Beckie Wood has been with Pandora since 2006—long before Pandora became the household name that it is today. Wood started out as a marketing analyst at Pandora and, over the last 11 years, has worked her way up, landing (for now) as Vice President of Product for Content, Programming, and Insight. While that sounds like she's totally made it—and, let's be honest, she has—Beckie keeps herself grounded thanks to her dedication to empathy, mismatched socks, and the transcendent power of donuts. She's proud to have "grown up" with Pandora—and she's here to tell us all about it.

Whenever I’m asked, “Is Pandora a media or tech company?”, my answer is always, “We’re a music company.”I love music. I go to shows, I sing in the shower, I read Pitchfork. Loving music (and being super passionate about delivering music to our 75 million monthly listeners) is what keeps me here. Also, I love the Pandora culture, my boss Chris Phillips—he’s literally the best—my peers, and my team.

I am very good at navigating Pandora and getting things done. This is, in part, because I’m generally a very execution-oriented person, but it’s also largely because I’ve been here for so long that I know the ropes. I’ve been lucky to have grown up with Pandora.

On Her Journey to Product Manager

My path to product management was somewhat circuitous—I went from investment banking to equity research, then to marketing/analysis, and then into product management. I love product management because it combines technical work with empathy and understanding a user's (or in our case, listener's) needs and behaviors.

I didn’t have any formal Product Manager training [before starting at Pandora]. I actually moved from an analytics role into a PM role several years ago because our previous Executive Vice President of Product and Chief Technology Officer thought I would be good at it.

On What A Project Manager Does

I run part of the product team. "Product" at Pandora means defining the “what” and “why” of our app. We tell the engineer what new features and functionality to build. Have you tried the add-similar songs button when creating a playlist? My team defined and helped create that feature. The fun thing about product management is that there are many different types of successful PMs. There are the very technical PMs, the design-oriented PMs, the analytics/insights PMs, etc.

My advice to anyone who wants to get into product management is “check your ego at the door” and really learn about your consumer/user needs. Make sure you are also incredibly collaborative, good at communication (with all different types of people), and learn to influence people without ever directly managing them. Most PMs “run” very large teams, with no specific direct reports. They are instead asked to get things done by influence and partnership with their engineering, design, and analytics partners.

On the Bottom Line

Products need to work. At Pandora, we’re focused on basic metrics like crash rates and app speed. Also, products need to be dead simple—but with the ability for power users to dig in a bit more if and when it's needed. It’s really easy to dream up new features to add to the app. The discipline comes when we say "no" to “feature bloat”.

On Her Mistakes (And How They Helped Her Grow)

I spent too long being quiet and questioning myself. This is a cliché female trait, but it was absolutely real for me. I still believe in quiet leadership—leadership that’s about listening first, not speaking first—but there’s a need for folks to speak up if, and when, they have a strong point of view. With a bit of guidance and some coaching from others (and a formal public speaking class), I quickly learned which moments demanded me to speak up. I wish I had forced myself to make this change earlier in my career.

To this point, now when I see more junior folks remaining quiet, I like to dig in to understand their communication style. I also believe in creating space for everyone to participate in meetings, either by calling on folks or doing around-the-room style meetings.