S3E2: Remote Realities: Product Management in a Hybrid World with Flora Taagen

What if your path into product management started behind a coffee counter, in the middle of a global pandemic?In this episode, Karl talks with Flora Taagen about a journey into product management that looks nothing like a straight line. Flora shares how she went from studying computer science to serving coffee during COVID, where suddenly “making coffee” also meant rethinking safety, budgets, and how a small business survives when the rules change every week. That experience, it turns out, translated surprisingly well into product work.She also reflects on discovering the PM role for the first time through a Microsoft program led by two women who helped her see that big‑picture thinking, empathy, and curiosity mattered just as much as technical depth. From volunteering in healthcare to working on Azure Linux with teammates spread across the world, Flora talks candidly about learning where she adds the most value and how customer impact became her guiding motivation.The conversation digs into the lived reality of working on truly distributed teams, where video calls are the office, hallway conversations have to be intentional, and showing up on camera can make the difference between connection and isolation. Flora also shares how AI tools have quietly changed her day‑to‑day work, not by replacing judgment, but by helping her stay present, ask better questions, and move faster without burning out.This is a thoughtful, grounded episode about finding your way into product, building trust at a distance, and learning that the skills you pick up in unexpected places often matter more than the ones you think you’re missing.Key Quotes“I think that empathy and creative problem solving and satisfying customer needs are all deeply transferable skills.”“I found it very valuable to spend the first few minutes of my one-on-ones with my fully remote colleagues, just chatting and catching up and not jumping straight into work.”“Even if some team members are physically in person in a conference room together, I really appreciate when everyone still joins the Teams call individually and turns on their camera.”Resources MentionedCracking the PM Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell & Jackie BavaroCloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) for open source contributionsMicrosoft Teams, GitHub Copilot, and other AI productivity toolsConnect with FloraLinkedIn – Flora Taagen -- https://www.linkedin.com/in/florataagen/