David Riordan: Product Manager

From 5 AM Oatmeal Cookies to Open-Source Audio Research

David Riordan is a Product Manager at Spotify, based in New York. Since the pandemic began, he has been working from the Greenpoint apartment he shares with his wife, dog, and 21-month-old son, Zev. His days start early and blend family life with deep technical work on the company's audio-processing infrastructure.

• 5:00 am: The day starts with Zev. The two get dedicated playtime before the rest of the household wakes—this morning included baking oatmeal cookies. Once everyone is ready, the family walks the dog through the park to the nanny-share, with Zev in a back carrier.
• 9:00 am: Back at the desk, Riordan checks a master To Do list that keeps personal and professional commitments in one place. As a PM in Spotify's Data and Insights team, he works alongside researchers building tools on the audio-processing infrastructure—infrastructure that enables large-scale leaps in knowledge and application.
• Klio: For the past year, Riordan has been part of the Klio project, a software framework that lets researchers, engineers, and data scientists process audio files easily and at scale within a commodity data pipeline. The framework moves algorithms that previously ran in a bespoke manner at small or medium scale to work on a relatively unbounded amount of input data. It provides a unified, standardized approach, removing the need to "reinvent the wheel" and freeing teams to move further and faster with research. Klio was recently open-sourced, making the tools and methodology available to the broader research community.
• 11:30 am: A project like Klio requires deep collaboration. The team is geographically spread but stays connected via Slack and a daily morning Hangout to synchronize priorities.
• 12:00 noon: Lunch is a shared break with his wife, often including a walk. Being in New York through the pandemic has kept a sense of connection, from bumping into neighbors to using the communal outdoor space at their apartment block.
• 1:00 pm: Afternoons hold most scheduled meetings, particularly with US-based colleagues, while mornings are unstructured. Outside meetings, the routine varies: focus time on specific issues, check-ins with fellow Product Managers, or workshops and user research with customers. The current customer community is small enough to know each one personally, making it possible to understand precise pain points and measure the impact of every change. Riordan acknowledges this personal connection won't scale with growth, but for now it makes the work feel like helping friends.
• 6:00 pm: With quarter and year planning underway, some evenings run later. Mostly, Riordan logs off in the early evening, eats with his family, walks the dog, and "collapses"—much like busy parents everywhere.