Deb Liu

The most successful people I've worked with aren't the ones who had charmed careers with no failures. They're the ones who turned stumbling blocks into stepping stones — who got hard feedback and came back stronger.

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. You don't get to choose everything that happens in your life — but you do get to choose the way forward.

Saying 'I'm an introvert, I can't speak up' is doing yourself a disservice. Speaking up is a skill like any other. If your product would be killed unless you defended it, you'd find a way. So why aren't you doing that every day?

In my first 30 days at Ancestry, I talked to over 60 people and then published a state of the union: here's what I'm hearing, here are the challenges, here are the wishlists. People want to know they've been heard. Diagnose before you treat.

If you had to write a product spec for your career — with milestones, required skills, success metrics — what would be in it? Most PMs have detailed plans for their products and zero plan for themselves.

Perfectionism is a curse we place on ourselves — and it's especially dangerous for product leaders. It's a lack of trust in your ability to bounce back. The more adaptable you are, the less you have to be perfect every time.