Working as a Product Manager: Commitment to Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging
Surya Dinda is our Junior Product Manager. She is responsible and working on the Online-Tryout, which will essential for students' exam preparation. What makes her attracted to Quipper and how she adapting to her new role? Here is the complete story of Surya Dinda.
Tell us what you are working on …
I’m working on the Online-Tryout squad. Currently, there are only two people in this squad (1 PM and 1 Engineer), and that makes us quite different compared to another team on Quipper. Just two of us do the sprint planning, discussion, testing, and daily updates; we’re two partners working shoulder to shoulder towards a shared goal and mission.
Online-Tryout is a squad that has the responsibility to provide content that helps teachers evaluate students’ readiness and allows students/schools to understand and assess strengths and weaknesses through Quipper Online Tryout.
We believe that making preparation for the exam is an essential part of academic life. The teachers will be able to understand where more attention in class may be needed when teaching a particular subject. That will allow students and teachers to know where their weaknesses might be, in time for the preparation of the formal exam. It also gives them all the chance to ensure that they can achieve the best of their abilities in the class, thus helping them in the future.
How would you describe your first 3 months working at Quipper?
I joined Quipper in August 2019. I still remember my first working day; arrived slightly late because I made a wrong estimation, it was my first time trying Transjakarta from Pondok Cabe, and it’s beyond my expectations, it was hushed, the bus only departed once 50 minutes, I passed the first bus and need to wait longer for the next one. A bad start for me; I supposed to make a good impression on the first day. So the day after that, I intend to arrive more early even though only for the first month, lol.
As an introvert, I spent most of my time doing everything solo. It’s not that I don’t get along with others or work well with them; instead, I just prefer to do it solo. Making new friends, it’s one of the problematic parts of my life. I mean, if you’re an introvert, you probably understand this. Luckily, I have a good colleague who understands someone like me; some of them just slack me directly “Hey Dinda, Let’s eat together,” Din! Let’s hang out after the office.” or just swing my desk and ask me to join and get along with them. How do I feel? I’m very thankful for having a good colleague. In my 1st month of working, the management team just sent a thank you card to all the colleges, and I appreciate this not only for being polite it also serves to strengthen our relationship in the workplace.
In my 2nd month, I was suddenly asked to be a Master of Ceremonies of Quipper Monthly Share Meeting, which is the things that I never master of; I don’t like to talk in front of many people formally, so I tend to reject this, but the only thing they ask for me is to learn not to say no. After practicing more, I finally did it despite being very tense. Thanks for Bella (HR team) to help me with this.
In my 3rd month, I began to find my comfortable pace; have a solid understanding of the industry, the company, and the competitive landscape so that I can hold my own in any conversation about the company. Although I worked in the same role as my previous job, there were many new things I learned from the first day I worked, and I am very grateful that I decided to join the Product Management team at Quipper.
Why Quipper?
When I was a child, I dreamed of becoming a teacher. My mother used to tell me that I often invite my friends to play the roles of student-and-teacher. My friends acted as students and am playing the teacher role. My mother also bought a blackboard and a few small chairs so that my friends could sit as well as sitting in a real school, to be honest, that was a proper game! Long story short, another dream catches my eyes.
A year ago, I began to know several companies in the field of education after following one of the events at South Jakarta, I began to find out what they were doing, and I’m curious about their contributions. I do believe that education is the foundation for creating a better life, and it will be good if I can be a part of that. By accident, at that time, one of the HR Quippers just sent me a message on Linkedin, and I was very interested in having a conversation with him.
I know that I can’t be a teacher in a formal way, but Quipper allows me to position myself as a teacher. I reapplied the roles of student-and-teacher that I had played when I was a child; sometimes, I pretend like I’m a teacher or student so that I can make the right features to help them. What I have to say is Quipper allows me to make contributions to education without being `a real teacher` but by helping teachers and students through Quipper products and service.
Tell us what makes you passionate about work?
I love the excitement of seeing ideas come to life when the features I make from scratch are going to be out in the world. We spend months working hard for the product/feature, having to pay attention to every little thing. Then when you take all of that to your user, the feeling is very indescribable.
Besides that, working as a Product Manager allows me to explore and learn many new things. As famously quoted by Martin Eriksson that product management is the intersection between the functions of business, technology, and user experience. Hence, people need to have an understanding of these three diverse fields. This, quite literally, makes the PM role very challenging. In short, I learned a lot about every aspect of the product life cycle, going beyond technology itself. So there was never a dull moment, and I am always on my toes acquiring a new skill.
What are the most interesting challenges you’ve discovered so far?
There are days when I’m going to work with an exciting feeling, and then there are days when I’m absolutely panic and chaos, but I have enjoyed every moment and challenge. Sometimes with success stories and sometimes with failures, but all of them bring a lot of learning.
One of the most interesting challenges so far is the learning process of how not to say yes to every request by the stakeholder to my squad, and my job as a product manager is not to over-promise that request.
Besides that, I’m very lucky to have a dev team that wants to involve themself in product decisions, so it really helps me to negotiate with the stakeholder. I often find myself chartering unknown waters, to make it more clear, I should go engaging with stakeholders and communicating with them.
The other exciting challenges are to get all stakeholders aligned with our goals and with the development timeline. We know aligning everyone on the team for a shared mission and goals will help us achieve bigger and better things together.
List the top 7 skills you’ll need to succeed at work!
As I mentioned before, PM needs to have an understanding of three diverse fields, which are business, technology, and user experience. But instead of breakdown those fields, I would like to say that the role of the Product Manager is more of an art than a defined set of responsibilities. Thus I began to consider which art skills that PM needs to master; this is just my thought so far, and I’m still on my way to improve this.
- Communication, communication, communication
- Problem Solving
- Be proactive
- Prioritize
- Negotiation
- Management skill
- Writing skill
