“Because it (PM) is extremely ambiguous. The more you advance in the PM career, the more unknowns you’ll face. There is no established technical solution we can refer to in the voice technology I’m working on. We’re developing the technology that will be the solution.”
Gui Ruggiero (MBA & MSI ‘20) is a Senior Product Manager – Technical in the Amazon Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team. Gui started his career at Procter & Gamble (P&G) in eCommerce after graduating from Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil with an Electrical Engineering degree. He left P&G in August 2015 and joined three local Brazilian startups as Marketing Manager and Commercial Head between the end of 2015 and October 2017. He initially joined the ride-hailing service company 99 as Operations & Growth Manager but ended up working out his first product as a Product Owner through 99’s acquisition into DiDi (a Chinese ride-hailing company) in the summer of 2018. Gui came to Ross for an MBA right after that experience and decided to pursue a second degree in the School of Information during the first year of MBA study. After graduating with a dual degree from University of Michigan, he joined Amazon as a Senior Product Manager.
1 What was your career plan in college? Why did you decide to go to marketing as an engineering student?
I pursued Electrical Engineering with a focus on energy at one of Brazil’s premier engineering schools. The graduates usually either went to consulting/finance, which was completely not related to engineering anymore, or ended up in engineering research. It felt there was very little in between in terms of career choices. But as I prefer flexibility in career, I neither wanted to depart from EE nor wanted to stay in academia. To get out of that binary trap, I kept reflecting my strengths in college. While in college, I was highly involved with sports and enjoyed being among people. The challenge of leading people excited me and was the field I felt passionate about. So I started thinking about which career I could go to understand people. I love how marketing was all about understanding customers and influencing decision-making. It was a departure from the technical side but an arrival to the human side. So I took that as my first step in my post-grad career.
2 How did you get your first product experience without having a Product Manager title in previous jobs?
Luck played a significant role in my career, and there were three or four pivotal moments where I can distinctly attribute the impact of fortunate circumstances. One such moment occurred when I embarked on my first product experience.
With an EE degree and almost six years working with marketing and business development, I had an interesting mixed basket of skills and sought a transition into Operations at 99. In the ride-hailing industry, that primarily involves managing the business of a two-sided marketplace, namely drivers and passengers. I started at 99 in October 2017. DiDi had invested in and pushed for an acquisition not long after my joining. When the acquisition started, it was decided that all engineering teams in Brazil would be laid off, whose work were all moved to the team in China. So, other than some transition work, for a couple of months the engineers in 99 Brazilian teams didn’t have much to work on. On the side of the floor where I was sitting, there were about 10 engineers sitting behind me. I was there still doing my job and thinking how to grow our business while engineers were chilling there. I had a good relationship with them because of my engineering background, and I chatted with them without barriers. They were bored and I proposed: “Why don’t we work on something fun?” I think they enjoyed working with me and by collaborating closely. At the end, we managed to ship three features within a month and a half, a task that typically took many months more. It was during this period that I realized I was essentially doing product management (PM) work – conducting research on customer needs and solving problems with technology.
This experience served as an incredible “PM bootcamp”. Most importantly, the features we shipped improved customers’ experience. We were the first team in the world to invent a “fencing” feature in ride-hailing apps. In Brazil, each vehicle has one day in a week that they cannot drive in a particular area and specific times of the day, based on their plate number and enforced electronically. It is called “driving restriction day”, regulated by the government to reduce emissions and traffic. For ride-hailing services drivers, if they drove through that area, they would face paying high fines. As a result, the drivers either did not drive on that day at all, or were unfortunately involved in fines. The engineering team and I invented the “fencing” algorithm that ensured the driver would not receive any ride that went through the restriction area during the forbidden time. The cool and intricate part about this feature are the corner cases. Let’s say a driver cannot drive through the restricted area from 7am to 10am (morning peak). What about when they get a ride at 9.56am – can they take it? It’s only minutes from when restrictions are lifted so it might work. But what if they are super close to the restricted area? They might arrive in the area at 9.58am and that would be problematic. It was a remarkable and challenging project that showcased the impact of product innovation on real-world problems.
3 What are the skill sets you find critical in the PM career? What is your advice to students in UMich?
The fact that I did two masters degrees, and have been learning in two different languages and two different countries, opened up an extreme need of learning fast and prioritizing. One of the most important skills is being able to ramp up fast. For example, it’s common as a PM to have a meeting with a new team and you have to pick up their team’s work in several minutes to carry out a conversation with them. Another big one is prioritization – there is always more stuff to be done than we actually have time to do. The mental model to know what to do first, what you have to give up on, and what you need to communicate fast is extremely important. Commencing my MBA at Ross in July 2018, I applied for the Master of Science in Information (MSI) during my first year, focusing on user research and UX design to advance my skills in user understanding. Doing two degrees at the same time and completing within only five semesters was a great learning and training.
Locating your passion is a key in finding career direction. My belief in a significant gap between human-human and human-computer interactions, particularly in the realm of Voice UI, fueled my academic and professional pursuits. Recognizing the prevalence of voice interactions in human development, contrasted with the reliance on text-based interactions with machines, I dedicated my research efforts to Voice UI at the School of Information. This research seamlessly aligned with my subsequent Product Manager role at Amazon in the Alexa team.
I encourage students to leverage the learning opportunities within the academic environment. While I firmly believe that a PM doesn’t necessarily require a technical background, a foundational understanding of technical aspects is immensely beneficial. This proficiency can be developed by taking courses such as SI 506 for coding and SI 582 for UX design. This knowledge, even at a basic level, enhances collaboration with engineers and contributes to technical literacy. Resources are abundant, whether within the University of Michigan or through platforms like community colleges and Coursera, making technical proficiency accessible to all.
4 People keep saying “you don’t need a technical degree to get into PM”, “you just need to be a great problem solver”. It sounds easy but it is actually extremely difficult to get into PM. Why do you think that is the case?
Because it is extremely ambiguous. The more you advance in the PM career, the more unknowns you’ll face. There is no established technical solution we can refer to in the voice technology I’m working on. We’re developing the technology that will be the solution. Even if one works on a product that is less novel, chances are nobody ever developed exactly what one needs to do. Navigating through that ambiguity and communicating well what needs to be done by when with engineering folks and other stakeholders is very hard.
I have a colleague who has been an Engineering Manager at Amazon for three years who recently transitioned onto my PM team. When we first chatted he said: “I feel the product team removed so much ambiguity for the engineering team. When I was on the engineering team, we knew exactly what we needed to do. Even though how we would get there was a system design open question, it was a well-scoped problem.” In essence, his work in engineering involved operating within a highly constrained box, defined by the PMs. However, upon transitioning to the role of a PM manager, he found himself facing the opposite scenario. The challenge shifted from working within a well-defined problem space to a situation where the problems were not explicitly defined for him.
The PM evolves by receiving a problem statement and breaking it down into actionable steps. I had a teacher in high school who gave us a piece of white paper and just told us to write. We were all confused and had no idea what to write. “There you go, a piece of paper and pen. Just write on it.” It’s way easier when you’re told “Hey, here is a piece of paper. Please write two paragraphs with no more than 200 words about your summer vacation.” I feel PMs are usually working with a blank sheet of paper and a pen.
5 How can you train yourself in dealing with ambiguity when in school?
The Business+Tech Innovation Jam presents an incredible opportunity that everyone should explore, encouraging individuals to step into a PM position. It allows participants to engage in a product development life cycle and understand the responsibilities associated with being a PM. It’s an excellent chance to practice asking essential questions such as “Who are the customers?”, “What is their problem?”, and “What are we doing here/how can we help them?” These questions, which I regularly pose to myself in my daily PM work, are instrumental in guiding effective decision-making.
My very first job at P&G was dealing with Pampers (diapers), Always (tampon), and Pantene (shampoo). I wash my hair, so I can relate to Pantene. But the other two, I could not! I never used a tampon. And when I used diapers, I was too young to remember anything (laughter). Regardless of the product, a PM needs to take a step back and think “What is the customer need I want to address?”, “Who needs it?”, “What do we develop?”, and “How does it help?” Having that mindset is critical. And I could see B+T Innovation Jam helps students to develop that mindset. There are definitely also other opportunities on campus offered by other schools. So if you’re a student, immerse yourself in those challenges, practice those muscles, get a white sheet of paper, and start writing on it.
For students seeking similar opportunities, I recommend exploring “blank sheet paper” challenges, regardless of the field. Engaging in the product development aspect of these challenges provides valuable practice. So, if you’re a student, embrace these opportunities, exercise those critical thinking muscles, and engage in the white sheet of paper to start brainstorming.
6 Tell us something not on your LinkedIn/resume
I have a deep love for extreme sports, having immersed myself in scuba diving for the past 15 years and started skydiving for the last 3 years. The rush of adrenaline that accompanies learning new things in these pursuits is a notable aspect of my life. It also serves like a humorous footnote on my resume (laughter).I’m also an Olympic Games fan. I could not go to the Tokyo Olympics because of the pandemic but I went to both London and Rio Olympics. And the Paris Olympics is on my plan for 2024.
There’s one thing I’ve never mentioned in my resume and I don’t even know how to do it – I am very passionate and energetic. I bring that to my work and my teams. I enjoy energizing people around me and see they are excited by the passion I bring to the table.
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