If you’ve ever wondered what a Technical Product Manager does at Keysight, today is the day you can find out with this interview with Daniel, a Technical Product Manager at Keysight Technologies Romania. 

Daniel has been a part of our team for more than 8 years now. He’s a passionate Product Leader and has mastered both technical and business skills. He has extensive expertise in network applications and security and a proven track record of delivering products to market with aggressive deadlines.

How did you decide on a career as a Product Manager?

This is a long story, but when I started on this career path, over 10 years ago, the role of “Product Management” was not really known in Romania. However, I knew that I wanted to understand more than just the set of features we have on the roadmap. 

I wanted to understand the real problems those features solve and how that will enable customers to be successful. I wanted to be in front of the customers and learn about market trends and opportunities. It just turned out that all of these (and few others) are being dealt with in Product Management. 

What projects are you proud to have been a part of?

I’m proud of all the projects I’ve been involved in as I had and still have the privilege to work with amazing people from whom I have a ton of things to learn. Of course, I have favorite projects, and it’s hard to pick just one. But if I’m to name one, I would say IxLoad-IPsec, due to state-of-the-art implementation, industry-leading performance and functionality, and an example of how to make very complex technology simple.

How does a typical day in your life at work look like?

It really depends on many factors. What I can certainly say is that there are no two days alike. At a very high level, it all starts with checking my agenda and meetings for the current day, checking emails, and prioritizing them accordingly, and from there on, things can get pretty dynamic. Calls (customers, sales, support engineering), ad-hoc meetings, escalations, priority updates, building marketing material (outbound and inbound), market research, backlog review, and engineering demos can all be part of a fun day :)

What top priorities does a Product Manager have?

I think a book can be written on this topic (not that there are not plenty already). But I’d like to emphasize the fact that it all starts with the real problem that the product needs to solve and truly knowing your customers. Obviously, your product team would need to be in this mix. I will not continue developing more on this topic as I am afraid I won’t stop too soon and don’t want to waste our readers’ time :)

If you could choose to work on a project to make the world a better place, what would that be?

I would love to contribute to reaching a state of anti-fragility in cybersecurity. It has always been a cat and mouse game in information security, with the cybercrooks having almost always an advantage. 

Cybersecurity personnel have virtually no room for error and even a single mistake can have disastrous effects. Attackers only need to succeed once to reach their goals. This needs to stop and a new security paradigm must be conceived. A system where the more you try to attack a system, the better it becomes, eventually discouraging all kinds of threat actors. This is what I like to call antifragile cybersecurity.   

What does it take to build passionate teams?

Awesome leaders and a well-defined true purpose.

If you were to start over your career tomorrow, what path would you choose?

Although I cannot claim that everything was perfect all the time, I can surely say that you can learn from every professional experience you have. Therefore, I wouldn’t change many things and I’m grateful for everything.

What should a Junior Product Manager expect from this career?

Learn a lot of things (or be open to) from different domains, do a lot of awesome stuff but also step up when there are not many options on the table, expect people to rely on you but also be ready to say “No” when the case (and there will be plenty of such situations). In a sentence, be the mini-CEO (although this phrase is overrated) of your product.

Do you believe you should follow your passion when choosing a career path?

Absolutely. You need to start with that. You want passion to be driving you all the way.

If you were stranded on an island and asked to do your job with only three things, what would you choose?

Laptop, broadband connection (satellite would work), and coffee.

What attributes/skills make a Product Manager successful?

You need to master skills from various fields: 

  • technical (so you can have meaningful discussions with the engineering teams);
  • marketing; 
  • world-class presentation skills; 
  • effective communication; 
  • a good array of soft skills actually;
  • business; 
  • strategy; 
  • execution; 
  • market and data analysis;
  • ability to say “NO”; 
  • a bit of finance and legal... I’m sure that I missed some.

How do you get “in the zone”? Hyperfocused, not to be disturbed, only you and your tasks. 

I find the right spot and just start a timer. I prefer a watch that reminds me I’m there for a reason and I need to get things done in a productive fashion. 

What aspects of product management do you find the most exciting?

When customers are happy with our products and they see how their problems are getting solved. Also, extending this to the product team and engineering is equally important.

How do you motivate your team?

Providing as many details as possible about customer feedback (need a mix of good and things to improve), market trends, and highlighting how problems can be solved.

How do you balance communication, from speaking with a strategy-minded executive with no technical expertise to a development-focused engineer?

This is related to the skill set needed by a Product Manager. With a strategy-minded executive you always need to talk about ROI, risks, and benefits, what problem are you trying to solve, and why are you solving that instead of a different one. 

On the other hand, a development-focused engineer will be more interested in translating high-level concepts into technical concepts. Of course, other things like culture (like the application vs principle first) must be considered as well.

How do you balance gut decisions with the use of data?

In my honest opinion, you should always start from data. Product Management needs to be data-driven and rely on facts. Of course, gut feeling will inevitably come into play but that should be later in the decision-making process. The risk if you start with gut decisions is that you’ll always look for data to back-up that decision and ignore other data that is invalidating that same decision.

 

Keysight Life is a series of interviews where we put a spotlight on different projects, with the help of the people who made those projects possible.