S1E7 - Nadim Hossain, VP Product Management, Databricks - Building Open & Closed-Loop ML Products

Nadim Hossain is VP of Product Management at Databricks. We often hear that careers don't happen in a straight line. So how can we be thoughtful of the zig and deliberate about the zag? Nadim has done exactly that. His journey has taken him at McAfee, Amazon, Salesforce, CEO of his own startup BrightFunnel, Uber and now Databricks.

Key Highlights:

In this episode Nadim covers:

- Applying "product thinking" to career and job search
- Taking on a role that you think you are not qualified for
- Product-led vs engineering-led
- Truth-seeking for PMs
- Building open-loop vs closed-loop ML products
- PMs working effectively with ML and AI engineers
- Customer-facing features vs tech-debt
- When to not be dogmatic about OKRs

Connect with Nadim Hossain:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadimhossain/

Referenced in this episode:

• Nadim Hossain on Why I'm Joining Databricks (blog)
• Marc Andreessen on Markets, Product, Team (blog)
• Don Valentine on Sequential Market Identification (video)
• Jeff Bezos on Day One culture (video)
• Jeff Bezos on One-way and Two-way doors decision making (video)
• Mark Benioff on V2MOM planning process to create alignment at Salesforce (blog)
• Paul Graham on Alive or Default Dead? (blog)
• The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin (book)