I work as a Product Manager for the Platform Core Services team at MuleSoft. My team works primarily on Identity and Access Management services, platform sign ups and logins, audit logging, and entitlement services. My team is unique in that the consumers of our services vary from external customers to internal teams such as Support, Sales Ops, Finance, and Product teams. We are like the glue that holds the different components of Anypoint Platform together.
What is your favorite thing about working on the Product Management team at MuleSoft?
I love building things that make people’s lives more productive. I have always been good at trusting my teammates and rallying them to victory while playing team sports. So getting into the shoes of a Product Manager was quite natural to me. In order to be successful in this role, you have to trust your team, and your team needs to believe that you have the organization’s best interests at heart.
My favorite thing about working at MuleSoft is that you truly get to own the product you manage. The leaders here are supportive and trust you with making the right decisions; the engineers are cooperative and empathize with the users of their product––making my job very easy. Everyone here is committed to shipping greatness. A true Muley always asks: “How can I make this better?” We have built a great company and I’m proud to be part of it!
What is the most interesting problem you’re working on solving right now?
We have many teams at MuleSoft that depend on us for delivering functionality to their end-customers. My team is constantly working to eliminate dependencies by developing APIs and adding self-serve capabilities across the board that help reduce the time taken to complete projects. We are also working to enable support engineers at MuleSoft troubleshoot customers issues more quickly.
How did you become a Product Manager?
Back in 2013, I was introduced to the world of SOA through a course in grad school. I was using a competitor’s product, which was quite bulky and cumbersome to set up. I was introduced to MuleSoft through a job posting about a Product Management internship position in my university’s job portal. What drew me to MuleSoft was its name, it was so unique. Out of curiosity, I downloaded the design tool – Anypoint Studio – and was able to set up a project within a matter of minutes.
The product was so easy to use and I was sold. I interned as a Product Manager at MuleSoft in the summer of 2014, where I developed 50+ example applications with a team of developers to streamline the onboarding process. To this day, those example applications are the most popular content types on MuleSoft’s Anypoint Exchange. Through this experience, I realized how much I love working with cross-functional teams, often under uncertain conditions, to facilitate the shipping of a great product. At MuleSoft, I found my calling.
Why did you choose to come work for MuleSoft?
There are a number of reasons why I chose to work for MuleSoft. From a product standpoint, MuleSoft was doing something right. It is lightweight and very easy to set up. The 10 weeks I spent here as an intern were pivotal in my decision to come back as a full-time employee after graduation. My coworkers were smart, driven, and genuinely nice people to work with. During the internship, I enjoyed the culture of the company and felt that I was growing hand-in-hand with the rest of the team. The decision was a no-brainer.
Take us through a typical day in the life.
My day starts with a team scrum where I meet with my engineering team and talk about daily activities and issues that come up. If there is something preventing my team from getting their job done, then this becomes my highest priority. The rest of the day is spent in meetings with customers, stakeholders, product managers, and other functional groups. I also try to find an hour or two every now and then to reset and think about the direction of my product area.
What 3 things are always on your desk and why?
- My trusty notepad. I use this for taking notes, making to-do lists and drawing quick prototypes. I like to keep things analog whenever possible.
- My headphones. I listen to music throughout the day. It helps me stay focused.
- A coconut. It is carved in the shape of an elephant, just cuz…
What teams do you work with most, and how do you collaborate?
I work with the Engineering team the most, I sit right next to them and make sure that they are not blocked in any of their daily activities. I work quite a lot with the UX team where we often do whiteboarding exercises to identify experience gaps and come up with design mocks. I also work closely with other PMs at MuleSoft to identify cross-team dependencies and to align on roadmap initiatives.
What is your favorite activity outside of the office?
I love making music, I do acoustic covers of hip-hop music. I love traveling the world and exploring California through road trips on weekends. I also play in the corporate soccer league every week with my coworkers. Recently, I also started taking Bachata lessons, the footwork from soccer helps!
What is your proudest accomplishment in your role here so far?
Over the course of the past year, my team has been receiving a lot of ad-hoc requests that touched different code bases. Switching contexts often hurts productivity in software development. I made sure those requests were broken down into smaller chunks that could be shipped in multiple phases, thereby helping the team focus on smaller increments, rather than getting bogged down by big chunks.
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