Zaki and Abdul start with a chat on Elon’s buyout of Twitter before moving on to topics like the product management culture at Meta, archetypes of product managers & what it takes to be a successful PM at Meta.

About the Guest

Zaki Shaheen is a seasoned software engineer who currently works in Silicon Valley at a startup called Tome - a storytelling app for work. After graduating from FAST in 2008, Zaki worked for a few years in Pakistan’s software services ecosystem before getting the nod from Yelp in San Francisco to work on their iOS app. Soon after that, Zaki was hired by Meta (then Facebook) at Menlo Park where he worked on products like Facebook Avatars and Whatsapp. He is still involved with Pakistan’s tech ecosystem as a technical advisor to Aimfit.

Chapters

0:00:00 Intro

0:03:24 Elon Musk buys Twitter - Zaki’s thoughts

0:19:50 Zaki’s experience at Meta/Facebook

0:27:38 How to be a successful PM at Meta

0:46:39 Discovery & User Research at Meta

0:49:32 Archetypes of Product Managers

0:58:29 Zaki’s Career Journey

1:11:20 Finding your purpose as an engineer or PM

1:16:40 Recommended Reading

Recommended Content (referenced in the episode)

User Story Mapping: https://www.amazon.ca/User-Story-Mapping-Discover-Product/dp/1491904909

Acquired: https://www.acquired.fm/)

Practical Engineering: https://practical.engineering/

3Blue1Brown: https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown

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