The Customer Driven Playbook](https://amzn.to/3a9xE4h) - [The Jobs-To-Be-Done framework](https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done) - [The Hypothesis Progression Framework for Customer Development](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-customer-driven-playbook/9781491981269/ch01.html) ** Some of the above links are affiliate links for which I earn a commission from the vendor if you purchase a product.