Building Data Driven Products & Dodging Unsolicited Advice (with Emily Reid, Product Manager @ FCT)

An interview with Emily Reid. Emily is a Product Manager for FCT, a Canadian insurance company, as well as consulting for AgeRate, a healthtech startup. Emily is passionate about demystifying data and is leading FCT's charge towards being a data-driven, API-enabled company.

We talk about a lot, including:

• The most important question - is it "this data" or "these data"?
• The pros & cons of working for a big, established firm and the imperative to move to a more agile mindset
• Why she moved from banking into product management, and the misogynistic attitudes she was trying to get away from
• How she skilled up in product management hard skills, as well as data science fundamentals
• The importance of embracing not being the smartest person in the room
• How a background in biotech at uni helped her really explain complicated concepts
• The importance of picking good product metrics & why you need stats knowledge to be an effective PM
• How data science isn't the be all and end all, how to factor failure into the process, and why we might see a new breed of data science specialist product managers
• Why unsolicited internet advice is never welcome and people should just stop
• How she has been judged and patronised as a young, up and coming, blonde woman in technology

And much more!