Name: Anthony Ferrario
Anthony Ferrario is a software developer at Pure Storage, where he has been for 3 ½ years. He recently moved into software development. Prior to that, he was a senior product manager.
Yes, Anthony is my son. He is the oldest of two. My other son is Nick, who is a personal trainer in Virginia.
Before joining Pure, Anthony was with Brightedge. He started there after graduating from college in the sales organization. He quickly moved into customer support. He left for a short time to work at Zenefits and Levitt Insurance. And then returned to Brightedge as an R&D Consultant and moved into Product Management.
Anthony graduated from UC Berkeley with bachelor’s degrees in History and Economics. While there, he was on a competitive Indian dance team and walked onto the Cal Bears football team.
Career Journey
As you can tell from the brief background on Anthony, he has not taken the straight-line path. This is exactly what we will talk about in this first interview – how he decided on his first job out of college, and where he went from there to get to the role that he has today.
Anthony starts us off in high school, where he talks about the school that he wanted to attend and the major(s) that he decided to pursue. Somewhere along the way – he decided that working in high technology at a company in Silicon Valley was right for him.
I think the podcast will be both interesting and useful in helping others to think about their career journey.
Product Management / Software Developer Interview
The discussion in the first podcast leads nicely into the second podcast, where we will talk about product management and software development from the perspective of someone who has done both roles. We will cover the similarities and differences, how they interact, and what were the biggest surprises in each role.
Anthony provides a unique perspective as someone who has been in both of these roles, sees the value, especially understands the interactions that are required, and has an idea of where his experience will take him.
During this interview, I ask four questions.
- One of the key relationships in a product organization is between engineering and product management. You have had the unique experience to have held both jobs. I would like to start by talking about that relationship. Fill me in on the roles and responsibilities between the two.
- When you look at both roles, what do you love about each (and what do you not love)?
- We love to laugh about how naive we can be about different jobs. The one that we most laugh about is football lineman – as you learn more, their job is pretty complex and clearly important:) What surprised you about each job?
- You have already had some great managers in your career. When you think about them, what are some of the attributes that have made them so good?
Regardless of the role that you have, the discussion will give you insights into Software Development and Product Management that will help you to be more successful!
See Also
Technical Program Managers with Orna Berryman
Product Managers with Expert Pashmeen Mistry
Raghu Raghuram – Technical Visionary Drives Multiple Company Pivots
