My Journey From MIT to Uber and Beyond!

May 15th, 2020 was my last day at Uber. After nearly two years at the company, I decided to move back to India due to family obligations. The bittersweet moment marks the end of a notable chapter of my life — I started my career at Uber as an Associate Product Manager (APM). Now feels like the right time to sit back and reflect on the ride.

TL;DR

After graduating from MIT, I moved to San Francisco to begin my job at Uber. I immediately found a community among my fellow APMs. We started together in an intense but unifying orientation. Then, we dispersed across the company for our first rotation. Over the course of the APM program, I had the privilege of working in three different PM roles. I improved earnings for millions of drivers, scaled the rider loyalty program globally, and launched Uber’s first-ever ads business.

Along the way, I collected many fond memories. I traveled to four countries through the APM trip, witnessed Uber’s historic although anticlimactic IPO, and hosted a fireside chat with Dara, the CEO. What I’m most grateful for, however, was finding mentors who deeply cared about my growth. They include Justin Bleuel (my APM buddy) and Phil Ho, Holly Ormseth, and Aaron Berger (my managers). If you’re a new grad interested in PM, I highly recommended the program — ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to be precise.

The Story Has Four Parts

I’m writing this blog to share the perspective I wish I had before my first job as a PM. Specifically, I didn’t know what to expect from an APM program, how to decide between Eng and PM, what it’s actually like to work as a PM, or how to prepare for PM interviews. I’ve structured the story into four parts accordingly. Whether you’re in college or early in your career, I hope my learnings can help you decide if a career in PM is a good fit for you.

📸 My APM Journey in Ten Snapshots

🚗 From Eng to PM in a Self-Driving Company (Coming Soon)

💡7 Surprising Lessons I Learned as an APM (Coming Soon)

🤓 Cracking the APM interview (Coming Soon)

If you’d like to stay updated on the next stories or have any feedback, please let me know here. I’d deeply appreciate it!

About Me

I’m Sudhanshu Mishra. I grew up in Bangalore and moved to Boston in 2014 to attend MIT. Over four freezing years, I completed a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and a Master’s in Artificial Intelligence.

During my senior year, I found myself at the crossroads of different career paths. One option was to stay technical. I had an offer from Uber to join as a software engineer. The second was to further my interest in Business. I was lucky to have another offer from Uber to join as an APM and one from McKinsey to return as a consultant. The third was to take the entrepreneurial plunge. Two friends and I had been working on an EdTech startup for a year and considered pursuing it full-time. I was fortunate to have these choices but the decision was daunting nevertheless.

Ultimately, I chose Uber’s APM program. I was drawn to Uber’s mission as well as the opportunity to work as a PM, an entrepreneurial role that sits at the intersection of technology and business.

📸 My APM Journey in Ten Snapshots

Founded in 2014, Uber’s APM program is a rotational PM program for new grads. Each year, the program welcomes a small class of ~10 APMs. The APMs complete three fast-paced rotations over a year and a half. Then, they’re promoted into a longer-term role on their desired team. Now in its 7th year, the APM community boasts 50+ current and former APMs who’ve worked across Uber in ride-sharing, food delivery, self-driving, and more.

This article is part 1 in a 4 part series.

1) The First Supper

On August 5th, 2018, the Sunday before our first working day, my APM class and I eagerly showed up at a restaurant in San Francisco called Lahore Karahi, where previous APM classes were inducted.

The dinner was our first time together but it was clear our ties ran deep. Kevin and Andy went to college together and so did Jason and Claudia. Andy had seen Jason in a gym years before. Jason and Parth were from the same hometown. Parth and Revati had interned together — twice.

That evening, we faced our first test of teamwork. Alex and I were discussing startups when the cashier interrupted us. Strangely, he said the waiter was too busy to take our order and suggested we help ourselves. I took his scratchpad and got to work. A connoisseur of Indian food, Adi herded our preferences into a family-style order. Jeremy clicked our reactions to each dish on his DSLR. We left with our stomachs full and our wallets empty; a passing grade.

2) Surviving Bootcamp

The next morning, we began APM Bootcamp. Our days were packed with sessions and our nights busy with assignments. Some sessions were tactical, like learning how to take effective notes; others were strategic. We met with Directors of Product to discuss their vision for Uber. We stayed up late solving customer support tickets, including an absurd complaint from a driver who felt his rider was too obese to use Uber Pool.

Bootcamp culminated in a hackathon. We were given 48 hours to solve a problem faced by Uber. In my few days in San Francisco, I had seen several scooters drive recklessly and felt there was a need to encourage safer driving. I built ScootRoute, a tool that detects sidewalk violations by scooters using computer vision.

Over two grueling weeks, my class learned about Uber as well as the nuts and bolts of PM. Somewhere in those sleepless nights, we also became friends. Having survived Bootcamp, we were ready for our first rotation.

3) Doing What’s Fare

My first rotation was on the Marketplace Fares team. My job was to improve drivers’ satisfaction with their earnings. The problem stemmed from a quirk in Uber’s pricing algorithm. Uber sets riders’ fares based on their predicted routes. But due to regulations, it sets drivers’ earnings based on their actual routes. Due to differences between prediction vs reality, drivers earn a variable percentage of their rider’s fare that fluctuates from trip-to-trip. In rare cases, drivers would feel they didn’t earn enough compared to what their riders paid. They would post angry Tweets and complain to regulators.

My data scientist and I brainstormed a solution. What if we gave drivers top-ups in such cases? This would cost Uber money but our hypothesis was that improving drivers’ satisfaction would be beneficial. We designed an A/B experiment to find out. I wrote product requirements, ranging from the top-up logic to UI changes. Once the experiment concluded, the challenge was calculating a precise ROI. Would our results sustain in the future? How should we quantify the impact of decreased regulatory complaints? Even as Uber’s most data-driven team, we had to rely on a mix of data and principles — like what was the fair thing to do — to arrive at our answers.

Ultimately, we launched Share Adjustments, top-ups given to drivers whenever the difference between a rider’s payment and their earnings was higher than estimated.

4) La La Land

At the end of our first rotation, my class embarked on our much-awaited APM trip. Each year, the newest class travels to four cities around the world to gather local insights about Uber’s business. They meet with city leaders, talk to customers, and experience Uber’s products first-hand. On returning, they write a detailed trip report about new product opportunities.

Our first stop was Los Angeles aka Scooter Land, a sprawling city with limited public transportation and great weather. It was no surprise the city was infested with scooters. To learn more about the business, we visited one of Uber’s scooter warehouses. Its manager told us about three challenges.

The first was regulation. Cities had placed strict caps on scooters. This limited their growth but fortunately also prevented an oversupply (like that of bikes in China). The second was theft. Scooters were often vandalized or stolen despite being GPS-tracked. The manager pointed at a red dot on her monitor. One of her scooters was stolen — and taken to Arizona. The third was recharging and rebalancing. Riders simply picked the nearest scooter, with little regard for its brand. To win, Uber had to position well-charged scooters in the right spots. In fact, the entire warehouse served that purpose. It housed hundreds of scooters in charging docks that hummed together in unison.

After our session, we roamed the city in mini-trucks to help with rebalancing. I was surprised to see that Uber and its competitors deployed scooters at the same spots. Didn’t we have a data advantage? It turns out, we did. We used sophisticated techniques to place our scooters in optimal spots. Competitors used not-so-sophisticated techniques to place their scooters right next to ours.

5) CDMX

Our second stop was Mexico City, fondly known as Ciudad de México (CDMX). LatAm is one of Uber’s largest markets. For years, Uber was the undisputed king. That changed in 2018 when Didi entered the battlefield. Didi is China’s largest ridesharing company and a force to be reckoned with. In 2016, after a period of ruthless competition, Uber famously bowed out of China in exchange for a minority stake in Didi.

By the time we arrived in CDMX, competition with Didi had intensified. While visiting Uber’s Green Light Hub, a physical center where drivers came in for support, we saw Didi agents camped outside the gate ready to poach our drivers. We knew LatAm had a high crime rate. But our conversations with drivers shocked us. One told us about getting mugged at gunpoint on a ride. Another shared a story about a couple who abandoned their baby in his car. It turned out to be an accident, and they came back for her soon after. I was keen to find out what kept these drivers going. I learned that driving for Uber was safer and offered more status than their next best option — driving for taxis. Now, they were also considering driving for Didi.

We spent the rest of the day in a scavenger hunt. We split up and explored the iconic city through its many modes of transport: scooters, buses, metro, taxis, and tuk-tuks. We knew the folks back at HQ were doing their jobs when two teams on their way to the same destination matched with the same Uber Pool.

6) Venice of the North

Our third stop was Amsterdam, the city of bikes. We were lucky to meet with Pierre-Dimitri, the head of Uber’s EMEA business. He was a living legend at Uber. As one of the company’s earliest employees, he launched its business in France and was even arrested for it briefly. He spoke about Uber’s meteoric rise as well as its cultural struggles. He offered some memorable advice.

“If you look at the world as a spreadsheet, you miss what can’t be quantified.” — Pierre-Dimitri

One afternoon, we set out to learn about UberEats by delivering orders. We downloaded the Courier app, created test accounts, and grabbed our bikes. We took to the streets in excitement. Ten minutes in, we hadn’t received any orders. Thirty minutes later, we still had nothing. We were convinced the app was glitching. Perhaps, the test accounts were misconfigured. We finally understood the problem when we spoke with other couriers on the streets — virtually nobody orders food between lunch and dinner.

To lift our spirits, we decided to boat down the city’s canals. Midway through our ride, we became the hungry exceptions. One of us joked that McDonald’s should deliver to our boat. There was a moment of silence. We immediately pulled out our phones and began mapping our path. Based on the boat’s speed and the delivery’s ETA, we predicted which bridge we were likely to approach. We carefully set our delivery location and placed our order. With a bit of luck and some clever steering, we ended up intersecting with our courier perfectly. He was camera-shy, unfortunately, so I did the honors instead. That day, we orchestrated what we believe is the world’s first land to water McDonald’s delivery.

7) The City of a Thousand Minarets

Our last stop was the ancient city of Cairo. On our first morning, we gathered at the hotel lobby as per routine. We were about to call an Uber to the office when we realized the ETA’s were too long. We were going to miss our first meeting. I scrolled through the app and requested an Uber Moto, the product with the lowest ETA. A few others followed suit. Within minutes, my driver pulled up on a bike. I hopped on and we were off to the races. He delicately swerved through Cairo’s jam-packed streets and dropped me at the office in no time. Those who took Uber X’s arrived 45 minutes later.

Cairo’s morning traffic wasn’t an anomaly; it was a daily ritual. While Uber Moto worked for those with short commutes, Cairo’s scorching heat made it impractical for the majority. These people relied on a mafia-like network of private buses. To create a safe, affordable, and reliable alternative for daily commutes, Uber launched Uber Bus in Cairo in 2018. During our visit, we took a ride in Swvl, one of our bus competitors, and met a woman who was an IT worker. She used Swvl religiously because it was not only safe but also five times cheaper than Uber X. She was excited to hear about Uber Bus but didn’t anticipate trying it for a few months; she was locked into Swvl with a subscription pass.

On our last day, we visited The Great Pyramid. I chose to dress in a Galabeya, a traditional Egyptian attire, and impressed many locals. One even asked for my phone to take a selfie; he didn’t return it until I paid him a ransom.

8) Loyalty Without Borders

On returning to reality, I joined the Uber Rewards team. Historically, ridesharing riders have been price-sensitive. They try any service when offered sufficient discounts. But competing on discounts is a race to the bottom. One winning strategy is to engender long-term loyalty. In late 2018, Uber Rewards launched in the US as a first-of-its-kind loyalty program. It rewarded riders not only for riding with Uber but also for engaging with the rest of its ecosystem: food-delivery, scooters, bikes, transit, and helicopters.

The goal of my rotation was to scale the program globally. My first feature was to enable riders to earn points outside their home country. After consulting with stakeholders in Operations, Legal, and Accounting, I decided riders should earn points based on their international spending converted to their home currency. For example, a US rider who spends Rs. 1,000 in India will earn points on ~$13. A designer and I created a light-weight UI experience. A product marketer and I announced the feature through an email campaign.

I also worked closely with a behavioral scientist to simplify how users tracked progress towards their goals. The premise of any loyalty program is simple. You encourage incremental engagement from users by setting achievable goals for them and offering compelling rewards. We redesigned the Rewards Hub to clarify what goals they had achieved, which goal was next, and how far they were from it. Research shows that people become exponentially more motivated towards a goal the closer they are to it. So, we experimented with push notifications and email campaigns to nudge users when they were close to a goal. As of May 2020, Uber Rewards is live in the US, LatAm, parts of Europe, and Australia.

9) A Moving Billboard

My final rotation was on the Driver team. I launched Cartops Ads, Uber’s first-ever ads business, commissioned by Dara. Cartops are digital displays installed on top of cars. They enable advertisers to create digital, geo-targeted ads and provide drivers with supplemental income.

The project was unique in several ways. First, it was scrappy and 0–1. We built the simplest possible MVP to allow drivers to manage their Cartops inside their app. Every user was hard-earned; I had to cold-call our first batch of drivers to enroll them in our pilot. Second, I had never worked on hardware before. I had always taken for granted how software can be distributed freely and instantly. This time, I had to think carefully about the supply chain, from sourcing our digital screens from suppliers to installing them on top of drivers’ cars. Third, I worked closely with external partners. At times, I negotiated deals with the CEOs of suppliers by myself.

The rotation was special because of how closely I got to interact with users. I flew to Atlanta, our launch city, several times. I got to know our drivers closely and received regular feedback from them. I still remember seeing the eyes of our first driver light up when he saw his installed Cartop for the first time. On my final trip to Atlanta, I landed late at night and called an Uber. A driver — who I had never met before — arrived with a Cartop.

10) Coming Full Circle

In August 2019, Alex and I came full circle as the organizers of Bootcamp. We continued its format but made it more interactive. Inspired by our scavenger hunt in CDMX, we created one for the new APMs. They explored San Francisco, from iconic spots like Pier 39 to quirky spots like a virtual reality gym. We also arranged a tour of Uber’s secretive self-driving facility.

Bootcamp always promises an impressive line of speakers. This time, we were lucky to have Dara. In August 2017, Dara joined Uber when the company was in turmoil. He took on the herculean task of fixing its culture and steering it towards profitability. During our session, he walked us through his decision to leave his comfortable job at Expedia to take on the challenge at Uber.

We asked him what he found surprising about being a CEO. He said once you’re CEO, your world starts to warp around you. Everyone prepares before they speak to you. As a result, they say what they think you want to hear but not necessarily what you need to hear. He said what excited him about sessions like ours was the opportunity to have an unfiltered and unrehearsed conversation with the youth of the company. At that moment, I debated whether I should tell him that Alex and I had rehearsed all of our questions for him. Instead, I decided to ask him one off the cuff. I asked him to comment on the rumors that he works out at Barry’s Bootcamp at 6 am every morning. He confirmed the timing but wouldn’t confirm the location.

Bonus

Our very own Andy Zhang created a 🔥trip video.

Conclusion

Starting a new life after college is never easy. Neither is moving across the country. There are so many unknowns, from juggling new responsibilities to finding new friends. Uber’s APM program was the perfect new beginning. Work was…fun. I’d never worked as a PM before but enjoyed being thrown into the deep end of impactful projects. I always had my friends and my mentors for support. Frankly, I never expected to find close friends at work. Now, it feels weird to call my fellow APMs anything else.

These ten snapshots offer a glimpse into my ride as an APM. The journey leaves me with little to be desired — except for a higher stock price. But as one Uber alum famously said during the IPO,

“Maybe the real equity we made was the friendships along the way.”

Thanks to Tyson Chen, Arjun Gandhi, Manu Hegdekatte, Ahilya Mehta, Sam Huang, Apurva Shrivastava, Jason Cui, Prapti Mishra, Justin Bleuel, and Saguna Goel for reading drafts of this.

Up next, From Eng to PM in a Self-Driving Company (Coming Soon). I’ll talk about what it was like to intern at Uber during its most turbulent times and how the chaos led to my fortuitous transition to PM.

If you’d like to stay updated on the next stories or have any feedback, please let me know here. I’d deeply appreciate it!

You can find me on LinkedIn and Instagram.