What we talked about
Priyank Mohan traces a candid journey from QA/testing and networking, through consulting at PwC and Accenture, to platform product leadership at Amazon:owning 0→1 builds that now serve a 2M+ workforce. In this conversation, he unpacks his current mission: enabling Amazon to uphold UN-aligned human rights standards across its global supply chain. Priyank explains how his team builds the underlying platforms:guardrails, monitoring, and automation:that help program owners detect risks (e.g., forced or child labor), trigger remediation, and measure adherence at massive scale. The product challenge, he notes, is familiar: translate abstract principles like fairness and dignity into concrete requirements, scalable architectures, and auditable outcomes:so humans spend time on high-judgment work, not toil.
Show notes
Priyank Mohan describes a moment that surprised him early in his Amazon tenure: he discovered it was completely acceptable:expected, even:to say no to a business stakeholder. Coming from consulting, where you are contractually obligated to deliver what the client asks, this was a genuine culture shock. Learning to say no, backed by data rather than deference, turned out to be the foundation of effective platform product management.
What we covered
- Priyank’s current role focuses on building the underlying technology platform that enables Amazon to monitor human rights compliance across its global supply chain:covering suppliers who provide goods, construction, staffing, and services of all kinds. The platform automates detection of violations against Amazon’s publicly listed standards, which are aligned to the UN’s human rights directives, and triggers remediation workflows when deviations are found. A decision made in a meeting room, he noted, can improve someone’s life on the other side of the world.
- One of the most transferable habits from his PwC consulting years was the practice of making discussions visual. Amazon is a deeply document-oriented company:meetings begin with 20 minutes of silent reading:but Priyank found that supplementing narrative documents with architecture diagrams and workflow visuals helped him communicate complex platform designs far more clearly than text alone.
- At PwC, Priyank led a project that built a custom DevOps framework allowing a client to go from code commit to production-ready build in under an hour, using open source tools, containerization, and regression testing. This hands-on experience taught him to navigate both the business problem and its technical implementation simultaneously:a skill he considers essential for bridging engineering teams and business stakeholders.
- The sharpest distinction between consulting and in-house product work, in Priyank’s view, is ownership. As a consultant you deliver and move on; as a platform PM you live with every decision you make. That accountability raises both the stakes and the quality of judgment you develop over time.
- Enterprise product adoption is an “uphill battle” by default because users already have an established way of working and are motivated to protect it. Priyank said that in his experience, enterprise users typically greet a new PM with skepticism:”here comes another one, let’s see what you can do”:because they’ve been promised good solutions before and received nothing. Building trust through persistence and genuine investment in their problems is the only path through.
- On AI in product management: Priyank uses LLMs in three specific ways:discovery and research to identify gaps in existing knowledge, rapid prototyping to give stakeholders something concrete to react to rather than a verbal description, and documentation to produce shareable drafts for alignment. What used to take a month to get into a shape fit for feedback now takes about a week.
About Priyank
Priyank Mohan is an enterprise product leader at Amazon, where he has built zero-to-one platforms serving a workforce of over two million people and currently leads the technology platform supporting Amazon’s human rights compliance program across its global supply chain. Before Amazon, he drove large-scale transformation projects at PwC and Accenture and holds an MS in electrical engineering from San Jose State University.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyankmohan
- Website: https://www.amazon.com
Episode 66 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the PreVetted Podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today we are joined by Priyank Mohan. He’s an enterprise product leader at Amazon. He’s led a zero to one platform for a 2 million plus workforce from a unified HR platform and an AI assisted departure experience to his current focus.
building guardrails and trafficking human rights compliance across Amazon’s supply chain. Before Amazon, Priyank shipped large-scale transformations at PwC and Accenture, and he holds an MS in electrical engineering from San Jose State. So we’ll dig into ethical tech at scale, the craft of platform product management, and lessons from a career that spans QA consulting and product leadership.
Priyank, welcome to the show.
Priyank (01:01) Thank you Federico, thank you for the nice introduction. Looking forward to the conversation.
Federico Ramallo (01:07) Great. Great. So,
What’s the through line of your journey? You you go from QA, testing to consulting to platform PM at Amazon
Priyank (01:16) I think I see myself as a person who used to be Jack of all trades. then luckily I found my niche as I continued working in my career, where I realized unknowingly that over the years I had developed this aptitude to understand technology platforms, understand how things need to be built.
Understand how business problems need to be solved and then Being able to you know, put together a sort of a vision and solve them In a more formal sense. So yeah, I think that’s that’s like the that’s how I look back at my entire career journey It wasn’t something that was planned, but I think it just shaped on its own as I get going
Federico Ramallo (02:00) Amazing. human rights in supply chain, what does that look like on a day to day and what outcomes matter the most?
Priyank (02:09) So I think at a high level, the human rights and supply chain relate to ensuring that companies when they conduct business with suppliers who are located across the different parts of the world, there is this UN driven directive about human rights principles that guide a lot of companies and countries and states as well.
A lot of the companies have taken up this goal to ensure that they uphold these principles in a way that when you engage with the supplier, a company that, let’s say, sends you manufactured goods, provides construction work for you, provides staffing, provides anything. I mean, they are selling you things. They are selling you HVACs or anything.
You want to make sure that you work with people who respect human ethics, human rights. And that’s what we do. Like our mission is to make sure that Amazon is a leader in that space. we should be, we want to be known as a company who work with, you know, only such companies who uphold these rights.
Federico Ramallo (03:17) Right, right. Because you’re helping making sure that all the players in the chain, in the supply chain, are following human rights, positive human rights policies, right? ⁓
Priyank (03:30) Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Like you want to make sure that you’re not working with companies who are engaging in child labor, forced labor, you know, all sort of bad practices where, you know, employee like people are forced to work, you know, into wrongful labor policies and whatnot. Right. So we want to make sure that we do not work with such bad actors.
Federico Ramallo (03:53) Right. Right.
Priyank (03:55) And I think I I think
I should add beyond that. So I think it’s what I’ve also learned is it’s not just stop. doesn’t just stop at, you know, ensuring we do not work. I the buck falls further with where we want to make sure we identify such bad actors and we help remediate those problems. Right. I mean, end of the day, I think the mission is to make sure that there are human beings involved and those human beings are able to work in a safe space.
So if you find certain things, it’s our job to make sure that there is a fix identified for that. Someone corrects that.
Federico Ramallo (04:31) Right, right. It’s not only sending the signal to the market that that’s the position of Amazon following the guidelines of the UN, but also making sure that every player within the space is following those guidelines, right?
Priyank (04:48) Exactly, exactly.
Federico Ramallo (04:51) Yeah, yeah. And I can see that the level of impact that that would have on the market, right? You’re literally changing people’s life.
Priyank (05:00) Exactly. Exactly. I think it’s a, it’s a, has a really deep impact on human lives. And, know, obviously, you know, it’s a huge company. So, you know, we can really make a big dent if we do the things the right way and we go for the right things.
Federico Ramallo (05:15) Right. Yes, I think that’s commendable, right? It’s a great mission to pursue.
Priyank (05:18) Yeah, yeah, Absolutely.
I think it’s a super exciting space to be in. Where you know, know, a small decision that you make in a meeting room can potentially improve someone’s life, you know, across the other half of the world. it’s, it just has a lot of, you know, passion and motivation.
Federico Ramallo (05:42) Right. So how do you translate abstract principles like fairness, dignity, ethical principles into concrete product requirements and how do you measure it?
Priyank (05:52) So I think I come from a technical side of the team where our objective is to enable the teams who run these human rights programs, in the sense that me and my team, we are not engaged directly with these companies to track their human rights, but we build the underlying platforms.
that will be used to track and measure. So there’s a lot of technology-based decisions that we are making in the sense that how do we, like Amazon is a big company, right? We have to build something at scale. So how do we help these teams to make sure that they’re able to monitor the human rights compliances?
for such a vast population. Like, you know, we have to build things at scale. We have to consider scale in our product designs. We have to consider, you know, a variety of use cases. We have to consider automation because end of the day, you don’t want people to be spending more more time. You want people to be spending time on things that really matter that can not be done through a system, you know, that require high cognitive judgment. So I think those are some of the big key factors that go into.
our product design and building principles.
Federico Ramallo (07:11) Right, right. Yeah, I mean from the technical point of view, this platform would not be different as any other platform, which would just change the requirements, right? Just, yeah.
Priyank (07:22) Exactly, exactly.
You’re basically building an enterprise platform at scale, the corporate scale. But its purpose is obviously different, right? I mean, it’s just the application of a use case. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (07:33) How do you quantify impact for ethics and complaint features beyond the classic engagement or cost metrics?
Priyank (07:42) Oh yeah, so essentially, the mission of our organization is to like, so Amazon has a set list of standards that it has defined and publicly available on their website that defines that these are our standards for human rights that we ensure that whoever we work with, they follow this. So our organization’s objective is to make sure that
those standards are being met. in a way, you you can think of it as a checklist of items of various types of practices that we have defined in accordance to the UN directive. And we just want to make sure that, you know, people are following those. When there’s a deviation from that, it implies that there are some violations. And then, you know, there are obviously measures to work with those suppliers, to those companies, to get those corrected.
Federico Ramallo (08:36) Right. Right.
Priyank (08:37) It doesn’t answer your question.
Is that what you were looking for?
Federico Ramallo (08:42) Yes, yes, I think so. So going to your PwC or Accenture days, what consulting habit have you still using on your product management role?
Priyank (08:54) I think the one practice that I really picked from my consulting career that I feel benefits me in my day-to-day work is the application of like, know,
making your discussion more visual, right? like consulting comes from a consulting is a very PowerPoint based, know, technically, you know, space where people are into PowerPoints. You have PowerPoints for every single thing. Whereas Amazon is a very document oriented company as you may have heard, right? Like we bring documents to our meetings. We spend first 20 minutes just reading documents, leaving comments, and then discussing those comments. Right? So that’s what we typically do. But I think
I was able to find a sweet spot by bringing in those visual skills that I had learned and know, complementing my documents with those visuals that really help explain, especially when you think about complex platforms which you know have huge variations, long workflows and so many things. I think it really helps when you have a visual that explains the system architecture, it explains the workflows.
and it covers everything, right? So I think that’s where I was able to bring in that habit. And I think that’s really helped me from a consulting base. I think it’s really useful for a product person to have that skill set.
Federico Ramallo (10:14) Interesting, You also led transformation across clients, right? What is one of the experiences that most changed how you think about products and people?
Priyank (10:19) Yeah.
So I think one of the experiences from PWC was at a client where we were essentially working with their technology teams and engineering teams to figure out how do we expedite their release cycles. And this was back in the days when DevOps was a hot thing.
Like, know, everyone was talking about DevOps, just like nowadays you have AI everywhere, right? So this was the day of the DevOps. So, you know, we were able to essentially spin up a custom, like, know, customized framework for DevOps where we showcased to our client companies that you could use, you know, several of these open source tools to actually build your code.
you know, test it with some, you know, regression testing suite, deploy it in various environments within like, you know, containers and, you know, apply all sorts of different technologies like cool technologies at that point and have your code ready for deploying production within an hour through thorough testing. So I think that was one of the cool things that I really learned over there. And I think if I look back, what it taught me was that
how do you really solve technology related problems, right? So there is a lot of different types of work that you do in consulting from strategy to processes and so many other things. But I think just getting down, getting your hands dirty and actually figuring out what are the pain points for technology teams and how do you actually solve them, think that really gives, that really gave me a good insight.
from a consulting standpoint, from a business or from a business solution standpoint. So I’m trying to relate it to what I do today. I think some of these experiences in my consulting career basically shaped how I’m able to understand the nitty gritties of the technology world today, the engineering teams that I work with. for example, if a business stakeholder is asking me for 10 different things,
You know, I am able to talk to the engineering teams. I am able to figure out what are the technical components and You know very often I’m able to you know work with both the teams as a bridge and figure out how can we Deliver incrementally. So for me my mantra is like, you know Deliver incrementally you don’t have to do everything in one going to figure out what is absolutely essential and then no just keep building upon it. So, you
just balancing those things.
Federico Ramallo (13:02) Right, baby steps but in the right direction.
Priyank (13:05) Yep, yep, exactly, exactly. So there is no strong yes or no to certain things, but always trying to win a bias or action and trying to figure out what we can do, how we can solve something with a long term vision in mind.
Federico Ramallo (13:22) interesting and what’s appraising you the most about building inside a massive organization versus advising from the outside?
Priyank (13:33) That’s a great question. think obviously ownership and the rewards of building such thing is one of the key things that stands out for me. I think as a consultant, you never get to, or maybe you do, like at least in my own experience, you would often switch over from one project to the other. You do your main.
mean, you know, part that you are supposed to do that you hired for you complete that and you move forward, right? So you basically deliver value as a consultant and then you move on, right? Because there’s always different work and that gives you exposure of different types of clients. And I think where that helps you overall in several years is that you have a really good exposure across the spectrum of different types of companies, different sized companies, different types of problems. You’ll know how to solve different things. But I think what
it what, how that is different from working in a big tech organization is where you actually own things. Every decision that you make, you know that you’re going to be there to see it come to a realization, right? So if you’re making the right decisions, you are the one who’s going to be at the rewarding end. But you know, if you make the wrong decision, it’s an equal risk, right? So it’s high risk, high reward kind of a.
situation where you’re in. But it’s fun. ⁓ I think when you start working in such a space, for me, I would say my instinct comes into play a lot of times. You develop that sort of an instinct where you know certain things are right, certain things are a little worrisome. You will not want to go with those. So I think you basically have to
Federico Ramallo (14:53) you
Priyank (15:12) trust those judgments, look at the data and just move forward. So I think that’s.
Federico Ramallo (15:17) Right, because I can see the value on both sides, right? mean, you’re within an organization, you can do changes on the long term, right? But there’s also, within all organizations, right? And the bigger the harder it is to make changes because there isn’t a resistance of, you know, this is how we things. We don’t know why, but this is how we do things, right? We, as human, we kind of get used to it.
Priyank (15:26) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (15:42) to do things one way for whatever reason and we don’t accept those changes, right? So I can see that the value of an outside consultant coming in with fresh eyes without any participation on the current game and being able to say, well, this is how things should be, right? ⁓ And having that
Priyank (15:44) Yeah.
Right.
Federico Ramallo (16:03) I wouldn’t say conflict, having that discussion of at least validating the whys for doing things.
Priyank (16:09) Exactly, exactly. I think that’s a great, that’s a great call out you just mentioned. So I like, know, I want to give you an example. So I recently changed, for example, you know, my teams where I work. And I think one of the big values that I saw in that change was you bring a pair of fresh eyes.
to the same set of problems that people have been looking at and dealing with for a long time. And that fresh perspective is super important, super valuable. I mean, for me as well, being able to look at problems and see how we solved it elsewhere and giving that perspective to people and for them being able to hear a different view on certain things, I think it’s extremely valuable. I…
I feel like, know, as a product person, yeah, I mean, if you have done certain things, if you go on to a different team or a different space, it always helps. Like, you know, obviously I’m not saying that, you know, we should keep moving, but there’s just examples to your, to what you just said. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (17:14) Right, right Or when I was 16 years old I joined Microsoft team on the enterprise level right and This was when I was living in Argentina And I ended up working with the you biggest banks biggest corporations that were Microsoft clients And I was on the team of
technical pre-sales, right? And what we’re doing is showing them on the technical side how they could use the new features, the new products, the new solutions that Microsoft were building on the organization. I feel a similarity with
being an external consultant, right? Because I was able to come with fresh eyes without the shackles of the organization, right?
Priyank (17:58) Exactly, Those shackles
are important, right? You’re not bound by anything. You’re able to give that fresh perspective.
Federico Ramallo (18:05) Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I kind of shock about the idea of the shackles because it does bound the organization. And there is a resistance to those changes, right? So I was able to come propose a new solution for a problem that they were having. But one of the reasons I left that position
after four years is because I was building stuff on a prototype level, but I would never build stuff that would be in production, if that makes sense. And at that point, my feeling was I lost purpose. Because what’s the point of building all this when
Priyank (18:37) Goddard.
Federico Ramallo (18:50) when there is no stake in the game, right? Where there is no real change in the world, right? I’m not making an impact in the world, right? That was my feeling at that time, right? But rather if I work on production code, then I’m building products that people are using that, you know. So I can see, I could see, I don’t know if that relationship also happens in, you when you’re going from consulting to product, right?
Priyank (19:14) Yes, I think that’s one of the other things, right? So like I said ownership and being able to actually drive impact, right? Like when you’re consulting, like you said, you are often building prototypes. You’re you’re you’re a lot into sales to, you know, showcase what you’ve done, your success stories. It’s a very different model over there. The mindset is different, right? It’s a business you’re running.
But yeah, when you are a product person in a company, are essentially owning certain things. You’re responsible for bringing a change or solving a problem they’ve taken out. yeah, exactly.
Federico Ramallo (19:52) Right, yeah, and I think that the keyword is ownership because now you can have much more impact in the world,
Priyank (19:56) ownership. ⁓
Exactly.
again, another example. So in consulting, it’s not easy to say no to a client’s demand. When you’re working for a client, it’s not easy to say no. You are essentially a consultant. You’re bound by a certain contract, and you’re working with them. You have to deliver certain things. For me, that was a big change when I came to my current employer because
I was never in the business of saying no to my business takeover and I soon learned that people around me were like, know, it’s a very, like, you know, more relaxed environment where business is asking you for something and the product and tech teams can outrightly just say no to it. You know, everything has to be data driven. Like, you know, if you have hundred things to build, you have time only to build 10 things out of that.
there has to be justification for the remaining 90, like, you know, why this should be done versus not. So yeah, I mean, that was one of the big, you know, things, big changes for me after I moved from consulting into product in the early days of product.
Federico Ramallo (20:59) Interesting. Yeah, I mean you’re bound by the data you’re bound by what the user needs
Priyank (21:03) Yeah.
Exactly, exactly. So it’s because you own that, you know, you have a say. So I think what it boils down to is that as an ownership, ownership also brings like, you know, a say in that risk in that. you know, it’s both ways, right? Like you have a say in the decision, you can define the strategy, but at the same time, if it doesn’t go through, you are the one who’s going to get the heat for that.
Federico Ramallo (21:30) Right. But that’s kind of the appeal, right? mean, the hero, you know about the hero’s journey, right? So the hero’s journey is the hero that goes and saves the princess or goes into an adventure, right? What does an adventure need? An unknown, right? We’re going to the forest. We’re going to, you know,
Priyank (21:34) Exactly.
Right.
Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (21:52) to cross a desert, right? We’re going to face the unknown, right? And that means that we’re going to take risks, right? Because we don’t know what’s going to happen. And we know that, or at least we perceive that that’s going to be dangerous, right? So going, you know, in this context, it translates to going outside of our comfort zone, right? And then being able to take risks, in this case, for the benefit of the users.
Right?
and
And the payoff is impact, right? Because if we build a product that doesn’t help the users, we are not changing people’s life. We’re not helping them to achieve the mission, right? And that becomes a much higher level mission or goal than any internal difference of opinion on the team, right?
Priyank (22:44) Exactly. think you rightly called out again that I think it’s the thrill of that adventure of the unknown that you actually start liking. know, first couple of times it’s a little daunting to be in outside your comfort zone not knowing what is going to happen. you know, like I said, after a while you have your instinct kick in and you know, you can trust your judgment on certain things.
So you actually start enjoying that. It’s a lot of fun to be in that space and just sail through it. There are difficult times, but there are fun times out of that.
Federico Ramallo (23:20) Right.
And the other part of this is the impact that you’re having on the people. That’s something that is so rewarding. mean, as a software engineer, used to think that, I want to a feature, a piece of software, and I want to build it as beautiful as possible.
Priyank (23:26) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (23:42) and with all the trade-offs, make sure that it becomes this harmony, like a symphony that was my first ethos, my first philosophy but then I learned that, well, we’re building this for the user so I learned this idea of, okay, now I’m building for a…
higher level mission, That is, I’m helping the user, right? A user that I do not see, I do not touch, I do not feel, but the data allows me to understand. Well, in the case of a software engineer, the product owner relays information, right? Of what the user needs, and the priorities.
Priyank (24:19) Right, right.
Federico Ramallo (24:24) But that allows me to have a better understanding of the impact that my role have as a software engineer. Because now I’m building something that is going to be useful for the user. And it allows me to have a higher appreciation for the product owner that is relying that information.
Having that understanding requires a lot of effort because you mentioned data, but there’s also user research and understanding the requirements, understanding the priorities. You mentioned also you get 1,000 feature requests. Which one do you prioritize first? So once I understand that,
Priyank (25:04) Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (25:06) I was able to become a better software engineer.
Priyank (25:10) Fantastic. Yeah. I mean, I think you threw in so many good points over there Like you are obviously a product leader like an established product leader I think I have been learning my lessons over the last few years on this space and I will say that yes, like, you know during my initial days or the product I would get carried away as well with trying to build a perfect product
There’s no such thing as a perfect product in the real world, right? Like end of the day your product should be as good as what your customer wants. It should function for the customer. They should find it useful. It doesn’t matter whether you are building it as a perfect product for yourself or not, like how you perceive it. So I think that’s where, you know, it teaches you the art of prioritization. It teaches you the art of like, you know, discovery, which with, know, which is where you, like you mentioned, you have to make sure that you
are close to the customer, you need to understand who your customers are, how do they engage. And more than engage, you want to be able to understand which customer has the ability to influence your product. I think it’s important for you to also understand that, OK, I’m going to build 10 things for this customer versus one thing for a customer B.
What are the pros and cons of doing that? Who is a larger customer of my, who is a day-to-day user versus maybe someone is the one who is financing it, right? So I think you have to play all those pros and cons. You have to do user research, like you said. So there’s just a whole lot that goes in. So yeah, I think by the time you bring it to the engineering team on the table to discuss, you’ve already like, you know, done tons of research.
And that is when the engineering teams love to like, you know, just tear things apart and dig, you know, dig into your work and ask questions and make it more interesting and fun.
Federico Ramallo (26:59) Right, right and as a builder I have a hammer and everything I see are nails, right? So I want to hammer everything, right? but I think that there’s also a grace on how much is not built, right? As a product owner being able to have that criteria of saying okay these are things that we should not build and or remove of the system, right? Because
Priyank (27:01) you
Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (27:25) are not providing value to the user. Otherwise, I I always remember, I don’t know if you’ve seen this episode of Homer Simpson where he designs a car with his brother, lost brother. And this car has all the crazy features that he could think about. And the car becomes a nightmare, a nightmare to build, a nightmare everybody in the market rejects because it’s such a crazy, car.
Priyank (27:25) Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
You
Federico Ramallo (27:52) know, then Ten leaves his brother’s company to bankruptcy, right?
Priyank (27:56) Wow.
Federico Ramallo (27:58) But anyway, the idea is that he has all this crazy idea of to build in the car, but was not listening to the market and was not listening, OK, what are the things that we should remove to make it a better product, right?
Priyank (28:05) Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah,
yeah. I think that’s another valuable point that you brought up. What I’ve also seen, again, just to quote an example, is to be a successful product manager, you also need to be able to challenge the current status, which means
If your customer tells you that, you know, we have 10 different problems, right? They’re telling you the problems they are facing, the symptoms. You as a person, as a product person need to do that root cause analysis to figure out what is the actual issue, right? Underline issue. What is the objective? And then, uh, you know, I think building a product that just meets their customers needs today is probably not the
smartest thing like, you know, I think you need to be able to challenge. You know, when you see certain things are being done in the wrong way or inefficient way. So for example, like, you know, there are times in my work where I see that the teams who for whom I’m building solutions, they are probably doing something, some steps or something because of how their work grew over the years organically or maybe some limitations in the tech products. But it is my job to, you know,
Inform them or help them to understand that you know if this is how you do certain things This will be faster or if you build a certain solution this way This is how to benefit you. So I think those are also the shoes that you have to wear and you know be able to What do you say be a devil’s advocate over there be able to know? Push back. Yeah
Federico Ramallo (29:55) Right.
Right.
How do you make that conversation with the users? Because, I mean, if you have many users of the system, how can you relay that information to them?
Priyank (30:06) So typically, least like in my experience in building enterprise solutions, I have always operated with users within the organization. So I technically know my customers. I wouldn’t say I know them personally, but I have an established user base who I know is accessible. So we typically set up some sort of service, some deep dive sessions.
call in a few experts, sample some users, some users who are extremely experienced, users who are very new or things like that. And then you want to run through those processes with them. You want to identify where those pain points are. What are your thoughts? You want to challenge them. So,
Often you’ll find that at least I found that.
When you explain to someone that this is probably not the right way to do a certain thing, you need to come up with a better alternative. And it may take a few iterations for people to understand. So my experience, at least, I’ve always generally worked with users who have been tired of waiting for a good solution. So oftentimes, I get into a situation where my users are people who
Federico Ramallo (31:19) Yeah.
Priyank (31:24) don’t really trust you immediately and they’re like here comes another one let’s see you know what you can do how you can solve our problems you’ve been promised the the solution or the you know the dream solution several years back so i think that’s where it makes the job harder but you know it’s through persistence and building a relationship with them trying to ensure that they understand that what you’re doing is for their benefit i think that is that is where you have to really invest in
to get things moving.
Federico Ramallo (31:53) Right, right. I love when you can have, when your users are on a first name level, right? Because then…
Priyank (32:00) Exactly exactly like you know you you need
to have at least one or two users who you can message anytime and ask right like you know I have always Had the luxury or I would say like I’ve been lucky enough to have that luxury that I Always had at least one or two users at my fingertips whenever I had into a problem I would just ping them on my messaging channel and ask them and they would help me out so you know
It’s obviously a luxury that not everyone has, but yeah, mean, it really helps having that.
Federico Ramallo (32:30) Right, right and being able to have this representative sample right that you can go through ⁓ that that allows you to save so much time. Yeah, and the other thing I learned through the years is this idea of On the software engineering, you know, it’s you and the machine right? I mean you are on the technical side, you know your
Priyank (32:35) Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (32:52) working towards with the computer to build whatever you need to build and that’s a whole different dynamic when you go from engineering to product because on product you’re living with people and that’s a whole different problem domain
Priyank (32:56) Mm-hmm.
Exactly. like, you like referring to the fact that, you know, when you’re coding, you’re basically working with a machine, right? But with people, it’s a lot more complex, path to navigate, like, you know, getting alignment from them, knowing them, everything. It’s basically, it’s more, it’s a lot of people skills basically that you need to have.
Federico Ramallo (33:32) Right, right. And when I tried to approach, as a product owner, I tried to approach it on my, know, square engineering perspective, I would took the responses at face value, right, without challenging them, right? As you would with a computer, right? So I struggled a lot with that and I didn’t realize why until further on the road that, you know…
Priyank (33:33) Okay.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (33:57) it’s a people’s problem, I should approach it completely different. And when I understood that, that was a big change on my side.
Priyank (34:06) Exactly, exactly. One other thing for Derrick that I wanted to call out, we haven’t touched upon that specifically, but I think we were talking about this in the last couple of questions. When you’re working with an enterprise product, with an enterprise set of users versus your typical customer facing products that you have in the market.
I think this came up as part of my response when I was talking about that I have the luxury of always knowing at least one or two customers. So I think it has, I don’t want to call it that. I think it has its advantages and disadvantages. Obviously, the advantage is that you know your customers, you know who they are, you get approachable. Whereas in the other realm, you have to rely on data. Everything is data. You have to find…
who your customers are, have to rely on a lot of your instincts and everything. But on the other hand, I’ve realized, I have observed over the years that enterprise products bring their own challenge in the way that it’s not easy to get adoption or change when you’re working in enterprise space. So when you’re building enterprise products, are like, you know, people are averse to change as, as, as, as an agent, right? mean, humans are averse to change, right? So
it’s very difficult to push that adoption. Like, no matter how you build a solution, because end of the day, your users already have, like, most likely they already have a way of doing their work or whatever problem you’re solving. unless they are motivated to change their way of working and get onto your new product that you’re building, I think it’s always an uphill battle. So I think that’s something I like to call out that, you know, that’s.
another thing that differentiates or makes it more difficult.
Federico Ramallo (35:55) Right, Adding to that, what I’ve seen happening with bigger organizations, enterprise projects, is that there is a lot more internal communication and a bit less external communication, right, outside the organization, right, versus a startup. The internal communication is very minimal. Most of it, 90 % or 70%, it’s outside communication, right? And in the…
in that communication is also talking with users, right? And the relationship between the product manager in a SaaS company, for instance, in a startup and the client is much distant than what you would have within an enterprise, right? And you have to rely more on reading
reading the data rather than interviewing. It’s harder to interview users. But also they are much easier to adapt to new changes because first you have rotation of users, of customers, if you like. And also you have customers that are new or customers that have been using this for very little time because it’s a startup.
Priyank (36:53) Very true, very true.
Federico Ramallo (37:15) It’s not like they have been using the system for 10, 20 years, right? So they’re more easy to adapt to new changes, right? Yeah. And the opportunities of new things that they need to be built are much higher, right? The greenfield opportunities, right? Whereas on enterprise, most of the work that people are doing is most…
Priyank (37:27) much higher exactly that greenfield opportunity yeah
Federico Ramallo (37:37) Mostly the same, and this is another across generalization, right? But usually people are doing pretty much the same work, right? It’s hard for peer organizations to make innovation within the organization, right?
Priyank (37:51) Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I think that is where the biggest challenge comes in because people are so used to doing things the way they have been doing for a long time.
Federico Ramallo (37:56) Right.
Right. And the incentives within the enterprise organizations are to reduce liability and risks. So any new changes becomes a liability.
Priyank (38:14) Exactly,
Federico Ramallo (38:15) So you also have that additional layer of resistance,
Priyank (38:19) Yeah,
exactly. There’s a lot of factors that go into that. It’s typically enterprise is typically far more politically than you would say than launching a mobile app or a video game or anything. It’s so much different. There’s a lot of human sentiments and emotions that go into that. So yeah, it’s certainly a different space.
Federico Ramallo (38:37) Right.
Yeah, I agree. mean with the enterprise clients that I’ve been working with I’m one of the few that are pushing for innovation and changes, right? ⁓ But I also understand the concern of liability and can this be done with whatever am I proposing? So I’m very careful of…
Priyank (38:53) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (39:04) First every promise that I make making sure I have a back-tap that I can do it rather than just over-promising and under-delivering but also what we do is we build prototypes to prove that the technology can do whatever we claim to do and even we do that there’s always resistance because it’s a change
Priyank (39:18) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (39:25) But what I learned is that with those steps, we help the managers to make the decision or at least to do the first step of accepting a little bit of risk, right? Because we reduce the risk to a level that is acceptable for them, right? And that worked great, right? We were able to make interesting changes on
frameworks, technology, coding language, things like that, right? But then on the other hand, what I’ve seen happening with the engineers is that this particularly happens with JavaScript, right? There is always a new framework, a new tool in JavaScript, and then the stable tools get deprecated very quickly, so it’s very unstable.
they get attracted by the cool new tool that comes up, So they’re saying, we should build this with this technology, right? ⁓ So I have to be that voice of reason saying, yes, that looks interesting and we can do some toy project with it because you want to play with it. I want to…
Priyank (40:17) new tools ⁓
Exactly. Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (40:35) I want to acknowledge that and I think that’s great. But also, it’s not something we should propose to the leadership team or the managers because I know that they’re going to be adamant to take risks.
Priyank (40:50) Yeah, I think that’s a really good insight for Derek or like, know, about engineering teams. I think this is part of their day-to-day challenges, like how do you keep up with the fast evolving technology, where do you invest in versus not. I think that’s the other side of the world that is equally complicated, I would say, like, you know, with the daily innovations, new tools, AI and so much coming in. yeah.
Federico Ramallo (41:14) You
Yes, mean, with AI, I see the same thing, right? I mean, there’s a lot of hype, right? There’s a lot of startups using it, which is great, right? There’s a lot of greenfield opportunities. I heard people talking about this is similar like in the 2000s, you know, with the startup bubble, you know, that there are so many opportunities. But also I understand the other perspective of enterprise being resistant to add AI because
Priyank (41:25) ⁓
Federico Ramallo (41:47) of the non-deterministic nature, right? That is a big risk that nobody talks about, right? And the fact that we don’t exactly know how it actually works, that’s, know, yeah, that has Skynet, you know, implications.
Priyank (42:01) Exactly.
you know, to me, I think this whole AI, it’s like a golden wand that, you know, we’ve all been given, but people are still figuring out what to do with that. Like, you know, there are so many interesting and fun things that you discover every day, nobody really knows what is the full potential, right? But I think talking about AI, right? I mean, think it has definitely changed how we work day to day. You know,
Federico Ramallo (42:18) You
Priyank (42:27) in a tech organization like Amazon, where as a product manager, you have access to so many AI-based technologies that simplify your work. think it’s easier to… It’s become so much more easier to prototype. You’ve been talking about prototyping, right? So I think in my experience, I’ve seen that with AI, it takes five minutes for people to spin up, like in a prototype applications, then demo it to the customers.
The customers are able to use it. So I think it’s going to change the whole paradigm of product and engineering. Like, know, how we all work together to build solutions and solve business problems basically. So yeah, I think this, I just gonna wait and watch like how this goes, but yeah, there’s a lot. That’s.
Federico Ramallo (43:15) Right. I think that that’s true that you can vibe code new prototypes. And I think that’s a great tool for product managers or maybe non-technical people or people that don’t have the bandwidth to build prototypes. But what I’ve seen is that the AI is not able to make abstractions yet.
Priyank (43:31) Exactly.
Exactly.
It cannot hear.
Federico Ramallo (43:43) Putting that into production is a big no-no, but it’s a great way to show it to the users, validate your assumptions, and then show it to the engineering team to build it properly.
Priyank (43:54) Exactly. I think it only bridges that whole discovery process and getting alignment because you’re able to showcase what your vision is. You’re able to put your vision to a reality through a prototype quickly, even though it’s just a scrappy prototype, but you know, it just helps. So yeah, I think.
Federico Ramallo (44:14) So what advice would you give to your younger self getting into product management?
Priyank (44:21) To my younger self getting into product management, I think
You need to be a very good people person. When I say people person, it’s not about managing people, but it’s about building relations. You need to really be able to build those relations with your customers, with your stakeholders, understand what their problems are. You need to be very genuine and sincere about thinking about the long-term vision.
I think you should never lose track of that overarching North Star, right? mean, no matter how much deep you go into things, always remember like, you know, what you’re doing, how does this play into the long term vision because that helps you stay grounded. And then third, baby steps, you know, baby steps, try to build things that work for your customer, even if it’s not perfect in your own.
sense right because in other day you are not the user for the product you’re building it for someone else so you need to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and give them value incrementally so I think that those are some of the key takeaways I can think of top of my head I don’t know if that absolutely makes sense or not but that’s what comes to my mind that those are some of the things that I’ve learned over the years you know which I feel have helped me
Federico Ramallo (45:28) You
Right, right. I think those are great insights. We’re running out of time, so I’ll ask you one last question.
what are you excited to see happening in the future? What are you looking forward ahead?
Priyank (45:47) ⁓ what am I
I think this whole AI thing that’s going on, I have started to find myself more and more as a, you know, as a dated person when it comes to the technologies. But I think over the next few years, this is going to like reshape everything that we do, how we do like, you know, it’s about being able to
get insights, being able to make decisions, being able to get things done. It’s going to change the whole paradigm of our world around us as we know it, right? mean, from the moment you wake up in the morning, like, you know, it’s going to be so embedded in our day-to-day lives, personal lives. It’s going to be so embedded in our work lives. How do you conduct meetings? How do you complete your work? How do you get from place A to B? How do you, you know, get your
know, can do your household chores, so many things, right? mean, so I think that’s what excites me. I think there is just so much going on. We are an inflection point in this whole, you know, space right now. And I think the next 10 years are going to be like really, really interesting to watch. I literally feel that by the time, you know, you know, over the next 20, 30 years, I would have basically seen our humans, you know, our world.
evolved from using landline phones to cell phones to computers, internet, so many other things and through AI and just, I don’t know what not, right? So it’s self-driving cars. you know, it’s just, I think that’s what excites me. I think there’s a lot of potential. We are just scratching the surface of what, you know, we can really do. So, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (47:22) Right. Amazing. So Priyank thank you very much for joining us today. I think we learned a lot about product. We learned about your role on the human rights supply chain. And I’m looking forward to see where you’re going next.
Priyank (47:39) Thank you so much for your time as well Federico. It was a pleasure chatting with you. ⁓ Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (47:44) Thank you.