Deb Liu
CEO at Ancestry / Former VP Product at Facebook
CEO of Ancestry; former VP of Product at Facebook for 11+ years where she created Facebook Marketplace (1B+ monthly users), led the first mobile ad product, and built the games and payments platforms including Facebook Pay; board member at Intuit.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Deb Liu, CEO of Ancestry and former VP of Product at Facebook where she created Marketplace (1B+ users), shares career wisdom including the irony that the best PMs often fail at managing their own careers. She provides practical advice for introverts on reframing self-promotion as team advocacy, argues that who you marry is the most important career decision, and discusses applying product thinking to your own career trajectory.
Leadership Principles
- → Some of the best PMs are terrible PMs for their own career — if you had to write a spec for your career, what does success look like?
- → It's not self-promotion, it's educating people about the great work your team has done — reframe visibility as advocacy for your team
- → The most important career decision you make is who you marry — a partner who lifts you up vs pushes you back changes everything
Notable Quotes
"Some of the best PMs I have ever worked with are terrible PMs for their career. They just drift from job to job. But if I said you had to write a spec for your career, what does success look like? How are you going to get there?"
— On the irony of PMs who don't apply product thinking to their own careers
"The most important career decision you make is who you marry. Is this person lifting you up or pushing you back? You will have a much more successful career if your home life is in balance."
— On the career advice people rarely give
"It looks like self-promotion. But instead, what if I called it educating about all the great work your team has been doing? You have to actually share what you do."
— On reframing self-promotion for introverts
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