Author: Jason Shen

Jason is a tech entrepreneur and advocate for Asian American men. He's written extensively and spoken all over the world about how individuals and organizations develop their competitive advantage. Follow him at @jasonshen.

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Product management is a tough discipline to nail down. It’s an opportunity to make a big impact but only if you’re the right person in the right role. I’m doing a couple PM-related things that you might be want to check out:

PM interested in a new challenge?

I’ve been advising a startup here in NYC called Kingfisher. They help people and teams organize and collaborate on complex information with visual maps and I’m and helping them hire their first product manager. Learn more about this really special opportunity and let me know if you or someone you know might be interested.

Looking to break into product management?

I’m hosting PM Hack, a one-day product hackathon on October 15th for aspiring and entry-level PMs to get more experience working on product challenges while getting mentored by senior practitioners in the industry. Sign up here!

Hiring product managers?

I’m speaking at Productized Conference in Lisbon on the five personas of product management and how to hire for them. Did a run through of this talk recently which well-received and excited to bring it to a bigger stage. You can get tickets here! Also there may be opportunities for employers to scout for fresh talent at PM Hack. Get in touch if you’re interested in that.

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Obligatory disclaimer – I am not a doctor and nothing in this article should be taken as medical advice. This article exists to document what I’m doing and is not meant to advocate consuming any drug or supplement without the consultation of a medical professional.

Ten years ago, the scientific journal Nature ran an online survey taken by 1,400 people in 60 countries around their use of three cognitive enhancers, or so-called “smart drugs”:

  1. Adderall / Ritalin (often prescribed to patients with ADD or ADHD to aid with focus)
  2. Provigil (also known as modafinil and often prescribed to fight fatigue or jet lag)
  3. beta blockers (a general category of drugs that reduce anxiety by blocking the effects of epinephrine, ie adrenaline)

The study found that about 20% of respondents reported having consumed at least one of the three with the goal of improving concentration and mental performance. I have to imagine if we ran that same survey today, the number would be higher. Continue reading…

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Editor’s Note: This blog is about competitive advantage with an emphasis on business and technology, so this post might seem a bit out of place, but if you’re new, you should know this is not the first time I’ve written about race, gender, or culture, and it won’t be the last. Ignore these issues at your own peril.

It’s been a hell of a month.

First, there was a 10 page memo that went viral authored by a (now former) Google engineer named James Damore about what he saw as Google’s liberal bias, where he implied that biological differences between men and women might explain why there’s a 4 to 1 ratio of men vs women on the technical staff at Google. Continue reading…

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I just finished Scott Hartley’s new book The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World. It is an inspiring read full of compelling stories and ideas about the rapidly evolving world around us.

The central thesis of the book is that instead pushing every last student to major in a STEM field, we need to recognize that the liberal arts provide a crucial human perspective in a world increasingly governed by machine algorithms. Continue reading…

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tl;dr: I recently left Etsy and I’m working on some new projects: one around improving tech hiring, and another around personal excellence. I have some spare cycles to take on part-time consulting / contract work in product and marketing, so don’t hesitate to reach out.

I joined Etsy in August of 2015, five months after the IPO. I had admired Etsy from afar for years and I was excited do product at an established, publicly-traded technology company after leaving a privately-held B2B software company.

Over the past two years, I’ve built products and features to support our global seller community of 1.7 million creative entrepreneurs. I helped launch a marketing / promotional tool called Shop Updates, oversaw a major rewrite of the system we use to assess listing and transaction fees, Continue reading…