S3E4: Software Product Management and Building a Startup with Sam Gimbel

This episode was transcribed with the help of an AI transcription tool. Please forgive any typos.

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Hey listeners, welcome to the Learn to Code With Me podcast. I'm your host Laurence Bradford and today's episode I talk with Sam Gimbel, co-founder and head of product at Clark, an app for tutors to manage all aspects of their business. Before starting Clark, Sam spent six years working as a product manager in New York City at companies like Digital Ocean drama, fever and more. In our conversation, we talked about product management, how Sam learn to code and starting Clark. Remember you can get Show Notes for this episode plus more information about Sam at learntocodewith.me/podcast. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe on whichever podcast player you listen on. If you're feeling particularly generous, ever view would be awesome to enjoy.

Laurence Bradford 1:43
Hi, Sam, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Sam Gimbel 1:45
Thanks for having me.

Laurence Bradford 1:47
Could you introduce yourself to the audience really quick?

Sam Gimbel 1:49
Sure. My name is Sam Gimbel. I am co founder and head of product at Clark. That's hiclark.com, got to get that plug in there. So previous in previous lives. I was able to Product Manager at Digital Ocean, drama fever and another company called Hashable. I've started side projects, one called Brew Crate, which was a subscription, homebrew kit business, which was a lot of fun. And currently, I'm working on a virtual assistant for tutors called Clark, which manages every aspect of a tutors relationship with their students from the time that they find them through running sessions with them to building the tutors brand around the success of the bit they've had with that student. That's the pitch.

Laurence Bradford 2:32
Yes, thank you. So it's so great. And we just see some context for like the listeners. We met through your co-founder and CEO Megan of Clark. And yeah, I'm really excited to have you on because this is the first time on the show that I've ever spoke to someone who did product management, or at least who's currently doing stuff with product and has so much experience that you do. So could you first explain what Product Management is for the listeners because as I told you before we started recording this was something like this was an area I wasn't even familiar with until a few months ago. So I'm sure there's others out there that are in the same boat.

Sam Gimbel 3:11
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I guess the first thing that comes up when people try to define product is that there's no really one great definition. So I think that's the first thing to remember is product management is what the company you're working at sort of says it is. But at its core product management is a business strategy role that is really responsible for the outcome of every feature and every product that gets built.

Sam Gimbel 3:40
So that means that product managers don't really manage people, although sometimes they do. They're really managing, you know, the, the product itself, hence the hence the title. So, you know, there's different aspects to being a product manager. Things that you'll hear a lot in that world. Include de-risking ideas, you know, deciding whether something's feasible to do market analysis and competitive analysis, figuring out whether it's worth doing at a business level, and also super technical stuff like, you know, product design, to some degree, user experience design, user testing, and all the things that actually get into the nitty gritty of building the thing.

Sam Gimbel 4:26
So to me, Product Management is a lot more about interacting with teams, and building processes that work for your teams, so that they can be empowered to build the things that matter. And owning the outcomes then becomes a matter of having really, really good inputs into your teams and your processes. But you'll see it, you know, bigger organisations, it tends to be a little bit more siloed and a little bit more about data analysis and that kind of stuff. So, again, you know, the most important thing to remember is that it's different everywhere. And there's there's many different flavours.

Laurence Bradford 5:00
Yeah, that was a wonderful description. Thank you. And kind of like going into your past a little bit. Before we hopped on the interview, I was doing some research and I saw that you studied neuroscience in college. Right? Yeah. And I know from previous conversations that you later on, you didn't start off as a product manager, right? You worked in tech, but in other ways, so could you just kind of explain how you maybe went from like neuroscience to working in tech, and then maybe even how you first got into product management?

Sam Gimbel 5:32
Sure. Absolutely. Um, you know, I don't know that there's that many, like straight arrow routes to becoming a product manager. So I don't know how typical this is or not, but I actually was studying to be a doctor and was on like, a full pre-med track in college. And it was right around the time and this is, you know, dating myself, but it was right around the time that Obamacare was being introduced as legislation and, so there's a lot of ambiguity around know what was gonna happen in the medical ecosystem. And so I sort of punted on the whole question and you know, went away for six months. And during that travelling the economy collapsed like entirely. So I came back to like a job market that was very, very difficult. And, you know, having sort of not finished up with, with pre med or anything like that, or applied to medical school for that matter. I started looking for jobs that were more suited to my skill set. And that actually led me to define what I was good at for the first time, like, I guess, in my life, at at 22 or whatever.

Sam Gimbel 6:43
And remembering that, you know, when I was 11, I built my first computer and for me, that felt pretty typical, but apparently it's not. And so I sought out jobs, you know, working in tech, and I had worked on this piece of software. By this tiny little subsidiary of Thomson Reuters publishing, that, that built peer review software for scholarly journals, you know, super niche, and I had done like QA engineering as a high school student on this stuff, you know, configuring sites for different groups and testing them out and making sure stuff works and doing lots of, you know, bug submissions to this company that had as of yet not been acquired by Thomson Reuters. just so happened that my mom was an account management manager there and so it was my first like, paid paid job ever. So I work at this thing, this this publishing company in in Westchester, New York, that doesn't really bear any, you know, need to be named or anything like that, because it was honestly pretty, pretty terrible. And I don't want to I don't want to call anybody out but during that time, time I spent more of my more my days thinking about how to build better versions of what we were using, then actually doing real work. And so I really was looking for something in the tech startup world. And lo and behold, there was an opening at a company called Hashable, which was one of these like, sort of glory days of early app development startups that was you know, trying to get rid of business cards by creating like a almost like a Foursquare like system for people check ins, I don't know, seemed like a great idea at the time. And I got a job there as a QA engineer.

Sam Gimbel 8:43
So during those days, the QA ecosystem for like mobile apps was was all manual. They hadn't come up with any automated frameworks for any of that. So I was touching all the things and realising that stuff wasn't working properly. And it wasn't because you know, the code was It was because the product was not correct yet, it just hadn't had enough time to gel or enough testing. So I started submitting bugs against that. And the product team was like, No, these are not defects. These are things that actually, you know, we need to think about and evaluate. There's just not that much real estate and an app, or prioritising X, Y, and Z, you're pointing out a, b, and c, and I'm like, but a, b, and c actually support X, Y, and Z and, you know, started making these cases for, for why we should do stuff, and eventually ended up in this, you know, in these product meetings with the head of product and my boss was the director of product.

Sam Gimbel 9:33
So that was like six months in and sort of, you know, edge my way in, bit by bit until I became, you know, a full fledged product manager there and you know, in the capacity of, you know, organising the the engineering schedules, prioritising features, sequencing, that kind of stuff, as well as like UX design and mock ups. So I went to a few courses General Assembly and stuff like that just in order to shore up my skills. And it was sort of just a natural fit, I just loved being in a place where I had to think about, you know, not just what the thing was, but why it had to exist. And whether or not we could build the thing. And really just thinking holistically about all those things really just, you know, got me to really dig my my sink my teeth into the into the, the role. And I was there for I guess like another year before I moved to drama fever where I built out their entire mobile ecosystem from the product standpoint. And that went so well over the next two years that it was just that was it. I just I really, it's all I all I ever wanted to do with my life.

Laurence Bradford 10:51
Yeah, well, thank you for sharing all that. And just to clarify real quick, the first job that you had QA because you mentioned you did some stuff in In high school, but then you did some stuff. Did you start really QA like but it while you were in high school was this more so after college?

Sam Gimbel 11:07
So I did have the role as like a QA person in high school. But the title was just like intern. And then after college, because I had been working on like the software from the provider, or from the vendor standpoint, the this Publishing Company, which was a client hired meets to basically maintain it. They were basically looking for a tech person, you know, like, this was that time of, of history where it was like, Oh, we need a tech person. And I was like, oh, gosh, this is gonna be fun.

Laurence Bradford 11:42
But then it led you to your even though you said it wasn't maybe that great. It kind of got your foot in the door, though, and then led to the next thing. And then to the next thing, right. And then you ended up being a product manager. So that's cool.

Sam Gimbel 11:54
Absolutely. It was definitely a you know, I had to pay my dues. And that was the Definitely a place to do it. Um, you know, I don't think anyone's first job when they're just figuring out what they want to do with their lives. It's like, particularly rewarding. Yeah, so I think that's like, you know, that's the style

Laurence Bradford 12:13
Yeah. Oh my goodness, I always my first like, quote unquote tech job was like, well, not similar. What I, what we were probably doing, I was essentially assisting like the second main developer, but this was in this like, town in Pennsylvania was small. I was like, not getting paid well at all. But I had literally just begun teaching myself like HTML and CSS, like a month before and I just kind of went out and tried to get some kind of paying job right away. And even though it was like very far from glamorous, didn't pay well. You know, after reflection, later, I realised the person I was working with really didn't know that much about what they were doing, but still like it still. Nonetheless, he knew more than me. And I learned, I definitely learned from that experience, and they got to get paid while I was learning so it was great. But yeah, I just all agree with you have to you know, make your dues and it's not always gonna be like working, you know, at Facebook with free food and catering debt, it doesn't always start off that way.

Laurence Bradford 13:12
Anyhow, so I okay, so you said that you took like some courses at ga and I know you later taught at ga which I do want to talk about, but I am wondering how much did you learn about product management from like, courses versus trial and error?

Sam Gimbel 13:30
You know, um, I guess I would say that like, taking the courses was actually a form of trial and error is definitely my first instinct, you know, having not been out of college for that long. I was like, Oh, of course is that makes sense. And it does to some degree if you don't have like some of the base skills, so I took, like user experience design, just like a workshop like a two day workshop. And I took like a Ruby course I guess it was through Skillshare but And that does matter. And I had been learning Ruby on my own. So that was just like a way to solidify that skill. But I actually learned through those experiences, you know, which were varying levels of expensive, financially, that like.

Sam Gimbel 14:19
Product Management is really just like a synthesis of all these skills. So it's much more about learning and where the interfaces between like, you know, the the developer mindset and the designer mindset, you know, sort of meet, that's actually much more important than knowing design or development. You need to know the language you need to know. You know, how to estimate how long something will take or how important it is and that kind of stuff. You don't actually need to know what those things really are. It helps for sure, like, you know, domain expertise is awesome, but that that, like, early coursework, honestly, was a really good way to talk myself out of taking more courses. And instead just like reading more books, playing with more software, I guess I'm a very intuitive learner. So, you know, for me, like play is learning. So it's definitely trial and error to answer your original question, almost entirely.

Laurence Bradford 15:17
Yeah, I always, I mean, I guess it's a bit different, like learning how to code and whatnot. But stuff like this could probably apply to most things. I think like building your own projects, which is definitely a form of trial and error and kind of like going out on your own and trying different things is a great way to learn. And it sounds like it sounds like you did build some of your own you did build some of your own stuff, correct?

Sam Gimbel 15:39
Yeah, yeah. No, I've always been a like a thinker. You know. My, my grandmother. When I was like, six bought me this electric firetruck which was the like, bless her heart. Very, very active. pensive thing. And I immediately took it apart. And like tried to figure out how it works and took all the motors out of the different things that, uh, you know, it was doing and put them to other uses and whatever. So that's my natural instinct. And, you know, I think some people around me see it as destructive, but I'm like, Oh, this is fun. So, that's, that's always been my instinct. I like hardware as much as I love software. So it's really, you know, sometimes difficult to stay focused. And I think that's actually an issue that a lot of product managers have. We have a lot of interests, otherwise it wouldn't be fun to do this job. And so the result is like, you do want to build everything and you do want to learn everything and you have to just continually tell yourself, no, no, no, this is what I'm doing right now. When I get home or like, you know, next project, I can do these other cool things.

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Laurence Bradford 19:02
Yeah, it's always difficult. I feel like um, you know, we spoke and we've spoken before about product management. And I know I've mentioned this to the listeners or to my to some my audience in my email list when I've taking a product management course right now, and I told you this, Sam before, I'm only two classes in so I'm not, not super far. And I think there's, we have a 16 total. So I mean, 17. So, just just getting started, but just so far from the course. One of the things I feel like there's just so much stuff like you can do like, I mean, you could spend so much time just doing like a competitor analysis. I mean, you could spend like weeks, it could be a huge project in itself. So yeah, it's like, trying to prioritise what should be done first, and in what order, which can be challenging, especially when you when you have lots of interests, like I definitely do have lots of interests.

Sam Gimbel 19:52
Yeah, absolutely. And even even applying stuff to like very narrowly scoped stuff in a job. With products, a lot of your validation comes a lot later. So it can be really tough to be like, Oh, I should only spend this amount of time doing this because spending more is just like, you know, tapping into, you know, some sort of system of diminishing returns. You don't know that until maybe sometimes months later, like, hopefully not as much because you're trying to get data early, but it's really challenging. Definitely, like, one of my greatest things it is that I'm spending too much or too little time on any one thing and Jesus a founder, like it's 10 times worse. So definitely worth, you know, recognising that early like your two classes in that's exactly the time to be thinking about that. And really like you know, owning it.

Laurence Bradford 20:43
Yeah, yeah. So to go back to like your your experience and whatnot. You later taught at General Assembly, you taught product management. And, you know, I guess I'm just curious, like, what that was like and also what made you want to teach product management. Okay. It's like three questions and also, did you have a full time job at the time when you were doing that? Because it just seems like a lot of work to like teach a course. And then like work full time, and maybe you know, you have other things, you know, going on outside of that.

Sam Gimbel 21:10
Totally. Let me answer the third one first. I did not have a full time job. Yes, I did. But I was an unfunded founder. So I didn't like I made a choice to be unemployed. And I was lucky enough to be able to do that and to have the resources to do that. But so that that opportunity crossed my plate from a really good friend of mine, this guy, George Clement, who are - Clemente, sorry, George, if you're listening. He was a product - He was actually a product manager at General Assembly on the coursework side and helped develop the courses from a product perspective that you know, I then taught so very, very meta on his end. And he was part of this fellowship that I took part of through the Robin Hood foundation called Blue Ridge labs, which is like a incubator for high risk, high reward ideas for nonprofits.

Sam Gimbel 22:13
Basically. They want people to build technology that solves problems that affects low income New Yorkers. So we were like, you know, having a great time doing that he was on a different team than I was. And he mentioned that he was teaching there after having quit because I forgot why. Well, I think it's the same reason I did, initially, which was, you know, realising we needed money, and it's a pretty decent way to make a little bit of money. So, I was like, Okay, well, at least like you know, check it out. doing you know, doing something for the money when it's like, as intense as teaching is, was not something I was willing to, you know, bite off like that just just without thinking about it, but after looking at all the options, coursework, I realised that the curriculum, while incredibly broad, and I think that's my major qualm with the whole experience is just there was a lot of content. It was just like it was the whole thing, it was all of the product management discipline that you can potentially tap into. So I was like, great, I have a, I have an opportunity to re solidify these skills and these these ways of thinking, that are actually really elusive when you're working on something specific.

Sam Gimbel 23:33
So, you know, I guess like when I was when I was doing mostly mobile development, and again, now as I'm doing mostly mobile development, the tendency is to really dig into like user experience and interaction design and those kinds of things as being the places that you think about de risking and, you know, improving metrics and what have you. But the opposite is true when you're dealing with like distributed like massively distribute systems like the Digital Ocean cloud infrastructure. So, you know, you're really just like tapping into these different things. And teaching at ga was like a really great opportunity to put it back all together and be like, Oh, this is why we do this. So I taught the part time course, which is 10 weeks, twice a week for two hours per per session. And by the end of it, I was like, I don't know if you guys learned anything, but I feel like I learned a lot. And I had like a really good time with it. I don't know how accessible the content is, for people who have never experienced before, though. And that is that is something that I think is really worth noting is that as a synthesis of different disciplines. product can be really hard to pick up even over the course of like 10 weeks. That seems like a long time, but it's really not if you have a full time job and most of my students did.

Laurence Bradford 25:00
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it's interesting. I guess I'm, you know, I'm not taking the course at General symbols, you know, there's really not that many proc management courses out there. And I remember I was doing research on it, I only found a handful. And some of them were like, at universities and some were really expensive, like a five day intensive like, you know, in California and like Silicon Valley, but it was like, quite quite expensive, not to mention, like having to pay for like lodging and all that stuff. But yeah, so but my in the same way, mine's very similar and that everyone there has a full time job, which I actually really like, because I feel like the people are a lot more serious. Like if you're taking a course on top of your existing full time job and you're doing it after work. And it's like, you know, until like, you know, nine every night you're not every night like twice a week.

Laurence Bradford 25:46
You're pretty committed or at least you're committed about your career, your career advancement. And other things is showing that mine is the people there. Some are already product managers like they just moved. They broke a developer before and they've recently moved into pm And they want to learn more about it. Other people on your arrange kind of positions, but most of you know, for the most part really all like tech or like fin tech people FinTech, actually. But anyway, I think one of my favourite things so far has been like the people that I've met through the course. Yeah, which is cool. But anyway, getting a little getting a little sidetracked one thing that when you were explaining some of the stuff you do in your past, and then you're working in general assembly, and and then you said Blue Ridge labs, which deals with nonprofits and whatnot. And now, your current startup startup that you co founded, Clark also relates to education. So has that always been something that has interested you like education?

Sam Gimbel 26:41
I mean, yes, but also no. You know, I guess the the unifying theme in my life has been giving back more than I take out which is pretty nebulous. So I'll I'll explain. So that's what being a dad was, for me, it's like a very technical discipline. It's something that's, you know, a little bit superhero II, which is definitely attractive. But more than that, like, sure you get paid pretty well as a doctor, although, you know, not so much anymore he used to be, you're still putting in many, many more hours and saving many more lives than like, are being consumed by you being there. I think that's really cool. And really unique to disciplines that build things up, like engineering is similar to that. But the tech landscape. And this is rather cynical. But it's just an observation that I made in general, the tech landscape takes out more than it puts back. And I really do believe that and I think that, you know, looking at the way that San Francisco has changed from like a housing perspective, over the last 1520 years, really to that just as like one very small example and not to call any specific PR company out. We're all in this together, right? So for me when I thought about doing my own thing. And this was heavily influenced by my experience at Blue Ridge labs. It was about building a sustainable ecosystem that would actually grow a market to a larger size than when we got into it, and give other opportunities to the people that were our users and actually paying us. So it's a little bit like sort of old school conservative economics is where I come from. I really think that like with strategic investments and helping people help themselves, and really understanding what would actually allow people to help themselves, we can we can give back more than we then we take out. So education is, you know, obviously, I don't know if it's obvious, given given some stuff that's going on right now.

Sam Gimbel 28:44
But definitely like one of the most effective investments that can be made in terms of like time and money. It just like it never stops giving back and the statistics are just like so stark. Not just for like education, the way that we're doing it, like with tutoring and out of school education, but like the value of a GED versus not finishing high school over the over your lifetime, it's like something like 250 K, difference in earned wages. And getting a college degree is like, you know, a million dollars more than not finishing high school or something like that. So, you know, that's great. And like, Hey, everyone should get education, right. But like, you have to pay to play. And that means preparing people and giving educators the tools that they need to reach kids, you know, at a young age. So, you know, it was our observation between Meghan and I, and through her work in education, she's much closer to the actual education scene than I am. Whereas I'm just, you know, kind of a crazy dude who, who feels very strongly about, you know, the future of work in the gig economy, she's like, comes from international education, international development.

Sam Gimbel 30:00
So we realise though that like, individualised education, personalised education one on one tutoring, for instance, is like the absolute best way to reach kids and have an intervention, which led us naturally to figure out a way that we could serve tutors, while doing so in a way that doesn't commoditize their work. Because that was the other key observation that we made is that valuable work that actually gives back over time just isn't it's not interchangeable the way that an Uber driver is interchangeable. And this is something that like a lot of the VCs that we've talked to, in the space get wrong a lot of the time. They see us as like a commodity, two sided marketplace, but really, we're a business management tool for the provider in that relationship. So that's really where my passion is, is empowering people to do good stuff, because they already want to do good stuff. But education is like a very natural extension of that.

Laurence Bradford 30:57
Yeah, well, that was such a great lesson. Such a great like description and tie it together from like wanting to help people or giving back more than you take out and then tying that into Clark and education and empowering tutors to teach students, you know, on their own and Yeah, wow. And it's just you and Megan just seemed like such a great match because as you said, like she has a lot of experience in like international development. And I guess like more formalised education, I don't know if we could say that if that's the right word, and then you are more interested in like, the whole gig economy, which is kind of like where it's like a blend of those two things. So because you're helping, like, you know, teachers make money on the side through tutoring, which is like the gig economy at the same time helping students learn more and, you know, advanced in their education.

Sam Gimbel 31:43
Yeah, and really trying to democratise that. And, you know, tying that back into the product conversation. You know, Megan and I also have opposite skill sets. She's the business co founder, and I'm the technical co founder, but I've never been As a full time engineer, you know, I've been a QA engineer that's different. I've never written production code for a living. So like being able to apply product skills and say like, Okay, well, these are the things that must be built. And here's the people that we must hire in order to, like actually have a tech team and you know, all these kinds of things. Those are things that I learned in product management, those don't come You know, innately to anybody I don't think so. You know, super cool to be able to apply that to this relationship with with Megan who's just like such a badass when it comes to you know, fundraising and and business partnerships and marketing and all these things. And then you know, I try to hold up my my end of the bargain as well as I can.

Laurence Bradford 32:43
Yeah, that's so funny that you mentioned because when another question I jotted down as you're talking is I was curious like how involved you are in like building the application or applications and Clark and if you're coding the day to day or if you're maybe QA and of course I know you guys are assuming samll sized startup, I'm sure like, everyone there is doing a lot of different things and maybe you know, you're doing things it doesn't really fall under like product management. But yeah, how involved are you? In the coding? At least?

Sam Gimbel 33:11
Yeah, totally. Um, so yeah, I mean, like, so little of my time is actually doing product. It's it's hilarious. Like, that's what I think about as I go to bed is like strategy wise, what are we doing? It's really hard to fit everything in. But in terms of, like daily involvement, I am writing code on a daily basis. It is mostly Ruby, some JavaScript. And I'm heavily biassed towards Ruby because I can read it and I enjoy reading. And it's not a it's like actually a complete language. No, no knock to JavaScript, but like, it was not intended to do the things that we're doing with it right now. So super awesome to the entire, you know, burgeoning JavaScript ecosystem. But honestly, like, I just I can't I can't do It just hurts my brain. So you know, I do a lot of Sinatra apps, that's like how we write a lot of our microservices. But I have a lot of help from my head of engineering, this guy, Michael Porter, who was at mediamath, prior to this, and he and I worked on this this project called Blue crate, which I mentioned previously, and, you know, he's just like, he's just awesome.

Sam Gimbel 34:25
So, and by awesome, I mean, really patient, like, deals with the fact that like, you know, I know enough to be dangerous and make stupid mistakes. But I actually find myself like fitting into a little bit more of the infrastructural DevOps role on a day to day basis, which is interesting. I think it comes from just having worked at digitalocean and sort of understanding that ecosystem, although I'm not an expert by any means, like honestly, that was, that was the hardest part of that job is like, no, yeah, I know what a server is. I know what a load balancer does, but like Geez, building them. That's hard. So I work a lot on the deployment side and making sure like we can actually get stuff up and running, although Mike has like, completely owned that as well. So just, you know, an example like we, we deploy our homepage as an s3 site as sort of a no like a static site that's hedged against, you know, the potential and, you know, hopeful knock on wood influx of users that we're going to get when we when we launch our, you know, iOS app, although I guess by the time you hear this, it'll already be launched, which is super exciting. To wrap it back up. Yeah, I'm writing code on a daily basis, it does get pushed to production. And, um, you know, we use GitHub and JIRA, and all those fun things to manage code and tickets, respectively.

Laurence Bradford 35:50
Oh, yeah. Thank you so much for sharing more about that. I feel like okay, maybe you're totally wrong. And I as listeners know, and as you maybe know, this is like, Well, my courage. I was like, my first full time job I've been here now like seven maybe maybe even eight months. But to me at least in my company from my perspective, or no, I don't know I feel like Okay, so I'm thinking like you mentioned with DevOps and kind of I'm thinking like operations and I feel like there's certain like are to me I could kind of seem like at least at my current job now I do a lot of stuff that could be fault like categorised under operations or maybe product and I feel like not the same thing at all but I can see how someone who is good at proc stuff would be good at the operational stuff as well.

Sam Gimbel 36:31
Yeah, I think that I think that generally follows like they're both both disciplines that really rely on iterative optimizations and process to survive. And you know, basically like getting out of your own way a lot of the time with operations you know, depending on the thing like if there's anything physical involves like moving a thing from place to place geez like the logistics involved are just like mind body. doesn't lead difficult and sure maybe I'd be okay at that. But I don't want to do that.

Laurence Bradford 37:07
I feel like I could because I always look at like just job ads just for research and I feel like I'm even like a product Okay, there was there's even a product operations it's like not that common but all the companies that have it, it's physical. So I'm like, like doordash like Uber like I'm like, I'm like reading the job description because it sounds cool at product operations, but I'm like, Oh my god, this is terrifying because you're like doing stuff with like, like physical objects that like to me which is terrifying. Like, or like orchestrating, like drivers are something I don't know. It's like It's like way too much responsibility, but also all the prog operations jobs. So I was only a handful were like, you know, 10 plus years experience. It was not it was like a person with both, I guess, like logistical and operations and you know, product experience.

Sam Gimbel 37:49
Yeah, that sounds horrifying. Like I don't, I don't want to do that. It does seem like it takes a really amazing person to do. For sure.

Laurence Bradford 38:00
Yeah, like the physical stuff. Anyway, getting sidetracked. Well, we had this conversation flew by it's already been 35 minutes. Oh boy. Yeah. Right. It was great to connect with you though. And as well, yeah. And is there I guess, is there anything else you'd like to maybe add just to finalise the conversation, like with Clark, or maybe any tips for someone who wants to get into product management?

Sam Gimbel 38:22
Yeah, so some quick tips. You know, definitely think like, like a CEO about your product. And check out some of the stuff that Ben Horowitz has written on the subject. But being a mini CEO for the product and owning every single thing that happens to it. And you know, giving your team credit when things go well, and taking the blame when they go poorly. That's the first step towards being really great product manager. If you can do that and you can orchestrate all the things that happen underneath there. You're gonna be very successful, you know, assuming assuming the idea is a good one, but in general You know, keep plugging away it does take a lot longer to be proficient in product than then in some other disciplines you know, as a like six years almost seven in product I'm still mid level, which is crazy. If you think about you know, somebody who's been writing code for six or seven years that would definitely be on the senior side. So you know, keep keep plugging away, keep plugging away and you'll make it if if you want it badly enough, but it's not an easy road, so keep that in mind.

Laurence Bradford 39:28
Awesome. Thank you so much, Sam. And where can people find you? Oh, yeah, where can people find you online?

Sam Gimbel 39:33
So you can find Clark online at hiclark.com and you can find me at samgimble.com

Laurence Bradford 39:39
Okay, awesome. Well that definitely add those links in the show notes. Thanks for again for coming on.

Sam Gimbel 39:44
Thanks so much, and I look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Laurence Bradford 39:53
If you enjoyed this episode, or simply are thinking about learning to code, head over to my website, learntocodewith.me, where you can find even more awesome related content. Like my 10 Free Tips for Teaching Yourself How to Code. Again, the show notes for this interview can be found at learntocodewith.me/podcast. If you're listening to this episode in the future, simply click the Search icon in the upper navigation and type in Sam's name. His first name is spelled like S-A-M, and his last name, G-I-M-B-E-L. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I'll see you next week.