Too busy to listen to the full episode? Here's the short version — Jireh's winding road from HR and warehouse internships to PM at Shopee, and what he learned about finding your fit, owning something, and why good product managers listen more than they solve.

In this episode of Lorong Product, we spoke with Jireh, a Product Manager at Shopee whose work focuses on improving the workflow efficiencies of R&D departments. A former SMU Business Administration student, Jireh took internships across HR, warehousing, procurement, and business transformation before landing in product. He has been working in the field for about three years and hasn't looked back since.

Here's what stood out from the conversation.

1. The "Wrong" Internships Were Never a Waste

Jireh's early internships were less about building a resume and more about learning what he could and could not see himself doing. HR felt too data-heavy. Warehousing was fulfilling but operationally exhausting. Procurement came with constant external uncertainty — supply chain shocks, world events, fires to put out.

The turning point came at BW Offshore, where his manager handed him a transformation project: moving a paper-based system online. For the first time, Jireh felt real ownership over something.

"You can really see your product come from ideas to something tangible for others to use."

That experience, followed by being given the chance to serve as product owner for two platforms during a management associate programme, confirmed the direction. From there, it has been product all the way.

2. Every Role Taught Him Something About Stakeholders

Working across such different environments gave Jireh two things that still shape how he operates: self-awareness and stakeholder range. In warehousing, he dealt with end consumers who were sensitive to change. In procurement, he worked with corporate account managers who cared about entirely different things. Recognising what matters to each group, and adjusting how you communicate accordingly, is core to what a PM does.

"You find out what matters to each of these stakeholders and then you really get to develop your own business communications with them as well."

3. What the Job Actually Looks Like at Shopee

Jireh's product is an internal workflow platform that handles requests related to the Shopee app. His scope covers feature development, live support, and performance tracking, with a growing focus on where AI-driven automation can improve processing efficiency.

For those who picture PM work as always customer-facing and externally visible, Jireh's role is a useful counterpoint. A significant part of product management happens behind the scenes, improving the internal tools that keep large organisations running.

4. The Myth Worth Busting: PMs Don't Need All the Answers

"You don't really have to be the problem solver or the one with the most creative solution. You just have to be a very good listener and a very good analyst."

Jireh has had cases where management asked him to build a specific feature, but after digging into what they actually needed, the real solution was something else. Holding the tension between engineers and business stakeholders, and translating competing priorities into something workable, is what the job is mostly about.

5. Tiebreaker: Three Scenarios, One PM

The episode featured a game segment where Jireh was given three classic internal team conflicts to resolve.

On dropdowns versus free-text fields, he sided with the engineering team for clean data, but suggested a middle ground: required structured fields plus an optional secondary text box. On urgent asset request turnaround times, he argued that is a business and strategy call rather than a PM decision, though on the product side he would design separate workflows for urgent and non-urgent requests. On survey length, his answer was "it depends" — specifically on whether users are volunteering feedback (give them space) or being prompted for it (keep it short).

The throughline across all three: "If you know what you're trying to achieve, then you can find the most ideal answer for any situation."

6. Final Advice: Just Try

When asked what he would pass on to students, Jireh landed on something he actually received and took seriously: try everything you want to try.

"So many opportunities are always wasted when you don't take the first step to go and explore or see how you can get into it."

His own path backs it up. None of the internships were wasted. Each one narrowed the field and built something useful, even when they felt like wrong turns at the time.

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