One Knight in Product

Building Effective Technical Skills for Product Managers (with Irene Yu, founder @ Skiplevel)

Listen Later

An interview with Irene Yu. Irene is a former software developer for up-and-coming everything store Amazon, where she found herself mentoring non-technical product managers to help them get better at tech. Inspired by her success, she left to found Skiplevel, a technical training startup aimed at teach actually useful tech skills to product managers & non tech founders.

We talk about a lot, including:

  • The mission behind Skiplevel and how she's trying to provide a good and easy place to learn useful technical knowledge for non-engineering tech workers
  • What being technical means, why being technical is helpful, and the importance of giving PMs and founders confidence to have constructive conversations with engineering
  • The target audience for Skiplevel and whether it's suitable for the wider business or focused relentlessly on PMs and founders
  • Why learning to code is not the best way to learn technical skills and how learning a broad set of technical concepts is superior
  • The four pillars of technical knowledge that Skiplevel teaches and how they contribute to helping people go wide not deep
  • Whether product managers even need to be technical, whether coding interviews are appropriate, and why companies use them
  • The potential risks of people knowing enough to contribute but not enough to make decisions, but then trying to make them anyway

    • And much more!

    Check out Skiplevel

    If you want to get better at tech & go beyond learning how to code toy apps for the sake of it, why not check out Skiplevel.co?

    Contact Irene

    You can reach out to Irene on Twitter.

    ...more
    View all episodesView all episodes
    Download on the App Store
    One Knight in ProductBy One Knight in Product
    • 4.7
    • 4.7
    • 4.7
    • 4.7
    • 4.7

    4.7

    14 ratings

    More shows like One Knight in Product

    View all
    a16z Podcast by Andreessen Horowitz

    a16z Podcast

    995 Listeners

    The Tim Ferriss Show by Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig

    The Tim Ferriss Show

    16,093 Listeners

    The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch by Harry Stebbings

    The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

    509 Listeners

    Decoder with Nilay Patel by The Verge

    Decoder with Nilay Patel

    3,125 Listeners

    How I Built This with Guy Raz by Guy Raz | Wondery

    How I Built This with Guy Raz

    30,235 Listeners

    The Product Podcast by Product School

    The Product Podcast

    166 Listeners

    Masters of Scale by WaitWhat

    Masters of Scale

    3,969 Listeners

    All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

    All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

    8,760 Listeners

    The Memo by Howard Marks by Oaktree Capital Management

    The Memo by Howard Marks

    407 Listeners

    Hard Fork by The New York Times

    Hard Fork

    5,356 Listeners

    Product Thinking by Melissa Perri

    Product Thinking

    144 Listeners

    Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson by Ben Thompson

    Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson

    90 Listeners

    The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis by Nathaniel Whittemore

    The AI Daily Brief (Formerly The AI Breakdown): Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

    422 Listeners

    BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley by BG2Pod

    BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley

    431 Listeners

    AI + a16z by a16z

    AI + a16z

    33 Listeners