Original link: https://www.lidingzeyu.com/phd-and-product-manager/
Guest: Zack Zhu https://www.linkedin.com/in/zackzhu/
Youtube: https://youtu.be/h3GNYfnyaJU
Bilibili: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Pt4y1P76V/
Text Version: Scroll down
Audio version Search “Li Ding Chat Room” in your podcast app
for example:
– Apple Podcasts https://liding.page/apple
– Podcast Casts: https://liding.page/pocketcasts
– Overcast: https://liding.page/overcast
– Spotify: https://liding.page/spotify
Text version
Li Ding: Welcome to the new Li Ding chat room, today we have Zack Zhu. Zack recently switched careers as Product Manager after getting his Ph.D. in Europe, so today we had the pleasure of asking Zack to share his experience with you.
Zack: Hello Li Ding. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share with you. But before I start, I have to declare two things. The first is that all chats are for personal hobbies. Just like my former employer and my current employer, there is no problem. Just telling you just now is a great honor, a great honor. I have this opportunity to chat with Li Ding about my personal hobbies. Second, this is the first time for me to speak any serious topic in Chinese, so I don’t know what the consequences might be. But for my Chinese is not my native language, I may stutter sometimes, so I hope everyone can understand. But Li Ding, you told me again, if I am really stuck, I can use English instead, right?
Li Ding: It is also an honor for me, you are the first foreign Chinese invited.
Zack: Me and Li Ding, we were in 2012 when you exchanged, right?
Li Ding: I met in Zurich when I went to the ETH Zurich exchange.
Zack: It was ten or ten years ago, when I should have just started my Ph.D. I started my Ph.D. program at the beginning of 2012, and at the end of 2015, about that time, my Ph.D. direction, as far as I saw your channel, was all CS PhD. I’m a bit pretending, because my PhD is not CS. I am our ETH called Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, so it actually belongs to the Department of Electronics. But in fact, half of the professors in the electronics department are doing CS stuff, right? It’s not a full CS PHD. But my doctor at the time was in the direction of Ubiquits and wearable computing. I don’t know if you are familiar with it or not, but I mainly used some ML to process some data of some wearable sensors. To do some so-called context activity recognition is to use machine learning to classify what a person is doing and what kind of environment he is in. Yes, it is not exactly in this direction, but I think most of the doctors are going in this direction. As a postdoc, I read to be a small postdoc. When I was a postdoc, I found an opportunity to carry the research of activity recognition or context recognition into the elevator industry and the elevator. In the past, the sensor was placed on the person, and the industry was to do the same thing. Put the sensor on the elevator. In fact, this problem is much simpler, because the elevator is not like a person, he is more mechanical and does some diagnostics. So my first step into the industry is at Shindler, which is Schindler. It is also a relatively large elevator company. In Schindler, it is equivalent to a relatively small but relatively research focus group. It is a bit like Google X, but a version of Schindler. We were purely doing the patent machine of our company at that time, and we were purely doing that kind of new opportunity technology discovery, but the main focus was on technology. It didn’t take a long time to do this, just a little over two years. Through this opportunity, I found that my personal inclination is more likely to be the same as everyone else’s, but I want to have that kind of commercial impact. In the past two years, I have made some patents in the group, and also done some interesting technical exercises. But in fact, later if you say where is the commercial impact, in fact, I am very honest, it is completely a commercial failure, right? That was the case at the time, because we didn’t launch any product, nor did it have any commercial impact.
Li Ding: It is equivalent to saying that your group is doing a lot of research exploration prototypes, but as for whether the company is willing to turn this into a product and carry out large-scale deployment, this may be the meaning that was not realized at that time. ?
Zack: Exactly, but even to say this group, it is not to productize anything, it is its scope, it is doing prototypes, constantly producing patents, doing prototypes, putting these Insight pass to product teams, technology transfer, in fact, is often not particularly successful. So at the time, I also thought that it was good to send patents, but I might want to turn these patents into products, so in fact, why did I transfer to another company after almost two years? When I went to the company, I focused on productization in research, that is, I stopped being a researcher, but helped the researcher productize some of their ideas, or his research outcome. Yes, this is the first step into the product.
Li Ding: First, you have this kind of thing, so you know what you want. I feel that it is very rare because not everyone can realize what they want. Many people say that after finishing my PhD, I learned After knowing how to post the paper, I will continue to post the paper, so they will either go to find a faculty, for example, or become an industry researcher. The second way is actually a bit similar to what you said, except that some people and companies may be more commercialization, and they may push researchers to do product work. Some companies will prefer academia, which may be a bit like you, such as patent machines, in fact, there are all of them. But few people will say that I feel unhappy after doing it. I have to change to a career track. This is actually a big change, right? Because I feel that among the PMs I know, the Product Managers rarely come out of the technical PhD background. Many of them will be a completely different background. They are very diverse, but I don’t know exactly what they are, but few PhDs come out.
Zack: I’ve observed that too, probably more of my personal inclination. Because when I was an undergraduate, when I was in engineering school, it was actually a relatively common thing, all of which were relatively diverse. At that time, many of my undergraduate students actually became Product Managers after their undergraduate degree. So maybe when I chose my undergraduate degree, I also had this idea and wanted to be like a product person. It’s just that I came to Europe later, and I have been sidetracking for five or six years. Later, I remembered what kind of idea I had at that time, and I returned to my heart. Actually, PhD is a sidetrack. Like you said, there is one thing right. Besides, I am actually one. You asked me to take exams since I was a child. If you give me a close problem, it is generally difficult for me to practice myself so that I can get a high score every time I take an exam. But if you explain this problem to me clearly, I especially feel that this problem is worth solving. I usually answer this kind of question better, that’s why I don’t know if what I said is very clear. So I was never good at solving these close problems, that I didn’t really understand why I was solving them for. So in fact, I am in the solution space, which is not my forte. Why go to product, in fact, my understanding is that product is more in the problem space, understanding the problem, defining it, why do we solve it, why is valuable. It is a researcher or an engineer, he may have a problem space, he will definitely understand him, or he will have a vague notion of like, what the problem is or somebody has explained it to them. But most of the time, he is how to solve this problem, and that is my shortcoming.
Li Ding: That’s why you want to think more from the perspective of motivation. Why do I want to solve this problem? After this figure is out, there will be other people who are better at solving this problem. Just like I feel that your definition is actually very accurate, one is to find the result in the solution space, the other is to find the appropriate problem in the problem space, which is equivalent to the intersection of PM and engineer, which is the overlap of these two spaces. Hopefully there is overlap, otherwise it’s the terrible situation.
Zack: To otherwise it’s the common situation actually. For problem space or solution space, there are two spaces, both of which are problem solving. Right, that is, in solution space, you are solving a given problem. In problem space, which problem you are solving should be solved, so in fact, you need to move Think about the problem and solve the problem with your brain, but do this thing in a different space.
Li Ding: You think that when you were a PhD student, you were doing this kind of solutions based solving. In fact, you are still doing it because there are many kinds of PhDs. There are also many kinds of papers, some of which are to dig a big hole, right, just hope that others will fill it, and open a new field to open up a new field. Some are like brushing the benchmark. I feel that it may be more like doing some improvement in the solution space. Both are great, but when you were in your PhD, which one did you feel you were doing?
Zack: I think I’m digging a hole, I’m digging a hole for myself, mainly and it’s a very small hole.
Li Ding: So in fact, if you look at it this way, your Ph.D. is not completely sidetracked. In fact, your Ph.D. is doing this kind of thing. In the problem space, go to navigate and explore some things.
Zack: For my PhD, in fact, our group usually uses wearable signals. My PhD wants to mix social media data with these signals, so I use social media data, which is location based social media data. To give a priority is to give a priority, it is a prior distribution of activity in an urban space caused by big data, so it is more like digging a hole for yourself, in fact, it is also filling this hole, maybe half of it is in PhD. At times, because you only dig holes, you may not be able to post papers if you don’t fill them.
Li Ding: Especially in many CS fields, for example, in some fields, everyone just needs to dig a hole and ask a question. But at least I have published a lot of papers in the field, and I will say like you said to dig a hole and fill it up by myself. This is a work of self containment. You can’t just point out the problem and not solve it. This is a lot in technical. It is not very popular in the field. Hello to you. Now that you have worked in the elevator company for two years, you may still like to work in the problem space. What kind of preparation do you have to do when you change jobs?
Zack: Actually, my first job-hopping was a more opportunistic job-hopping. Opportunity was passed to me by others, so I didn’t really actively seek. If there is no Opportunity, I may do it for another year, and I may think about this issue again, because when I entered the role, I should have stayed in the role for three years, so I left early. To answer your question I didn’t really prepare for it, I didn’t really think it through but it just matched. At that time, it was a senior of mine, a bit like a senior. One of his friends was in Zurich, and he was going to open a branch office. This is the company. He was the headquarters in the United States and Germany. They were going to open a research office in Zurich. Research office, they It is more focused on commercial impact, so they want to recruit a product person to help a new researcher, to reflect some of their value, and to reflect some of their product value. So this opportunity was kind of given to me, or I was lucky enough to kind of come across it. So I walked in a little bit blind. I didn’t understand product management at all at the time, but I just felt that I really wanted to do it. But after starting a new position, I started to read a lot of these, some very basic material like lean business plan or valley proposition design, to open some or attend some conferences. There is an annual Product Management Festival in Suez, which is a pretty big conference in Europe, and many Product Managers come to share some of their stories. Go to a lot of blogs for yourself, learning by doing. Yes, it was very bumpy to start like this at the time. I have to say that I didn’t know it at the time. In fact, everyone didn’t know where the value add of Product Manager was. In fact, I usually do some project management work at the beginning. Maybe after a few months, I find that the Product Manager and the Project Manager are completely different things. Okay stop the project management.
Li Ding: I’ll quickly give you some popular science, because their abbreviations are PM. Many times, including myself, I’m a little confused now. Maybe I used to be more confused. Now, because I am in a product group like this, I have been in the company for a long time and have to deal with different product groups, so I will gradually have some understanding of Program Manager and Product Manager, but it is definitely not so clear, you Can you explain to you the difference and connection between the two?
Zack: Yes, I can share my understanding. I think a product manager may be what it is doing in the problem space most of the time, why are we solving this problem, and part of it is what problems are we resolving, why is it a relatively large direction. Maybe what is more like slicing the elephant as we called, how to decompose this problem and this direction into different problems, right? But Project Manager is actually later on in the execution phase, it will enter, it is more how do we get this problem solved, but how do we get this set of problems solved with the limited resources that we have, how do we meet the deadlines and how do we communicate this to stakeholders. It is more about doing the execution in the solution space, or helping the engineer, or other disciplines to do the execution.
Li Ding: Yes, because our group recently recruited a new Program Manager, but we want to recruit Product Manager, but because we actually lack everything, we have to hire. When he joined the job, he emphasized that I was a Program Manager, and I was not very good at being a Product Manager. At that time, I didn’t really understand it, until he joined for a few months, and then I slowly got what he meant. He is like what you said, it means that after taking the sprint planning board and various planning documents we had before, he will make an arrangement, what is depend on what, what everyone can only focus on at any time For one thing, you can’t work on three things at the same time. If he will, he will plan the whole process and execute it very carefully. In this way, the execution is done very rigorously. It is not like our general engineer. Maybe In the past, we would follow our ideas. I like to do this problem very much. I will do it for a month without regard to the results. He will say that you want the time box to do it for two weeks. If it doesn’t work, we will change it. To solve other problems or something, he will be more rigorous, like what we are still lacking is a Product Manager, as you say, figure out why are we solving this, and what problem are we actually solving , this is what I feel we are still missing right now.
Zack: It’s the Program Manager Project Manager. My understanding is very similar. Right in our current company, the Program Manager has a wider scope. The project manager may have a smaller scope, but the nature of their jobs is the same, yes, but I think our understanding is very similar.
Li Ding: Yes, Ok, you were very lucky at that time, and had an opportunity of opportunistic right. Okay, we just discussed the timing of changing jobs for each company. Next, we can take a step back and talk about it. More generally, you are in the process of changing careers. What difficulties do you foresee and the difficulties you actually encounter? What?
Zack: Actually, there are still quite a lot of difficulties. In fact, I think it is true that for PhD, if I knew at the time that I would be a Product Manager, I might not be able to study for a PhD at that time. Because this is the first, it is time for the people who are better than your peers, that is, by your side, you will be much older than everyone else, and your experience will be less. In fact, a young man can grow a lot in these five or six years, especially in his 20s, especially the motivate ones. So in fact, if you get a PhD, someone else hires him with a salary level. Maybe his expectation, in terms of product management, will be higher than what you can deliver, so this is a more realistic difficulty. Also, I think that after reading the PhD, you will over think, you will need to figure out all the details, or you will need to be able to convince yourself, right? As a scientist you have to convince yourself that this is true. It’s a big obstacle in the product, right. Maybe it’s not a completely like the right thing to say, but my personal experience is that the people that can have some like level of bullshiting, am I allowed to say that, they are often better Product Managers, or they yield better results I would say. Because he can think about some obstacles, and some PhDs may be stuck in these obstacles, right? The fact that you stop these obstacles is not actually some obstacles that you have to solve by yourself, but you may have the kind of instinct to think clearly about all these um let’s say points of consideration.
Li Ding: Yes, yes, I think I agree with what you said. There may be two limitations. On the one hand, we are very strict and we want to figure out everything before we can do it. Spend more brain capacity to think about, first of all, self limiting, we have already let our brains not think about these possibilities, which is very important. The second is probably more important, because you think this is unreliable, you will not go to this idea, tell others to sell it, go to sell your idea, I think this may have a greater impact, As a result, others don’t know that this idea exists at all, and they don’t know that you are actually so creative.
Zack: Just now we talked about some of the problems of PhD and doing PM, but there are actually some advantages. For example, I think that in terms of structure and analytical thinking, any Ph.D. has actually been practicing for many years, and has practiced many aspects of its own ability to consider a problem. When you write a paper, you may have to consider many aspects of data, or you may have to consider a lot of literature, what others are saying, you are very strong, and you have a strong ability to synthesize it together. It is actually very important when you are a PM, because you have designers, UX researchers, engineers, applied scientists, they are all giving you different information, how can you give it to distill Achievement is a complete product proposition, this is I find it helpful to do a PhD.
Li Ding: I think what you said is very correct, because this is especially during the PhD period, if there are multiple advisors, or there are many collaborations between advisors, at this time you have many mentors, and everyone points out a direction. Some advisors may have a lot of requirements for hardware, some advisors may have a lot of requirements for your storytelling, and some people may have a lot of requirements for your entire presentation. As a PhD student, the first author, you have to synthesize all the information, make compromises wherever you can, to make sure you publish and graduate. Right, this is actually a good skill set in this area, because rarely in the early days of the industry, you can exercise such a comprehensive ability.
Zack: Yes, yes, yes, yes, PhDs are actually encouraged to become Product Managers. I have another one about data, right, what I just said is more general, you can synthesize, but I think that PhD CS PhD has a better understanding of data than many students like Bachelor of Art, or business students. This sense of data may be more of a practice. Just like every time you send a paper, you have some data, how do you convince reviewers, you have to pick a relatively complete story, so this kind of storytelling, I think it will still help me a lot. Because I see some other Product Managers as far as I know, they may be more qualitative evidence, anecdotal evidence, and their validation of this value proposition is often incomplete. Of course, it is difficult to do complete validation, but when you have some data, although it is a little bit, maybe a small pilot, you can tell a story with a data, the reliability of this is very high, and it is more reliable than some Interviews, especially for very senior stakeholders, they have seen some numbers, they think your numbers are more credible than the bullshit stories of those people just now, so it is still helpful in this regard. Yes, it’s another point, and there are specific to PhDs who want to turn into PMs, that is, what kind of opportunities should we look for, which is more suitable for the pros and cons we just talked about, but I think maybe I think there are still some companies, Or the product type is very suitable for PhD, so think about highlighting. It is a PhD that turns it into a PM. It can actually do something like a researcher, an early stage product, or a zero to one, especially a deep tech product. I think it is quite suitable for a PhD, that is, PhD transition into PMs, Because it can be easily connected with some researchers, it used to be a researcher, and he can easily connect with these researchers.
Li Ding: I don’t think what you said is quite right, because the prototype we are doing now is actually research driven. For an innovative product like you said, it is true that we lack one of these. I think it is quite common for a person who understands the limitations and possibilities of research to define problem space. For example, there are many large companies like Google, including our company. Our founders were a very innovative product at that time, such as Search, for example, our original PDF at that time. The products of this founder are all PhDs or PhD dropouts. In fact, they all have very strong technical backgrounds. Of course, there are also many founding companies that are not PhD backgrounds. But I would feel that in these startups of innovation driven, because the founder is actually a PM Product Manager, he wears many many hats they are everything, right? So they have to know where the technical possibilities and limitations lie. Next, some may not have so much to do with your PM’s career change. It is more about the differences between the tech industry in North America and Switzerland. Maybe one of the things I asked in the audience group before was that the time to change jobs in Switzerland, because it seems to be one to two years in North America, and once every two to three years, in Switzerland, it will be longer or shorter. ?
Zack: Maybe I’m an outlier personally, because I’m probably dancing to the rhythm of North America. You sometimes not by my own volition. But I think in Switzerland, especially in large companies, like Schindler and Siemens, job-hopping is a very rare thing to jump out of this company, so I think the people here are he It may also be European culture. He will use time to test a person, so many colleagues have stayed in Schindler and Siemens for five years, and it may be common for at least ten years or more. It may also be because of the culture here, it is easier to go, that is, the kind of work life balance is more important. So everyone, every time you dance, you will start to be more stressful, so after you are more senior, you may not want to go this route again.
Li Ding: So you said that these companies in Europe may use time to make an evaluation metrics, right? Correspondingly, for example, companies in the United States will use what do you think they will use to evaluate a person?
Zack: I think it’s an outcome, I personally think it’s an outcome. Although I haven’t worked in many American companies, I feel that if you get a grade, you may be able to advance to a level, or just one you can climb up. However, in these two relatively large industrial companies in Europe, I have not been like this, that is, if you make an achievement, everyone will remember it, but it is actually a test of time. You may be in different departments in this company. Or different roles, you can change it, but it is quite rare to jump from one company to another company. personal opinion.
Li Ding: Yes, indeed, I think what you said about outcome driven, I think this is also correct. I may think that the drawbacks of outcome driven are that it is difficult for him to take into account that luck is a factor in a person’s career. First of all, everyone must have their own strengths and their own efforts. We must admit it, but I feel that many people around me are working hard, right, but some people outcome better, that is, when they let them climb The faster you climb, the faster you climb the corporate ladder. So this outcome driven method will give people the illusion that either I work harder than others, or I’m smarter than everybody else. But this is an illusion because I think that the gap between people is not as big as imagined. The big gap may be circumstance, it may be your colleague, right, this kind of thing is out of your control. This may be related to the whole society. For example, North America may be a very individualistic society. He thinks that I can change the world, and I can move the earth by myself. Perhaps Europe, perhaps compared to the United States, believes more in collective power, and I do not know about collective power. Compared with East Asia, China, Japan and South Korea will go further and believe in collective power even more. I think this may be a more social culture issue, not a company-level issue.
Zack: Yes there is the opposite side of the coin of what you’re saying of an outcome driven like promotion is, if you don’t get that promotion, that’s not necessarily because you don’t have the capabilities. So I think there are some, some colleagues may be a little bit, or some of your audience may also think, why am I not rising so fast, in fact, he may be your ability, not particularly there are some additional factors and don’t count, don’t undersell yourself.
Li Ding: To use Lei Jun’s words, pigs on the tuyere can fly. Some of them are that he happened to come to the time point, that is, there are many factors, not only your ability, these are actually very similar to what the manager tells you during the evaluation every year, the reason why you are not promoted Not you, but some other factor is actually the same reason. Although sometimes they are sugar coating, but many times that’s true, that is the case. If the company’s stock price falls, it’s not your business if the company’s stock price falls. You don’t have that much ability to control the rise and fall of a company’s stock price. It’s more about the general economic environment, right?
Zack: Yes, so maybe my principle is more, I will consider my own growth, but I may not use the outcome too much, of course, a good outcome I will feel very happy, but everyone should make a summary for themselves That is to say, compared to last year, whether my own ability has increased, I think this may be more important. My hypothesis is in the long run, that’s actually what matters.
Li Ding: Yes, this is quite right. As you discussed just now, in Switzerland or Europe, the consideration of career advancement is different. In terms of work, do you think it is different from North America?
Zack: Well, it’s actually hard for me to compare, because my wife is in a North American company although she is in Europe, but he works in a North American company, so we sometimes talk, this is my reference point and some other friends Also in this company. I think in terms of work, of course, Europe is indeed more relaxed. Maybe North American companies I feel that they are constantly doing it, and I think European companies will give you more time to think about it, especially some, more in industrial Inside the company, you really will take a long time to figure out a problem. Or if it is a new direction, like I said just now, they gave me half a year to think about a portfolio strategy, and then we started to execute, of course, we did some things, but many times in this state of experimentation. And I feel that in this kind of American IT company, it is more just try just do it, go and then roll back, and it is more execution oriented.
Li Ding: Yes, I have two questions about following up, both of which are tangential related not very related. One is that if you say that you went from North America to Europe to study at ETH to study for a Ph.D., I don’t know where you went there. While I was studying for a PhD, I wanted to say that I wanted to start my career there. It was like this in five or ten years. Or I had finished my Ph.D. and happened to be in Zurich. You have thought about it, if you have to start over again, right, you may not be doing a Ph.D., you will finish your undergraduate degree in North America, or get a master’s degree or go directly to be a PM without a master’s degree, what do you think? Will you choose North America or Europe?
Zack: Before I come back to this question, I will tell you a very small story. I was a high school student or an undergraduate student when I was young, and I was never the kind of classmate who studied very seriously, which caused my marks to be very poor. Why did I come to ETH? At that time, I applied for a grads school, and I didn’t know what kind of school ETH was at the time, but I found that in the center of Europe, there was a school called ETH, and I applied for this school. Mainly, I wanted to come and play, to travel in Europe, to study for a master’s degree and return to North America. It was like this at the time. So why I tell this story is to say, in fact, I am not the kind of thinking about everything, planned ahead, strategic, that is, at least when I was in my twenties. Yes, that’s why you ask this question. Your question is very difficult. At that time, I came to Switzerland to read this book. I went to a company to do my Master thesis. There was another intern next to him. He was studying for a PhD. We worked very closely. I just think this classmate, he was really cool about the way he used science I thought that was really cool, just that the whole scientific method, the way that he thought about problems, how he planned out like the experiments and how he executed on that. That’s exactly what I was missing because I was never like a person who planned who was strategic about what I’m doing. That’s why I want to do a PhD, because hey that’s a good time to exercise this, cause I feel like this could be useful later. After my PhD, it was more about my wife, my girlfriend was here at the time, she started her job here, we may want to stay here for a long time, or at least for a while in the medium term, so I started looking here. work without going back to North America to see other possibilities.
Li Ding: Switzerland is a beautiful place, right?
Zack: I can’t really go too wrong in Switzerland. That’s right, sorry I don’t have kind of like a checklist of things are considered when I was planning on my life.
Li Ding: Well, the second question is more difficult to answer, but I feel like I should ask it. You just mentioned that a phenomenon you observed in European companies, maybe they like to think about it for a long time, so there are many such conformed, or exploration, which spend a lot of time to figure out something before executing, relatively speaking, North America is a rush Chongchong, right, first implement it to collect user feedback, iterate roll back is such a thing, this is a phenomenon you have observed. At the same time, another phenomenon is that most start-up companies appear under this kind of rushing culture, whether it is China or North America, I feel that China and North America are both rushing forward. Anyway, of course Maybe China’s overtime culture is more serious, and there is no such overtime culture in North America. But in general, especially in Silicon Valley, is also very rushed, especially the startups that took VC money on a small scale. In comparison, in Europe, at least everyone can hear that the number of startups will be relatively A little less, there are also Spotify, right, and Spotify, yes, there must be others, but my knowledge is limited, I only know that Spotify has been listed recently, right? I was going to say IKEA, but IKEA is not hehehe.
Zack: There are some, but the entrepreneurial culture is completely different. And I think there is also. I recently read an article about the investment culture. It seems that many VCs in the United States have a startup experience, and the VCs here in Europe are more bankers. Or there are corporate strategies, such a kind of origin. When he is in a company that is pre market product market fit, he asks me for a discounted cash flow analysis, or like this it makes a lot of sense to bankers, but it totally doesn’t make sense to someone who is trying to build a startup, or trying to create a new product. Yes, on the European side, maybe I think we all have to learn from each other, and we need a balance.
Li Ding: Telling you this, I think of one thing, people will invest in things they are familiar with. For example, China’s housing prices have been very high in the past few decades, so if you ask any ordinary person in China, what is the most reliable investment for you, they will say that housing prices are the most reliable investment. Of course, this phenomenon may follow. For example, if China’s population does not grow, or even declines, because housing is a simple supply and demand relationship, if you have no demand, the housing price will naturally go down, so ask China in 30 years. People, at that time maybe they would say, maybe the house is not a good investment and maybe there is something else, when the better investment comes out at that time. Knowledge is experienced in the process of their growth, and the same logic is transferred to what you just said. For example, these investors in North America, they themselves experienced it when they were in their teens and twenties when they were young. In the VC round, they know that startup is probability. If you invest enough in a company, there will always be one or two that can become popular. With these two popular companies, you can make a lot of money. So from investment point of view, that makes total sense right. But maybe people in the investment world like you said in Europe, because there is no VC, because they have never been a startup founder and do VC in Europe, so they do not trust the probability gain so much, they are not familiar with them or familiar with their traditions, For example, I don’t know what the European business is like. For example, it may be IKEA or other, this kind of more traditional business model. I was just trying to say OK. If this problem is solved, one idea is to say that the tech giants of the attracts living in the Bay Area, these founders are not trying to evade taxes, they may want to avoid tax evasion, and Elon Musk avoided tax from California because of tax avoidance. Went to Texas. If you say Europe, for example, this is just a wild thought, and I don’t have any inside knowledge, that is, they have some policies and tax policies that attract some of these giant crocodiles in the Bay Area, right? Going to Europe to live for a long time is like you Ah, right, you go because you like Zurich, some kind of natural environment, but for these VC investors, what they may want is tax benefits.
Zack: Really, there are some communities in Switzerland, because each district in Switzerland has its own tax line, just a small village, it has its own tax terms, they have some small villages, it will make a more People with money, whether it’s in the Bay Area or there, negotiate a fixed tax rate, your fixed tax, which means I don’t care how much money I make, I’ll give you three million a year, and that’s fine. A possibility of tax avoidance, in this Swiss tax is quite attractive.
Li Ding: For me, as long as you attract these people, they will be more familiar with the local area and have a certain influence on various local tech environments. Will they gradually invest in this kind of VC? The trend has passed.
Zack: I really think that I have myself. In the past five years, I may really think that many large factories in North America have opened in Zurich, but Google must have a large base in Zurich, so it is other big factories. There are also.
Li Ding: Meta also has it. I have heard a lot about it. I have known a lot of people in Disney research Zurich in Disney Zurich. Many of them were directly poached by Meta. They also opened one in Zurich. What a lab.
Zack: Yes, so many talents are actually going to Zurich, which is the direction. Maybe the Bay Area may have something like what I heard because of the visa, and some may feel that life is a bit too much for the culture there. After rushing, he took a step back if he wanted to. Anyway, people for various reasons are going this way, and there is such a tendency.
Li Ding: Yes, yes, yes, yes, of course. Bringing startup culture to Europe is not necessarily a good thing. It may have a certain impact on local residents. This is all right. Not all people in the Bay Area want to escape. After escaping, they all came to Seattle, and the people of Seattle were going to other places. It’s not necessarily a good thing for them to have a VC culture. That’s good, but today’s discussion with Zack is very interesting. Finally, you come back to our topic today. Do you have any final thoughts to share with the audience about the experience of turning a PM after completing a PhD?
Zack: I think if you are yourself, if a PhD is more interested in digging holes, I think you should consider PM. Of course we talked about some cons just now, but in fact, I personally still enjoy this new role. And I think I personally, my impact I think is bigger than me being a researcher. So if from impact, if you are a person who cares about impact, commercial impact can give it a try. Although the road is a bit curvy, I think it’s worth it.
Li Ding: It’s good. Thank you Zack for sharing with you today. I hope it can help the audience. See you in the next issue.
Zack: Alright, bye.
This article is reprinted from: https://www.lidingzeyu.com/phd-and-product-manager/
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.