6 Years in Product: 3 Things I Keep Coming Back To

I’ve spent the last 6 years as a product manager — starting on the technical side working with APIs, and then making the jump to checkout of the funnel. Along the way, the tools, teams, and domains have changed, but I keep coming back to three things that actually matter in this role.

1. Does this move the business forward?

It’s easy to get caught up building cool features. I’ve been there. But the question I’ve learned to ask first is: does this actually impact the business?

That means understanding what the company needs right now, aligning what we build to those goals, and being honest about whether we’re hitting the numbers that matter. In my API days, it wasn’t enough to ship technically solid solutions — I had to make sure they were driving results for the part of the business my team owned.

Now that I’m on the frontend side, the temptation is even stronger. You can always redesign something, add a new flow, make it look better. But looking better and performing better aren’t the same thing. I’ve learned to pause and ask: is this solving a real business problem, or am I just building something that feels productive?

2. Am I setting my team up to do their best work?

This one took me a while to figure out. It’s not just about putting the right people on the right tasks (though that matters). It’s about creating an environment where people grow — where collaboration feels natural, not forced, and where everyone’s getting better over time.

I think of it less like managing resources and more like: how do I remove what’s in the way and amplify what’s working?

I try to check in on this regularly because it’s easy to coast. When nothing’s visibly broken, you assume things are fine. But if you look closer — at how decisions get made, where communication slows down, who’s not speaking up — there’s almost always something you can improve.

3. Am I solving a real problem for real people?

This is the one that keeps me motivated. If we’re not solving something that actually matters to customers, nothing else counts.

When I was working on APIs, that meant sitting with developers, understanding their frustrations, and building tools that genuinely made their day-to-day easier. Now in checkout, the users are different, but the approach is the same: listen, find the pain, and fix it.

Some of the biggest wins I’ve seen came not from new ideas, but from going deeper into what we already had — asking better questions about our current flows and finding opportunities hiding in plain sight. I’ll share some of those experiments in future posts.

The thread that ties it all together

Domains change. Teams change. But these three questions have been my compass through every transition. If you’re early in your PM journey — or even deep into it — I’d say: keep it simple. Business impact, team health, customer problems. Everything else is noise.