Melissa Herrle

Featured

People matter. Go ahead, fire me. This will never change.

 

Building loyalty is not that hard. I have heard countless execs tell me that it is.

It is not.

Listen to your team. Listen to your customers.

Respect.

Earn Street Cred.

Loyalty is not hard.

If you think it is, you are not doing your job.

I have been in tech since I was a kid, fresh out of college age to be exact. I was barely old enough to drink.

Yeah, I was a baby.

25+ years later and man have I learned a thing or two.

My favorite chatbot told me to write this, "I'm driven by a deep commitment to solving real problems for customers and developing high-performing teams"

Side note to my kids: agentic apps do not have all the answers.

What my chatbot companion is trying to tell you:

I am a deeply passionate person, sometimes to a fault. Beautiful sunsets can make me tear up, remembering when my Son was four and used to follow me around everywhere I went, watching my 8 year old daughter take the stage playing a lead role and crushing it, watching my 14 year old daughter sing a song from Wicked on stage and also crushing it, that sort of stuff gets to me.

But this passion is also my rocket fuel.

My secret weapon.

I have a drive that is so deep that it sometimes feels like it is going to crush me.

Tearing through this beautiful life of mine, sometimes white knuckled, blurry scenes.

I do have a tendency to run myself into the ground: whether it is setting career goals or personal goals, trust me, failing is not a permanent option, I will always dust myself off and try again.

People have told me that my passion is so contagious that it makes them feel like they can bust through a brick wall.

Let's go! I am here with you.

This is the fire of waking life.

Ever since I was very little I loved the idea of helping people. When I was 14 I took up studying neuropsychology and swore I was Oxford bound.

Slow your roll, kid.

Here is what I am trying to say: I know (I used to say, "I think", but it is time to be a little more brave than that): I KNOW that this is what makes me a fantastic people and product leader.

Leading people. Here it goes:

Together we can build a force that is greater than you have ever seen.

If you work for someone that is dismissive of your ideas, makes you feel like you are stupid, or puts enough fear in you that you do not even think that you can share ideas or ask questions, you are working for an insecure coward. If this person believed in themselves, they would feel comfortable lifting you up, believing in you. Run away from this coward if you can. You will gain nothing from them but this lesson: NEVER WORK FOR SOMEONE LIKE THIS AGAIN.

Respect, deep appreciation, and mentoring = happy teams = loyal teams = super high functioning, highly productive teams.

When I lead teams, this is what I strive to do: every. single. time. No exceptions.

This is why you may want to fire me.

Go ahead, you and/or this company are not worth my time. You are wasting the talents of so many good people.

Shame on you.

Customer Obsessed. God I have learned to hate that term so much. It is overused and annoying. It has a negative connotation, right? It sounds like this to me: Obsession, stalker, someone that needs to get more in touch with themselves.

I am not obsessed with customers, that is weird.

I will not stalk my customers socials, or show up to their house with flowers and concert tickets.

No thank you.

I do, however, value them, and lucky enough, I've gained some pretty good friends along the way.

I appreciate them, want to learn from them, want to makes their lives easier by building the best products.

I genuinely like to help people and I love problem solving, and since I think software is pretty rad, I think that I made the right career choice.

I love what I do. I am in product management and I absolutely love building great teams as well as stellar products for my customers.

Helping people solve problems with software. That sounds about right.

In closing..

Be good to yourself and others and never stop pushing outside of your comfort zone. Don't take crap from anyone - If you are working at the right place for the right people, they will appreciate this in you. If you get fired for standing up for what you believe in then chances are they never deserved to have you in the first place. I hope that never happens to you but sadly, there are a lot of cold enterprises as well as fraudulent cowards out there that happen to hold executive titles because they are good at playing the game. All of this sucks but please, keep moving forward.

Shout out to the amazing leaders to whom I was fortunate enough to work for over the years. You helped shape who I am today.

Take more walks. Enjoy life. You got this.

PS: Not a single word of this was produced by AI, you have my word.