Reflections on 1.5 years at redBus

7th June (2022) was my last working day at redBus. I had joined the organisation in Sept'20 and have spent about 1.5 years building products for the Singapore and Malaysia geography. This blog is my refection on these 1.5 years.

The first thing that comes to my mind, which i felt quite regularly even while working here, is how much fun i had in this role. I would say this is the most fun i had working, so far in my professional journey. I often think, why would that be so? What worked best for me here is the amount of ownership and the difficulty level of the problems i was solving. The ownership was phenomenal - i was in complete control to decide which problems to tackle and to create solutions for them. It was an amazing rush! I think i work very well when i am myself convinced that the problems i am working on are important and and i am personally excited to solve them. At redBus, that was exactly the case.  Additionally, the problems here were of the easy to moderate difficulty - what i mean by that is that these problems did not require a highly technical or complex solution. They were either solvable by smart design or making smart product choices. This was perfect. It enabled me to solve them within a small team, and we did not spend months chasing just one problem. This also meant i was able to show results on the products i built quite regularly, without waiting for months to show the results. This kept my motivation levels high and it was a amazing feeling to see the numbers move because a feature you had built.  

Another major takeaway for me from this role is learning the basics of product management. This is a  little embarrassing to admit, considering i had already spent about 4 years working as a product manager before this role. But in the organisation i worked with then, i was a glorified stakeholder manager. The product management i did was mostly bookish - how to write better PRDs etc. It is only at redBus, where i was the only product manager working for two geographies (Singapore and Malaysia), with the expectation that i would start delivering from day 1 that i was forced to figure out what a product manager is actually supposed to do and then learn to do it well. 

Few things i learnt here - tricks to understand what to build / what do users want and need without having a user research team on the ground, prioritising the users experience while making every small and big decision (because others, especially business stakeholders, wont do this), how gently or aggressively to push back stakeholders and when, and how much product detailing is required for the product (depending on the context). Especially on this last piece, i now realise how redundant it was to fret over small details in the PRD when these would not matter because you choose to change directions later or could easily be ironed out in the later stages. I think i became more aware of the important pieces where i should focus on and hence use my time wisely. 

A few things i realise i still dont do well - have an eye for UI so that i can provide smarter feedback to the design team, regularly tap into the issues raised by the customers so i understand what is bothering them the most, provide enough visibility in the organisation to the work done by my team. I hope to the second part well as soon as possible in the next organisation i join, because i realise this is where the product manager can drive the most value - bring the on grounds reality to the engineering team so that you can ensure they are working to solve the actual and most important problems. 

On a slightly related note, redBus also helped me uncover some bad habits which might have might have crept in since maybe school. I realised i procrastinate on important tasks where i am supposed to take an important decision because i am super scared of taking decisions. And this happens because i am very scared of making the bad decision and then suffering the consequences when i know i could have taken a different path.This is a big handicap for me, because as part of my role i need to take important decisions everyday. I am working on it by forcing myself to tick off these tasks the first thing in the morning, even before i get into meetings and other day to say stuff.  I also realised i am very bad at making casual conversations at work. Especially when it comes to talking with someone in the top management, i struggle with what to say. This also prevents me from having fruitful 1:1, as these are not always about work. I still don't know how to fix this. 

At the start of my stint here, i had created a list of things i want to do better here. I want to note down a few of those as well. One of those was to understand the tech systems better, and this time around i did a much better job of it. I was able to discuss tech solutions with engineers clearly, and make suggestions as well. This put me in good position to earn respect from the engineering counterparts and also better estimate how much time it would take to build a new feature. I also did very well in managing the expectation with the stakeholders, especially the business stakeholders. I was not afraid to admit when certain features were getting delayed - i was very bad at this when i started. And i ensured there was regular and clear communication with the business stakeholders to keep them updated of the progress. I also got significantly better at execution. I did this my primarily identifying the most important projects and making the tech counterparts accountable to execute on them in time. I was able to take much better calls on which corners to cut, which features to drop without affecting the overall goodness of the product to ensure we deliver in time. I think product management is nothing but a sum total of all these small things put together. And imagine how much hoopla is made over twitter and linkedin over something which is part common sense and part skills which you can learn over time. 

Finally, i want to reflect on something which i am going to miss dearly now that am no longer working at redBus. It is the redBus office. I hate working in tech parks from the bottom of my heart. I hate how isolate-y they feel, how they look the same across the world, and how nothing about them feels organic or local or even built for a human scale. You just dont feel good walking into one. BUT at redBus for the last 3 months we were working out of office which is located in Leela Palace, flanked by a busy street one one side and quiet one, with food stalls and canopied trees, on the other side. It felt 'organic', you could take a walk for lunch, or go for a stroll and an evening coffee. Even the work setup was cosy - redBus being a small company, the entire org was squeezed into a single floor. No more negotiating multiple lifts and floors just for a small meeting! I could walk up to the CTO or the head of product and have a small chat, if required the CTO would call over the senior developer right away and we could problem solve the thing that was bothering me within a few minutes. I will miss the non-tech park feel, the clan like casual feel and the walk friendly feel of this workplace. I hope we as human beings are ultimately able to eradicate tech parks as a concept (no matter how efficient they are, and i am very skeptical of their efficiency as well) and move towards offices set up on street corners where you could have a standing meeting under a tree shade or go out for an evening coffee.