Ian McAllister
Product leader; senior director of product at Uber in 2022, earlier more than a decade at Amazon, where he created AmazonSmile; founder of the small-business AI service OkayWinston.
Ian McAllister did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Our reading
Escalation is forward progress; it is better to ruffle feathers than let a project stall.
Their wordsI applaud the drive in my PMs who choose to escalate (appropriately) because escalation is forward progress. It’s far better to escalate and risk ruffling some feathers than letting a project stall out.
↗Leveraging Your Leader - The Polite Escalationianmcallister.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsDon’t make your leader figure out what needs to happen. Tell them EXACTLY what you want them to do. That takes work off their plate.
↗Leveraging Your Leader - The Polite Escalationianmcallister.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 13 months earlier
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Our reading
In hard times a job seeker needs a large upper funnel of about 30 target companies, not 3.
Their wordsIn bad times or when you’re out of a job, you need to build a large upper funnel of target companies. A large upper funnel means 30 companies, not 3.
↗How to Go Get Your Next Job in Techianmcallister.substack.com
- 2 months earlier
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Their wordsCo-authoring a doc is painful, and the Frankendocs that result are usually painful to read as well. Collaborate on the outline, perhaps, but either write it yourself or have your prospective co-author write it. Don't tag-team.
↗16 Tips for Writing Upwardsianmcallister.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsBoil the entire doc down into a few bullets or a paragraph. Spill it. Your temptation will be to save the good stuff for the end of the doc to build suspense or get your excuses in ahead of time. Resist!
↗16 Tips for Writing Upwardsianmcallister.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsJust like it is quicker to fix a software bug during unit testing than in production, it is much more efficient to iterate on the outline of a document than to rework a fully written doc.
↗16 Tips for Writing Upwardsianmcallister.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 5 months earlier
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Their wordsYou shouldn’t claim success launching a feature by a certain date. Set a metric-based goal on the impact the feature is supposed to achieve. Metric-based goals are durable and give you the flexibility to meet a goal in different ways including launching a different feature or simply fixing something that is broken.