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Meet Matri Deans, who works for Autodesk as a Product Manager for Fusion 360 Manufacturing. Marti has been with Autodesk for six and a half years, and adds to her current experience by having four different roles during this time. In addition to being an invaluable asset to Autodesk, she also has a bit of a green thumb, taking care of 23 thriving indoor houseplants. Learn from her experience and what question to always ask yourself by reading her interview below!
Question: What degree did you graduate with, and how has it affected your career? Or, what education / training do you have that has helped with your role?
Marti: I graduated with a BS in Mechanical Engineering, but I think the most valuable education I left school with was the years I spent working in the student machine shop. There was so much practical and hands-on knowledge that I gained working there. I think the most valuable skills were related to practical problem solving and pragmatism – operating manual machines you quickly learn that super tight tolerances are often impractical, and perfect can be the enemy of good!
Outside of school, I think experience working collaboratively and within a heavily matrixed organization like Autodesk was valuable. The specific task wasn’t as important necessarily as working with people who had different communication styles or different viewpoints on the work we were doing. So as much as technical training can prepare you, I think good old-fashioned experience, even at a lower technical level, can be beneficial.
Question: How would you describe your role at Autodesk? What does a typical workday look like? Which skills and qualities are important to be successful in your role?
Marti: I feel like if you ask 10 different product managers how to describe their job, you’ll get 10 different answers. I’m still relatively new in this role, about 9 months in, but so far, the best distillation I have is being able to understand and represent the points of view of your customers while also taking input from Experience Design, business partners, and engineering to guide development while solving for highest customer value. The process is pretty non-linear, the day-to-day is incredibly diverse, and quite frankly I can never really tell if I’m doing a good job. I meet regularly with my engineering and experience partners, do competitive research, talk to customers, partner with research and analytics to gather generalized customer sentiment like surveys and analytics, use the product myself (this is my favorite part), track our business goals, build PowerPoint after PowerPoint to communicate all this work, and make sure that any and every decision is documented somewhere so the direction of what we’re building and – most importantly – why we’re building it is easily accessible. It’s a role that’s heavy in soft skills; pragmatism, communication, and patience are all really important to excelling at the above.
Question: What do you find interesting about your role? What are the challenges? What do you find satisfying about your work?
Marti: I think the huge variety in daily tasks and in partners across the organization, and fostering each of those connections is important, so it’s hard to get bored with so many things going on at once.
I alluded to this above, but I think one of the biggest challenges is evaluating success. The role is not necessarily grounded in specific outcomes or deliverables, so in the absence of clear KPIs, it can be difficult to tell if things are going well in general and for myself in the role. I am still getting better at creating clear goals for myself and the team to help with this. It’s also so hard to say no to so many good ideas, especially as someone who was a frequent end user of Fusion 360!
Despite some of the challenges, it is incredibly satisfying to see the work you have been planning for and your developers have been building make its way out into the market. Being able to tell a customer that a something they reported is fixed or a feature they were looking forward to is being released feels great.
Question: What advice would you give to a student who is interested in pursuing a role like yours? Is there anything that you would have done differently before you graduated to prepare for your role? Is there a piece of advice you would give yourself back on day one in your role?
Marti: I ended up in a role that’s so outside of what I went to school for that I think my off-color advice is if you graduate, get a job in your field, and realize it isn’t for you, there are plenty of other opportunities! Don’t be afraid to step outside of your area of expertise and try something new if it seems fun, exciting, and like a good opportunity to grow.
Some of this advice is probably a little cliché, but asking questions is so important for success in a role like this. Understanding and being able to represent someone else’s point of view absolutely requires asking lots and lots of questions, and I think there can be hesitancy to do so at first – don’t be afraid to ask a question even if you think it’s dumb! Another way to say this is challenge your own assumptions. I have a sticky note that says, “What am I assuming?” on my desk to help me remember to ask, not assume. Hand in hand with that, is always questioning yourself. If you can’t give several good reasons for what you’re doing, it’s probably time to reevaluate.
Questions or comments for Marti? Let her know below, or "like" her interview to show you've read it!