The Role of Product in Product Management and Design

Today I’m chatting with Kyle Winterbottom, who is the owner of Orbition Group and an advisor/recruiter for companies who are hiring top talent in the data industry. Kyle and I discuss whether the concept of data products has meaningful value to companies, or if it’s in a hype cycle of sorts. Kyle then shares his views on what sets the idea of data products apart from other trends, the well-paid opportunities he sees opening up for product leaders in the data industry, and why he feels being able to increase user adoption and quantify the business impact of your work is also relevant in a candidate’s ability to negotiate higher pay. Kyle and I also discuss the strange tendency for companies to mistakenly prioritize technical skills for these roles, the overall job market for data product leaders, average compensation numbers, and what companies can do to attract this talent.

Highlights/ Skip to:

• Kyle introduces himself and his company, Orbition Group (01:02)
• Why Brian invited Kyle on the show to discuss the recruitment of technical talent for data & analytics teams (02:00)
• Kyle shares what’s causing companies to build out data product teams (04:49)
• The reason why viewing data as a product seems to be driving better adoption in Kyle’s view (07:22)
• Does Kyle feel that the concept of data products is mostly hype or meaningful? (11:26)
• The different levels of maturity Kyle sees in organizations that are approaching him for help hiring data product talent, and how soft skills are often overlooked (15:37)
• Kyle’s views on who is successfully landing data product manager roles and how that’s starting to change (23:20)
• What Kyle’s observations are on the salary bands for data product manager roles and the type of money people can make in this space (25:41)
• Brian and Kyle discuss how the skills of DPMs can help these leaders improve earning potential (30:30)
• Kyle’s observations and advice to companies seeking to improve the data product talent they attract (38:12)
• How listeners can learn more about Kyle and Orbition Group (47:55)

• “I think data products, obviously, there’s starting to get a bit of hype around it, which I’ve got no doubt will start to lead organizations to look down that route, just because they see and hear about other organizations doing it. ... [but] what it’s helping organizations to do is to drive adoption.” — Kyle Winterbottom (05:45)
  
  
• “I think we’re at a point now where it’s becoming more and more clear, day by day, week by week, the there’s more to [the data industry] than just the building of stuff.” – Kyle Winterbottom (12:56)
  
  
• “The whole soft skills piece is becoming absolutely integral because it’s become—you know, it’s night and day now, between the people that are really investing in themselves in that area and how quickly they’re progressing in their career because of that. But yeah, most organizations don’t even think about that.” – Kyle Winterbottom (18:49)
  
  
• “I think nine times out of ten, most businesses overestimate the importance of the technical stuff practically in every role. … Even data analysts, data scientists, all they’re bothered about is the tech stack that they’ve used, [but] there’s a lot more to it than just the tech that they use.” – Kyle Winterbottom (22:56)
  
  
• “There’s probably a big opportunity for really good product people to move into the data space because it’s going to be well paid with lots of opportunity. [It’s] quite an interesting space.” – Kyle Winterbottom (24:05)
  
  
• “As soon as you get to a point where if you can help to drive adoption and then you can quantify the commercial benefit of that adoption to the organization, that probably puts you up near the top in terms of percentile of being important to a data organization.” – Kyle Winterbottom (32:21)
  
  
• “We’re forever talking in our industry about the importance of storytelling. Yeah, I’ve never seen a business once tell a good story about how good it is to work for them, specifically in regards to their data analytics team and telling a story about that.” – Kyle Winterbottom (39:37)

• Kyle’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylewinterbottom/
• Orbition Group: https://www.orbitiongroup.com