Jul 9, 20215 min read

Get to know our Product Management competence.

klarna

by Klarna

Klarna products are found all around the world. It is the Product Management competence within Klarna that defines and steers Klarna’s offering. Two of our Klarnauts  share their journey so far at Klarna.

Meet Diana Gerendy Isacson, Senior Product Manager, Stockholm.

– When Klarna implemented a new operating model a few years back and organized teams as small start-ups, it was a real game-changer for me. It meant that Klarna reversed the traditional top-down management and brought the individuals and the teams into the front seat, with each team owning its own problem space. We believe that teams who own problems, not features, will develop a deeper level of expertise.


Diana Gerendy Isacson, Senior Product Manager

Diana continues explaining the way we work at Klarna:

– We are organized in a way that requires a lot of responsibility and accountability. For those who strive to lead, be seen, and climb, this environment is highly empowering and impactful.
When it comes to Product Management specifically, I think that the Product Competence has developed a lot in the past few years. Klarna is focusing more and more on identifying and solving customer problems through a hypothesis-based approach. We then iterate to find the best solution to that problem. While we set high expectations, we have the right tools, frameworks, and people to encourage and support personal and professional growth.

In the four years Diana has been working at Klarna, she has had the opportunity to:

  • Work as Product Manager for several different teams
  • Be a Competence Lead for a group of extraordinary Product Managers
  • Be a vital part of projects both small and big
  • Launch improvements and new products in new markets
  • Contribute to the fantastic Product Management community
  • Make mistakes, learn from them, and have a blast doing so.

– My time at Klarna has been and still is rewarding, empowering, and challenging – all at the same time. I wouldn’t change any of it.

Meet Felix Würtenberger, Product Director and Domain lead, Berlin


Felix joined Klarna in Berlin in 2017 when Klarna acquired a p2p payments start-up.

– When I joined Klarna, the goal of our teams was to build and establish a p2p payments app that would make it easy for people to transfer money. Unfortunately, with our app “Wavy”, we didn’t see the results that we hoped for and after two years we discontinued the product.

Felix and his team moved on and founded the Consumer Banking domain with roughly 20 people where he took over the role of the domain lead.

– In the past two years, we have grown the domain from 20 to 90 people. I’ve never seen myself working for a big company before joining Klarna, but due to the way we work here, it still feels very much like a start-up. That’s one of the reasons why I have always enjoyed my time here, have learned a lot, and have grown alongside my amazing colleagues, facing new challenges every day. As a result, I am extremely happy with my job and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else at the moment.

– I am super proud of the culture and leadership we have developed in the domain. Building a new organization is never easy and we have invested lots of energy into it. As part of it, we were able to establish a strong and open feedback culture, supportive leadership, and a focus on learning which means daring to jump into new challenges. I see my job as a domain lead mostly to enable our talented people to allow them to do what they can do best: develop amazing products with speed and quality.

Felix continues explaining about learning and support tools that help Klarnauts grow.

– When you join Klarna, you get assigned a buddy from the same competence who supports you during your first weeks with all the things, big and small. However, your competence lead (CL) also plays an important role in your onboarding and will actively support you in your development. Together with your CL, you set your goals for your first months and have frequent check-ins to ensure everything is running smoothly.

– In general, we expect everyone to drive their own career development and we have developed our Performance Enablement Program as a framework to support you with that. Furthermore, we offer a Mentoring program in Product Management, have quarterly Meet-Ups, and we have also written our own book on Product Management (PM101) to not only support new starters but also to assist with development in general.

Being a global company with a decentralized structure does come with its challenges. Felix shares his thoughts here on what is essential when working at Klarna and within Product Management:

– It is important to dare to make mistakes, and that is reflected within our leadership principles. It is really at our core to challenge the status quo to drive innovation, which inevitably leads to errors. Therefore, it is crucial to have a culture in which people feel comfortable making mistakes and are transparent about it. Only then are we able to learn quickly and incorporate feedback effectively, which is the foundation for the growth of both our company and also our people.

To learn more about Klarnas Product competence, please visit our career site.