Niki’s advice: life

I don’t think of friends, travel and weekends as end goals. They are the reason why I work so hard and I made it an explicit decision to save time for them right now (you may not have tomorrow!)

Times can sometimes be hard. But over time you realize people are precious. Someone I respect deeply once told me that what you do with your life matters less than who you do it with

I learned from a mentor a long time ago: run toward something, not from something. Don’t just jump to the next offer because your current thing isn’t great. Try to make your current situation work, seriously consider other options, and take your time

Dan Koe wrote “Mistakes are nature’s compass. If happiness can’t exist without sadness, success can’t exist without failure.” I come back to that one a lot—if you haven’t failed, you probably haven’t really tried

Start the community you want:

A few friends and I started Babel ↗, a dinner series for people working in AI in San Francisco. A year in, I wrote that the best part was that “they have become some of my closest friends along the way.” Another friend and I started a dinner series for women. Another group of friends and I kicked off a book club. I also practice Baptiste Yoga ↗ and I’ve met some incredible people there. These communities have been the best thing to have happened to me in early adulthood

Focus on your life tasks:

The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga has this idea called the separation of tasks, which means asking yourself this question every day: “Who ultimately is going to receive the result brought about by the choice that is made?” Whoever lives with the consequence, it’s their task. I’ve spent a big chunk of my last year trying to achieve separation of tasks

Write letters:

I once read about someone being criticized for writing letters because they felt old-fashioned. Her response stayed with me: when you’re gone, memories fade, photo albums get tucked away, and eventually little remains. A letter gives someone something tangible to hold onto. Since then, I’ve made it a goal to write at least 30 letters a year to people I love—usually after a big life change or around Christmas.

Working with someone difficult is uncomfortable, and the instinct is to avoid it and run. But hard people show up at every stage of life, and it only gets more likely the older or more serious you get. Try to understand them. Running from any hard person means missing out on someone beautiful

One of my therapists once said, don’t go to the hardware store for milk. It’s a strange analogy, but it basically means you should realize you don’t have to get everything from the same few people. They’re like “hardware stores”, amazing for some things, but they don’t always have the “milk” I need. This has helped me stop constantly feeling hurt for going to the wrong places for support

When something goes wrong I’m quick to react. It’s taken me years to realize that patience is the best virtue, and sometimes you just need to give it time for things to shake out

Every 6 months, I like writing down 5 things that feel like me. Last batch was: Morning walks near the Golden Gate bridge, reading in the park, sending letters and calls with loved ones. I can’t make time for all of them every week, but I make it a goal to do at least a couple to keep me sane. Having a routine, AND leave room for serendipity.

Engineers and researchers guard their calendars. If they schedule time with you and tag you in everything, you’re excelling at the job

My approach to decision-making is to make reversible decisions quick and not be afraid to change course if it was the wrong choice, but take time to make irreversible decisions. Your ability to recognize whether a decision is reversible or irreversible will come with time (judgement), experience and exposure.

Rockstar mode and superstar mode:

A mentor of mine once told me there’s either rockstar mode or superstar mode (Kim Scott writes about the same split in Radical Candor). Superstar is steep growth, uplevel, go-go-go. Rockstar is doing the job really well and going deeper on the craft. You need a balance both so you don’t get bored or burnout

Moving fast will teach you about balancing good enough with perfect. Shipping early and iterating fast is incredibly valuable, but some early decisions stick

And on the same note, some of the most important work I’ve been part of wasn’t flashy at all. It was about making the platform more complete and cohesive so customers could grow without friction

Product skills:

When people ask me what it takes to break into PM or become a really good one, I don’t mention any specific “product skills” because while they are important, they are very learnable. Having an open mind, being ok with feeling uncomfortable and knowing how to get stuff done will make you successful as a PM; the rest you can learn along the way

Do the jobs nobody owns yet:

My first year as a founding PM @ Together I did model bring-ups, reliability war rooms, support, developer docs, partnerships, Twitter and built out our website. That’s what gave me full visibility, context and made me influential at the company early on

Support is key for product building:

In December 2023 I answered developers on X and emailed one by one when we pushed a fix. Feedback loops were quick & this helped me get to know the customer better

In AI infrastructure especially, small product decisions compound very quickly. They affect reliability, margins, customer behavior, and whether a platform actually becomes something teams build on long term or just try once and move on

Make sure people understand the context before going into the details. You will realize that sometimes the details are not that important and make you a more precise communicator