Inside the Day of a Spotify Senior Product Manager

Stefan Ålund is a Senior Product Manager at Spotify’s Stockholm office, currently working from home alongside his three children. His team sits within the Platform organization, building internal tools and services that help engineers, data scientists, and designers across the company stay productive. One of their flagship projects is Backstage, Spotify’s homegrown developer portal, which the team recently released as an open source project.

Adapting to Open Source and Remote Work

Backstage has been used internally at Spotify for several years. With the open source release, Ålund’s team is now navigating a shift in how they operate. “We can’t just sit in a corner talking privately any more,” he says. The team must learn to work in the open and cultivate a healthy external community of developers—a process that remote work is now accelerating. “I guess the current situation is somehow forcing us to figure all that out on the fly,” he adds.

Before the pandemic, Ålund’s mornings began with a 20-minute subway ride and school drop-offs for his three children. Now, he starts his day later and sets up his workstation at the dining room table, clearing away his large monitor every evening before family dinner.

Balancing Team Time and Global Calls

Mornings are typically spent collaborating with his Stockholm-based team. As the afternoon rolls in, colleagues in New York come online, filling his schedule with Hangouts and video conferences. He is also recording short demo videos for Backstage from home, a task made trickier by children who frequently wander into frame to share news or show off their latest Star Wars creations.

Despite the challenges, Ålund says Spotify is a family-friendly and supportive workplace. He mentors three relatively new Product Managers in his organization, passing on lessons from his three years at the company. He appreciates that the Product Manager role here is product-focused rather than general management. “I know it sounds ridiculous,” he says, “but I really do think I have the best job in the world.”

When the workday ends at 5:00, he packs up his screen and prepares the dining room for the family meal. Evenings are quiet, so once the children are in bed, he sometimes opens his laptop to do a bit of coding—not a typical part of his role, but a way to tinker with minor glitches or annoyances in the product. He finishes the night with yoga before bed, noting that he has not yet taken up any new self-isolation exercise trends. “But there’s still time…”

A Typical Schedule

  • 7:30: A later start than usual—no commute and no school runs mean an extra cup of coffee with his wife.
  • 8:30: Sets up the work station and begins the day on the Platform team’s projects, including the open source Backstage portal.
  • 1:00: Misses team lunches but enjoys a midday break for LEGO or schoolwork help with his kids.
  • 2:00: Afternoons are filled with video conferences with New York colleagues and recording demo videos from home.
  • 5:00: Shuts down, clears the dining room, and winds down with optional evening coding and yoga.