Evolution of Product Management

Jeremy Epling has led product at every level - Microsoft, GitHub, and now as Chief Product Officer at Vanta.

In this episode, he unpacks what most PMs get wrong about strategy, how AI is reshaping product development, and how to excel at your career.

Brought to you by:

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Timestamps:

Preview – 00:00:00

Working at Internet Explorer – 00:02:05

Why He Encourages AI Prototyping Tools – 00:06:15

Ad (Linear) – 00:09:56

Ad (Amplitude) – 00:10:48

AI Prototyping Tools Impact Continued... – 00:11:23

How a Microsoft Feature Gets Built – 00:15:47

Changes in PM Role Inside Microsoft – 00:17:57

Lessons Learned From Satya – 00:20:59

Steps to Move Up the Career Ladder – 00:25:11

Ad – 00:30:45

Communication as a Step in the Career Ladder – 00:31:33

Moving Beyond the Product – "The Final Step" – 00:34:11

GitHub for PMs – 00:37:33

Experience as a VP – 00:42:33

Evolving Expectations of Director-Level Roles – 00:48:51

Getting Job in Vanta – 00:51:59

Secret Behind Vanta's Success – 00:58:01

Growth in PLG vs. Enterprise – 01:01:36

Unique Things About Building a Product – 01:03:57

Embracing All AI Software – 01:07:16

Evaluation of PMs at Vanta – 01:11:12

Advice to PMs With No Experience – 01:13:56

Key Takeaways

* Big companies teach you how to scale. Great ones teach you how to focus. At Microsoft, Jeremy learned how to operate at massive scale - teams, systems, legacy complexity. But it wasn’t until GitHub that he saw what it meant to focus on developers, ruthlessly prioritize, and ship with empathy. Learning how to balance enterprise-scale thinking with startup-speed execution shaped his career.

* “Strategy” isn’t about having a roadmap, it’s about knowing what not to build.He learned early on that the best PMs aren’t the ones who ship the most features. They’re the ones who create clarity, say no often, and focus the team on why they’re building something, not just what.

* Prototyping is the new PM’s superpower. At Vanta, every PM gets access to V0. Why? Because the fastest way to learn is to build. His philosophy: “If I can show it, I can test it. If I can test it, I can learn.” Seeing is believing and customers don’t respond to decks the way they respond to demos.

* The lines between PM, design, and engineering are gone. At high-functioning companies, designers submit pull requests, engineers make design calls, and PMs prototype. Roles are fluid, and the best teams adapt to each other instead of clinging to old job descriptions.

* Most PMs don’t understand GitHub but they should. You don’t have to be technical to learn GitHub. You just have to be curious. The best PMs at GitHub - even the non-coders - understood the dev workflow, knew what a PR felt like, and respected the architecture. That empathy changed how they built product.

* Want to grow into VP-level roles? Improve your business acumen. Shipping features won’t get you there. Understanding margin, pricing, GTM, and how your product makes money will. He didn’t start out as a “business” PM, but he made a point to learn the mechanics of how things grow and that’s what unlocked leadership roles.

* If you’re doing the same job after 4 years, you’re probably not growing. He kept switching teams every few years at Microsoft not because he was bored, but because growth requires friction. Every new domain forced him to relearn how to build, lead, and communicate.

* Satya Nadella didn’t just save Microsoft, he redefined what it meant to build product there. Under Ballmer, the strategy was “build everything.” Under Satya, it became “build what matters.” He saw firsthand how Satya’s obsession with clarity and developer-first thinking rewired the org. That’s what made it the best place for PMs to work back days.

* If your team is waiting for a spec, they’ve already lost momentum. He doesn’t believe in 20-page PRDs. Instead, he believes in fast cycles, shared prototypes, and cross-functional discovery.

* Letting go is the lost art for PMs! One of the fastest ways to grow as a PM? Kill projects that don’t matter even if they were your idea. According to him, the PMs who get promoted are the ones who know when to let go and when to keep building on the idea.

Check it out on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.

Where to Find Jeremy

LinkedIn: Jeremy Epling

Company: Vanta (Get $1,000 off with our link)

Related Podcasts:

Write a Great Product Strategy: Lessons from Ravi Mehta 

How to Develop Your Product Strategy, with Satyajeet Salgar

Shek Viswanathan (2x CPO): “Product Management isn’t going to exist in 5 years”

Sergio Pereira: How to PM with AI at Early Stage Startups

The Claire Vo Episode: PM is Dead. So Now What?

Tutorial of Top 5 AI Prototyping Tools

Up Next

I hope you enjoyed the last episode with strategy legend, Roger Martin (the last video you’ll ever need to watch on Strategy). Up next, we have episodes with:

Bret @DesignJoy - Running Solo $2M/yr Design Agency

Harish Mukhami - Fmr Head of Product, Siri; CPO, Leaflink

Thomas Occhino - CPO, Vercel

Finally, check out my latest deep dive if you haven’t yet: What Product Management Interviewers Care About: Insights from 500+ Interviews

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