Uber

Sachin Consul's philosophy of product management stems from his belief that understanding end users requires more than data and metrics—it requires visceral, emotional experience. As Chief Product Officer at Uber, he recognized early that designing features in an office setting is fundamentally different from experiencing them in the real world. This realization sparked his commitment to extreme dogfooding: not just occasionally using Uber as a passenger, but regularly getting behind the wheel as a driver and working as a courier for Uber Eats. "When you're sitting in your office, your team and I, we design these amazing features. They look so good," he explains. "But then you get in the car and you have a phone which is sitting three feet away from you. You're driving at 45 miles per hour. The world just changes."

Sachin's dogfooding practice evolved into a systematic process. He set a routine of dedicating half a day or a full day once or twice per month to drive and deliver, completing 10-12 trips per session. Over his tenure at Uber, this accumulated to 700-800 driving and delivery trips. But the real innovation wasn't just the driving—it was what he did with the insights. After each session, he would meticulously document his findings, taking screenshots and writing detailed reports (sometimes reaching 40 pages) about every friction point, confusing UI element, and broken workflow he encountered. He would tag the relevant teams and push for fixes. "I develop a bit of impatience," Sachin reflects. "If I faced it in my 10 trips that day, we have eight million couriers and drivers in the world. So imagine the number of times that thing may have happened to our customers."

Sachin didn't treat dogfooding as a solitary exercise. He made it a cultural mandate. He organized quarterly driving weeks where hundreds of Uber employees signed up to drive and deliver, with friendly competitions rewarding the most trips completed and most feedback submitted. He also established clear organizational support: helping employees understand the signup process, navigating regulatory requirements for those on visas, and creating accessible pathways to participate. The company institutionalized this by setting "fix-it" OKRs: committing that the driver team would fix 300 issues, the rider team would fix 300 issues, and the Uber Eats team would fix 300 issues every six months. These weren't arbitrary numbers—they signaled that product quality improvements were a strategic priority alongside growth and retention goals.

The dogfooding revealed surprising insights. One early experience crystallized Sachin's empathy: on his fifth or sixth trip as a driver, a passenger left her suitcase on the curb, expecting him to retrieve it. He hadn't internalized that part of the job. "That was a somber day for me," he recalls. "Since that day, I have not forgotten what it feels like to be a driver." He also discovered the dopamine hit drivers feel when receiving a good offer—a small but psychologically important moment that justified celebrating alongside the friction points. More broadly, he learned that while the app matters, the human interaction between driver and passenger is what truly shapes the driver's day-to-day emotional experience. Good passenger behavior (asking permission before making calls, gently closing doors) meaningfully impacts driver satisfaction in ways the app alone cannot address.

The "ship, ship, ship" mentality complemented dogfooding. Sachin realized that documenting problems without shipping solutions wastes time. He pushed teams to minimize decision-making cycle time, insisting on live product demos for all major launches (a practice he learned at Palm in the 2000s), and sometimes personally writing 15-page PRDs on weekends to unblock stalled teams and catalyze decisions. During the critical driver shortage post-COVID, he implemented daily standups with cross-functional teams, cutting cycle time to 24 hours and enabling rapid iteration that helped grow the driver base from roughly 4 million to 8 million over 9-12 months.

Sachin's dogfooding culture has become embedded in Uber's product DNA. The company operates with a coexistence of emotional insight and quantitative rigor—neither alone is sufficient. He advises early-career product managers to seek roles with short shipping cycles, aiming to complete 3-5 product cycles in 2-3 years to develop product sense through "the thousand micro decisions" rather than a few grand strategies. As Uber navigates the emergence of autonomous vehicles, Sachin has pivoted the company toward a partner-oriented strategy, signing 15+ AV partners rather than building internal capabilities. His 24-year product career (spanning Palm, Lookout, Flywheel, and Uber) has reinforced one constant: understanding what end users truly want remains the holy grail of product management, and AI will only amplify the importance of developing strong product judgment and instinct.