Product Manager Bias: How One CEO’s Experience Could Affect an Entire Product Roadmap
There was a recent article published about how the CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi, went undercover as an Uber driver in a quest to find out why Uber was struggling to sign-up more drivers. Whether you applaud Dara for his actions or take the cynical view that it was a publicity stunt, we will explore the implications of his actions as it relates to product management.
In my last blog, I talked about why product managers continue to make bad internal tools and I actually used ride sharing as a specific example. TL;DR, the key point was that companies focus their time and efforts on revenue generating initiatives, rather than the internal tool, driver app. Therefore, it was no surprise to me that Dara went undercover as a driver. However, if I was a Product Manager for Uber, I would probably be pretty frustrated post Dara’s experiment. Here is why.
Product Manager bias
I am not a current or former employee of Uber so I am speculating in this blog but I imagine that when Dara returned with his findings, the product roadmap instantly changed:
“We need to create a single sign-up for both riders and drives and all drivers must see drop-off locations before pickups”.
While these may be amazing ideas, one of the biggest fallacies in product is that we can’t use our own experiences as a general representation of the market. Even though you may be the product manager, you are just one of thousands of users. One thing we know for sure is that customers use our products in totally weird, wacky and unexpected ways. Just like when you are analyzing data, it’s important not to overreact too soon. Therefore, it’s important not to unfairly weigh your own personal biases and experiences. It’s hard enough to hold yourself accountable to this fallacy, now try and have that conversation with the CEO! That sounds like a losing battle.
Voice of the customer
As a Product Manager, it’s your responsibility to be the voice of the market. You should be an expert on your customers. Who are they? What are their main challenges? Why do they use/don’t use your product? At a minimum, every Product Manager at Uber should go through the sign-up process to become a driver at both Uber and Lyft. Expectation for a solid PM is that they will go for tag-along rides with real drivers and/or even be a real driver just like what Dara did. I am speculating again, but Dara’s findings of tip-baiting, in-app operational issues and rude rider experiences was probably not a surprise to anyone on the product team. Instead, lack of solving these pain points was likely attributed to unfocused prioritization, limited resources or not listening to the empowered product teams put in place. Regardless of the reason, his public findings undermine the legitimacy of the product team and makes me believe this was likely a publicity stunt.
Conclusion
While I am glad to see that a CEO is willing to get their hands dirty, it’s important not to put too much emphasis on one person’s opinions, even if it’s the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion). In addition, as companies continue to prioritize consumer apps over internal facing tools, the backend teams will need to continue to make difficult trade-off decisions as they need to prioritize with increasingly limited resources. While I think this publicity stunt reflects negatively on the product team, at least the Uber driver app team probably has a renewed budget for 2023.
