Each day, everyone at Springworks comes into work with a true passion for building products and tools for the HR ecosystem. We are artists, innovators, achievers, and dreamers, with a one-track mind to fine-tune the products that we build. Through this series of posts, we showcase our team members, their roles, and what a typical day looks like for them. You can check all the posts here.
Shivhari Shankar joined the SpringRole team in October 2017. Before joining SpringRole, Shivhari was the Product Architect at an ed-tech startup based in Bangalore. Prior to it, he founded a job search aggregator and, worked on video surveillance as a Software Engineer at Cisco Systems.
Apart from leading the product team, Shivhari has represented SpringRole at several Blockchain conferences and frequently presents his thoughts on decentralisation and blockchain at industry events.
Let’s dive into it right away and take a peek into the life of a Product Manager building on the blockchain.
What does your job as a Product Manager entail?
My job as a Product Manager is to take the vision that is set out for SpringRole and turn that into a tangible product.
While doing this, you have to co-ordinate with all the stakeholders that are involved to get everyone on the same page.
That includes taking care of UI / UX, thinking about product timelines and flow, talking to the CEO to get more insights and interfacing with the development team to make sure things are going as planned.
Being a Product Manager building on the Blockchain must present a unique set of challenges. How do you go about solving for them?
The most unique and interesting part of being a PM in the Blockchain space is the fact that there are still so many unknowns and everyday is a process of trying to inch closer to answering the question — “How does one build meaningful products leveraging the Blockchain ?”.
This involves a lot of reading and seeing how the blockchain world is evolving.
It also involves trying out various products to see different takes on the user on-boarding and user experience problem.
Another interesting thing is about figuring out the token economics and the flow of the token across the platform.
Since there are very few platforms that have tried to take a crack at this, it is still a largely unsolved problem and it something that we at SpringRole are constantly looking to bridge everyday.
What’s your favourite part of your work?
Apart from my daily cup of coffee, without which I don’t start my work, the favourite part of my job is feature breakdown and mapping the product flows that are needed for a new feature. It is a very intellectually stimulating process and one that I really enjoy a lot.
Walk us through a day in the life of Shiv!
- Get up
- Meditate and read some stuff online
- Check Slack and start working
- Head to office
- Check my to-dos
- Talk to the designers to see if everything is going along smoothly
- Groom the SpringRole product Trello board
- Talk to the development team to make sure things are going fine
- Work on upcoming features and map them out
- Head back home
- Chill for a while (mostly YouTube videos 😛)
- Dinner and sleep
What is the SpringRole dev/product team like?
It is very dynamic and fast paced — things here change within the span of one or two weeks and you always have to stay on your toes and keep pace.
Being a start up and that too in a space that is constantly evolving, we have a culture around trying to help each other and achieve something rather than pointing out whose job it is to do so.
All of us are largely self motivated to get work done and are often looking at how we can solve things and constantly improve ourselves.
I’m very proud of the culture that we’ve built around our dev and product teams.
What advice do you have for other Product Managers building on the Blockchain?
Use blockchain products!
Since this field is constantly evolving, you should try out new things every day and see how people are pushing the envelope further.
This is especially the case with dApps (decentralised apps) where the UX is a constant challenge and there is always something new to learn.
Also read a lot — since building on the blockchain needs us to have a fairly good knowledge of how blockchains work, it is important to be in touch with the tech side of things as well.
About SpringRole
SpringRole is enabling everyone’s #VerifiedProfessionalProfile on the Blockchain. It is a decentralised attestation-based professional network platform powered by the blockchain.
SpringRole is the platform where people can view, share and get attestations on their professional profile, thereby creating a verified resume that they can share and use. A user’s educational qualifications and work experience are verified by the organisations themselves and written directly to the blockchain. To assess a user’s skill set, SpringRole has a system of weighted endorsements that let users objectively look at people’s profiles and assess their skill level.
Learn More
To learn more, and be up-to-date about all-things-SpringRole:
- Create your #VerifiedProfessionalProfile on the Blockchain
- Visit our Website
- Join the conversation on Telegram
- Follow us on Twitter
- Read more posts from our Blog
- Want to work with us? Check out open roles at SpringRole
