Welcome to Frank Takeaways. I'm Frank, writing the notes worth keeping from decades at companies like Slack, Etsy, and Google. I run a coaching practice dedicated to guiding leaders through the tricky stuff of building products and high-performing teams.
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Among product circles — especially the self-anointed Twitter/X PM Elites — there's a quiet hierarchy: "pure" PMs, guardians of taste and user empathy, look down on those who get close to Sales, rolling their eyes at "feature factories" and "customer requests." To them, working with Sales means compromising vision — building what sells rather than what's "right."
This isn't just arrogant; it's lazy. Because craft without adoption isn't craft — it's just theory. Ignoring feedback from Sales doesn't protect quality — it avoids the messy reality of shipping products people genuinely want. When I was designer at G…
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