S5E1: From Punk Rock to Product Management with Scott McCarty

Disclaimer: This transcript was cleaned and structured with the help of AI and may contain errors or omissions.  

00:01 — Opening & Setup 

Karl Abbott: 
Welcome to Productly Speaking — real stories from real product people about the messy, surprising, and sometimes brilliant work of building things. No perfect processes, no polished answers — just honest conversations and lessons learned the hard way. Today I’m talking with Scott McCarty, a former punk rocker who now serves as Global Senior Principal Product Manager for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. How do you go from playing to the backbeat to steering a product used worldwide? That’s Scott’s story.  

00:57 — Ikigai: A Late Lens for Meaning 

Scott McCarty: 
Ikigai is a filter I use: not only “do you love it?” and “are you good at it?” but also “does the world need it?” and “can you get paid for it?” More than that, it feels like a calling — feeling whole when you’re doing the work. I picked it up later in life when a friend asked me to speak to high‑school students and said he used ikigai to explain career choices. I tried it and realized it fit my own story.  

01:20 — Punk Rock Beginnings → Building a Band as a Business 

Scott: 
I started on guitar and bass around 14–15, played in about 20 high‑school punk and ska bands, then formed my own and led it. I recruited a trumpet player first, then found an excellent drummer and guitarist through my girlfriend at another school, later adding a trombone. We became a real band and opened for lots of acts during the mid‑90s ska wave. That’s when I unknowingly got my first reps in sales, partner management, services, and “product”: a song either resonates or it doesn’t — you can’t force adoption.  

04:49 — Band as Startup: Growth, Ceilings, and a Pivot 

Scott: 
We played two to three shows a week in the summers and practiced constantly. Drawing 200–300 people in the Midwest was tough; our biggest show hit about a thousand with other bands. It felt like a startup — seven of us, making “products,” selling shirts and patches, learning the full lifecycle. Eventually the momentum faded. In my mid‑20s I took the advice to get a “computer job,” went to college for computer science, and began the long pivot into tech.  

07:10 — Early Tech Path: NASA, eCards, Startup, Red Hat 

Scott: 
I shelved the band skills and focused on learning. A couple years into CS, I became a sysadmin at NASA (around ’99) for six to seven years, then moved to American Greetings during the eCards era, then a 6–7 person startup for about four years, and finally joined Red Hat ~14 years ago. Along the way I did both coding and infrastructure, then shifted from solutions architecture and sales into product marketing, and eventually product management.  

09:06 — Seeing PM Up Close, Wanting the Wider View 

Scott: 
Sales taught me customers deeply, but PMs seemed to see across many industries. That wider purview pulled me in. Product marketing and DevRel were the bridge; traveling and speaking gave me a bigger view of how the industry actually works and what I’d change if I owned the product. Then one day you are in charge, and it’s your job to fix the things you’ve been critiquing.  

10:58 — First PM Tour: From Seed to Foundation 

Scott: 
I started as PM for Podman — a small container tool that we grew from zero into a functioning open‑source project, then contributed to a foundation. We incubated Podman Desktop and later an AI‑oriented tool (“Rama Lama”). The early PM phase was hard: stack‑ranking, cross‑functional tradeoffs, and working deeply with engineering, QE, support, docs, sales, and marketing. After that came a step‑change: collaborating with about 45 PMs on a very large product. That meant less doing, more aligning — repeating the vision, finding allies, and helping others make tradeoffs.  

14:05 — What Resonates vs. “Art for Artists” 

Scott & Karl: 
You can look busy and make lots of “stuff,” but if it doesn’t move the needle, it’s art for artists. In music, solos that only guitarists appreciate rarely sell — the same lesson applies to product decisions.  

15:08 — DIY Era Lessons → Translatable Product Disciplines 

Scott: 
In the 90s, there were no API‑like services for merch and flyers. We screen‑printed shirts in the dining room and hand‑distributed 4–5K flyers, which taught me marketing funnels and awareness. I even watched Apache logs for traffic after shows. In the band, all the core functions existed: engineering (writing songs), QE (bandmates calling quality), marketing (flyers and shows), support (live performance competence), and sales/partners (promoters and opening slots). It also taught me hard people lessons — I was a poor manager then, but I learned what not to do.  

21:24 — Closing the Band Chapter 

Scott: 
No one was harsh, but by 24 I felt people watching and asking when I’d get a “real job.” Getting hired by NASA was the closing chapter for the band and opening the door to the next life.  

22:17 — No Hacks, Just Compounding 

Scott: 
I don’t believe in hacking your way to “better.” I’ll take 6% gains for 30 years over short bursts. Product management demands many disciplines; my path (engineering → sales → marketing → PM) helped me respect each function and see the missing pieces.  

24:40 — Executive Presence: From Loose Cannon to Architect 

Scott: 
The skills that got me here weren’t enough for the next level. I analyzed leadership archetypes — diplomat, architect, loose cannon — and realized I needed consistency and trust, not volatility. I took classes, worked with exec coaches, and reframed myself as an architect/diplomat style leader. Product leadership is show business again, but you can’t be a caricature; you have to be reliably you.  

28:20 — Agency: Aim Your 3 Percent 

Scott: 
You always have some agency, even if it’s 3 percent — aim it where it matters. A Czech friend pointed me to Havel’s The Power of the Powerless, which captures this idea of acting within constraints. PMs often lack direct authority, but they can still exert meaningful influence.  

30:20 — Advice to Aspiring PMs 

Scott: 
Go learn a couple disciplines for real — especially sales. You don’t need 20 years, but a couple of years with a quota gives perspective you can’t fake. And cultivate genuine respect for every function you rely on; people can tell if you get their world.  

32:18 — Against “Fake It” and “Fail Fast” 

Scott: 
I tell students not to fake it and not to chase grandiosity. Move the ball a little. Real competence in hard things often takes a year; if I had “failed fast” in sales, I’d never have gotten good. Accumulate traction over time.  

35:00 — Hobbies, Practice, and Being Human 

Scott: 
Mountain biking won’t make me money or fame, but after ~10,000 beginner‑room jumps I’m smooth and safe. AI even helped me analyze my form frame by frame. Not everything has to fit ikigai — some things are just for joy.  

38:21 — The Hard Parts of PM 

Scott & Karl: 
Product management is hard. Decommissioning features hurts real users. Big changes ripple through the entire organization — training, services, support, sales, and more — and you have to consider that butterfly effect. Sometimes the right answer is to stop adding features. As Scott jokes: “Gmail is done.”  

41:28 — Where to Find Scott 

Scott: 
For his “weird” writing: educatedconfusion.com. For technical work: crunchtools.com. Lately, AI makes it easier to flesh out odd ideas, so he’s publishing more on Educated Confusion.  

42:19 — One Last Fun Question 

Scott & Karl: 
If Scott had to give a non‑work TED talk tomorrow: using AI to analyze mountain‑bike jumps and other quirky uses of AI. It’s surprisingly competent at body‑position analysis and pressure/weighting feedback.