Main at Roblox is a collection that explores the profession journeys of Roblox’s leaders and discusses their roles, philosophies, and administration kinds. On this profile, we get to know Garima Sinha, Senior Director of Product, who heads up our Social Group throughout the Person Group.
Garima with colleague Effie Goenawan discussing a current undertaking
Let’s speak about your profession path to Product management. How did all of it begin?
GS: I’ve all the time been excited about technical innovation. I studied Pc Science Engineering in Delhi so as to start a profession within the expertise business. After school, I took my first full-time position as a Product Supervisor. This was a bit uncommon, as most PMs enter the place after just a few years of basic engineering expertise. However I jumped in and realized rapidly. To be able to thrive, I needed to have a “doer” mindset and never draw back from difficult issues. Many of those traits guided how I lead in the present day.
Two years later, I pursued my Grasp’s diploma in Software program Administration from Carnegie Mellon. From there, I had some superb alternatives within the coronary heart of Silicon Valley at firms like Meta (then Fb), Thumbtack, and Instacart. I began my position right here at Roblox in April of 2022, and this primary 12 months has been nothing in need of superb. I’m doing among the most modern work of my life.
What does your present position entail?
I’m a Senior Director of Product Administration inside Roblox’s Person Group, main Social. Our imaginative and prescient is to allow one billion individuals to attach, play, study, talk, and work collectively in high-quality 3D immersive co-experiences. On the Person Group, I lead Product for 2 of our verticals: Connections and Communication. Our focus is on constructing the merchandise that empower free, expressive, and immersive communication on-platform, and our mission is to allow and mimic real-world communication in digital co-experiences. Constructing these options safely and at scale has by no means been performed earlier than, and our staff is so excited to reimagine the way in which individuals talk.
Garima talking at Roblox Builders Convention 2022 with colleague Tom Sanocki
What’s one factor you’ve realized as a frontrunner at Roblox?
Everybody in a corporation is exclusive, and what energizes somebody and will get them impressed varies throughout people.
By way of my time as a frontrunner, I’ve realized that managing every of my stories in the identical method simply doesn’t work. I would like to have the ability to adapt my type to my individuals – and by extension, to the scenario and context that we’re in at that second. It’s simple to default to my very own most popular administration type, so I’m usually checking myself and guaranteeing that I’m aligning to the person’s wants, not simply my very own. My purpose is to assist everybody do their finest work whereas holding a excessive bar, and empowering them to achieve it.
On the finish of the day, my job is to assist my staff do nice work and develop as technical professionals. Grounding my strategy to management in that goal has helped me coach superb and numerous professionals who complement each other with their totally different kinds and strengths.
How do you assist to steer and construct a tradition of innovation at Roblox?
I consider in autonomy, possession, and making a tradition the place risk-taking is inspired. I feel it’s vital to educate my staff, however I additionally need them to have the house and creativity to take the steps that they consider are proper for a undertaking, with out concern of failure. I’ve discovered that when my groups really feel like they will personal and drive their area areas, they actually step up and do their finest work, and if individuals are not afraid to fail, they aren’t afraid to push the boundaries. Should you can create that setting on your individuals, you’ll encourage innovation as a frontrunner. I attempt to present steering, inspiration, and help, whereas encouraging of us to lean on their very own instincts and experiences. Every single day at Roblox, my groups are fixing issues that none of us – myself included – have the reply to. By inspiring our individuals to push boundaries and discover inventive choices, we’re capable of finding these solutions and innovate past our wildest imaginations.
The second factor I do to facilitate innovation is get my fingers soiled with the staff! I’m by no means shy about diving into the small print – spending time brainstorming, whiteboarding, and problem-solving. We’re working to reply among the world’s hardest product questions, so collaboration and knowledge-sharing are key. There’s no activity that’s too large or too small for anybody to tackle. It may be simple for leaders to get disconnected from day-to-day work. However for the kind of work we’re doing at Roblox – constructing issues that nobody has ever performed earlier than – it’s crucial that folks of all ranges dive proper in. We’re altering how the web works for the subsequent 10 years, and we gained’t be capable of try this if we don’t all deeply perceive all the pieces in our product and in our stack.
Should you had to decide on a worth that the majority resonates with you as a frontrunner, which one wouldn’t it be?
Once I take into consideration our progress towards our imaginative and prescient, I feel we have now two values that work collectively synergistically – Get Stuff Carried out and Take the Lengthy View. We take motion and ceaselessly iterate to realize a really excessive quantity of labor at scale. Our tradition is action-oriented, and we’re consistently in search of options that allow us to construct with velocity.
On the identical time, we’re a really long-term firm and taking the lengthy view is vital for us. Our tradition encourages intentional pauses: if we see one thing off or awry, it’s innate in our values to pause, step again, and rethink – even when which means a delay to make sure we get it proper. We all the time prioritize constructing with security and civility, which implies creating the most secure product options as a substitute of simply attempting to ship issues and verify a field. We’re actively constructing for the long run – despite the fact that we may have to attend weeks, months, or years to essentially see our imaginative and prescient come to life.
Garima Sinha, Senior Director of Product at Roblox
In closing, what excites you about the way forward for your staff? What about Roblox as a complete?
I’m extra impressed proper now than I’ve been in a really very long time. And I say that as a result of I consider that we’re on the crux of one thing big. We’re altering the way in which individuals come collectively. How they hang around with one another. How they convey. How they play. We’re so near that future, and I’m very excited to make it occur.
Impressed by Garima’s story? She and her staff are hiring! Go to our careers website to discover open roles.
