Avichal Garg
Product Manager at Facebook
Discussion
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
Hi, I’m Avichal, Product Manager at Facebook. My teams work on building Profile, Local, Events products. I’ve been at Facebook for 3.5 years and have worked on a variety of other teams, such as News Feed and Platform. I’ve started and sold startups, am an angel investor, and started in product at Google where I worked on search, ads, and started Google Transit. I love the process of building something from nothing and have an unhealthy love for pizza.
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Hey, Avichal! Facebook events is one of the best tools for passive discovery, so awesome work. 👏
Facebook is known for being experimental and moving quickly. What's the biggest surprise after working there for 3.5 years?
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
@rrhoover
Thank you! Events is a big team effort across engineering, design, analytics, research, product, partnerships, marketing, and many more. It's pretty awesome to have been a part of getting the engine going 2.5 years ago and seeing how we've grown. Fun fact: The entire Spool team is still at Facebook and most of us work on Facebook Events now.
The biggest surprise is how quickly the company is still able to move. I think "Move Fast" is so engrained in the DNA that every time we start to feel like we're slowing down, we find a way to scale better, build better tools, and re-think how we communicate to pick up the pace.
Cuan-Chai Megghross
@iamcuan · Angel Investor, Brainyloft
@avichal How do you schedule and organize your day to ensure maximum productivity?
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
@iamcuan Great question. I've found that organizing by when I'm going to have the most energy is the best way to go. I tend to have high energy points early in the morning and then early in the evening.
I try to get up around 6:30 and spend a few hours doing things that will require hard thought -- a strategy document, feedback on designs for a team, digging through data to understand what's happening.
From 9-5 I'm in various meetings with teams, people on my team, other groups we're collaborating with, and working sessions. These are often mostly about helping other people think through things they need help on and I find 30 minute meetings, back to back can be every efficient to help unblock others to go solve hard problems.
From 5-8ish I dig out from email and do some more deep thought sorts of work before shutting down for the day.
Hunter Horsley
@hunter_horsley
@avichal_garg what time do you go to bed? Have you always been a morning person or have you trained yourself?
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
Beats
@officebeats · Product Manager, Contextmediainc.com
@avichal_garg how did you train yourself to be more of a morning person?
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
@zach_cmiel So many great ones to choose from.
A few come to mind that are worth reading and rereading:
- The Psychology of Persuasion by Cialdini
- Self Reliance by Emerson (an essay really but so many quotable quotes)
- Ender's Game
- Siddhartha by Hesse
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
- On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
Kate
@katesegrin · Community @ Product Hunt
Who are some of the people who have had the biggest impact on your life/career? (Stories, please!)
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
@katesegrin Far too many people to name. Everything good that has happened in my life has been because of great people who have helped me along the way. One great story that comes to mind that I tell to entrepreneurs I work with:
Marissa Mayer was my first manager at Google back in 2005. I was an APM (Associate Product Manager) and after graduating from the program was thinking about leaving to do a startup. She spent a lot of time with me helping me think through the decision, and left me with a nugget of wisdom when she said, "Startups are hard. But failing is harder. One of the hardest thing for smart, successful people like you is the failure. Because you will fail repeatedly when you do this startup. And then your company might fail altogether. And you might start another one and another one, and those might fail. The hardest part won't be leaving now to do it. The hardest part of it will be picking yourself up and trying against after you've failed a 100 times and believing the 101st time will be different. If you think you can do that, I support you. Go do it."
She was absolutely right.
MoMo Zhou
@momozhou · Communications @ Uber
@avichal_garg great answer, and great advice! thanks for sharing.
Kate
@katesegrin · Community @ Product Hunt
Best place to get pizza in the Bay Area / Silicon Valley?
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
@katesegrin Arizmendi in the Mission. They make one kind of pizza per day, always vegetarian, sell it by the slice, and the crust is amazing. Sometimes I go up to SF from Palo Alto just to get a slice.
Ben Bregman
@bregman90 · Data Scientist, Facebook
@avichal_garg @katesegrin So you werent just coming to visit me?? :(
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
@bregman90 @katesegrin The more reasons to go to Arizmendi the better!
Kate
@katesegrin · Community @ Product Hunt
@avichal_garg @katesegrin the Mission is THE place to go for good food 🙌
Laura Barganier
@laura_barganier · PR and more at Day One Agency
@avichal what are some of your favorite sources for inspiration (outside of Facebook)? and did you make any resolutions for the year?
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
@laura_barganier I'm not really a resolutions person :)
A lot of my inspiration comes from comedy. I think great comedians have a way of shining a light on obvious things and looking at them in a new way. So I spend a lot of hours every month going through YouTube looking for good standup comedy routines or looking back at great sets from some of the greats.
Laura Barganier
@laura_barganier · PR and more at Day One Agency
@avichal_garg love this! any specific routine(s) you might recommend?
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
@laura_barganier Right about 10 minutes in it feels like the crowd tips and gets it. I think the donut-receipt bit wins them over.
Jon Lax
@jlax · Product Design Director Facebook
First question, How awesome is it working with Jon Lax? -- Follow up question, what is the one thing you tell PMs who are early in their career?
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
@jlax pretty awesome. I'd venture to say that he's probably my favorite Canadian Design Director in Building 20 at Facebook ;-)
Too many PMs early in their careers tend to think their job is the make product decisions. Good PMs quickly realize their job is to help the right decisions get made.
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
What are the most important tangible skills that aspiring product managers can teach themselves?
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
@andrewmettinger 1/ Humility - you are not Steve Jobs. Focus on helping people make the right decisions and not about whether you got the make the decision. 2/ Clear Communication - when there is more than one brain working on a problem, communication is often the bottleneck, so learn how to communicate clearly. 3/ EQ - why people do what they do (people using your products and people you work with) is as important as what they do
neeharika sinha
@neeeharika · Google, Threadchannel
Hello @avichal What excites you about a company to invest in it? Any suggestions for a first time entrepreneur?
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Avichal Garg
@avichal_garg
@neeeharika Hands down the early stage is about people. You can't teach things like tenacity or passion. If someone is smart enough (and really being smart enough is all it takes in my opinion) but wants to win badly enough, they will eventually win.
Start with something you believe in, surround yourself with people who believe in you, and go.