Why half of product managers are in trouble | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google)

0:00 The skills that used to be really valued in product managers are changing substantially. It's gonna be chaos. Our industry is very much in stress. Nothing's constant. Everyone's in a state of alert. If you talk to product leaders three years ago, they're gay. was largely moving information. The information mover is essentially going to become a dinosaur. I just did this report on the job market. Interestingly, we have the most open PM roles globally in three Plus years. This is a complete renaissance for the product industry, but it comes with a lot of strings attached. In the next twelve to twenty four months, we're gonna see massive shedding of staffs. And then massive rehiring. You might see a company shed thirty thousand and hire eight thousand. But the eight thousand people are gonna all be AI first. The builders are gonna have the time of their lives. But if you don't love building stuff, you're in trouble. What are some things that people should do to thrive in this future that is emerging from you have to Find ability to increase pace. You gotta find that reserve. The next two years requires a lot of fire in the belly.

1:11 Today my guest is Nikel Singal. Nikkel is, in my opinion, right now The number one best source of career адвійс. For product managers and for tech people in general. He was a longtime exec at Meta and at Google, CPO at Credit Karma. He's also a four time founder, and he leads the best community out there for heads of product and chief product officers called the Skip Community. He also has a larger community for tech professionals called the Skip Coach.

1:37 And through these communities and his thirty years of building consumer products at scale, and also his podcast, which I've recently partnered with. He's constantly gathering and meeting with And speaking with top product лідерs around the world. about what's happening and what's changing in the lives of product managers and tech workers in general. And the answer is a lot.

1:59 This is an episode that Every single product person needs to listen to. And you won't find a more real talk in actionable overview. of what is going on and where things are heading in your career And also what you should be doing about it right now.

2:13 Seriously, do not miss this conversation. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out Lenny'sProductFast.com for an incredible set of deals available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Nikel Singal. Nikel, thank you so much. for being here and welcome back to the podcast.

2:33 Yeah, thank you, Lenny. I appreciate uh version two. Uh and I all my notes were like Lenny version two, so I'm quite excited about uh being uh back on the show. You've done so well since the last time that I've uh visited and uh Appreciate the opportunity to to to share with you uh my current thing. Yeah, so you were actually one of the launch episodes of the first twenty thirty guests that I had on the podcast. This was two or three years ago, something like that, and

2:59 A lot has changed in the world of product management since then. And we're gonna be basically spending this entire episode talking about What is changing in the role and the career of a Product manager. And what I especially love about you talking to you and hearing your insights is you don't sugarcoat what's going on. You're very real.

3:18 About like here's what you need to know about what is going on. So we're gonna be talking about the good and the bad and just like a lot of advice. For product managers in particular. To kick things off, give us just kind of the big picture view. into what is changing for product managers. The good

3:35 And then maybe the the scary stuff. Yeah, it'd be a lot shorter of an episode if we just Talked about what didn't change. Well, I I think maybe I'll start with this. I think that when we first chat chatted, it was like in maybe the the end of COVID, I think. the ZERP era, as we call it, zero interest, uh, you know, kind of um free money from from investors was just kind of cresting

4:01 Uh we talked about How I see Are now more in demand. We talked about how these first round of layoffs are existing, that X growth companies gonna be a struggle.

4:14 But if you really talk to product leaders that were kind of in that mode, maybe three three years ago. They were they weren't very happy. And what I mean by that is They're day. Was largely a day of moving information from one to another.

4:33 Let me uh frame the way that my Team is presenting the information to my boss so that that person can frame it to their boss's boss. And

4:47 Generally, the function had become extremely focused on responsibility without authority. And so that is the greatest form of workplace stress. Now we don't talk about that. We talk about all the stresses that we have today. Boy, AI is gonna replace our function, et cetera, et cetera. But but the honest truth is if you think back, if you've been in product for a handful of years, that was a tough time.

5:13 Um now people were being paid well. Layoffs were just starting. There were the industry was huge. It was the biggest it's ever been. There were more product managers, more CPOs than ever had existed in history. Um Вот чай. Yeah

5:27 People are having fun again. Particularly product folks. Because they're able to build. They don't have To rely on as many people to have impact. There's

5:39 much more of a direct connection to their ideas and their ability to test and and and connect their product instincts to their customers. And so in many ways, this is a a complete renaissance. for the product industry.

5:56 Uh for a lot of the strongest builders in the group that I'm associated with compensation is an all time high. They have more offers than they've ever seen. they see their next job maybe being a founder, maybe being a CEO, maybe being in another function other than product. But being in the C level. They're feeling like there's more opportunities than ever before. So that's kind of the good.

6:21 Uh I would say, you know, honesty, it comes with a lot of strings attached. I think that It starts with just being exhausted. I have I've never seen a s a s uh industry that's more tired than they are now.

6:37 Um I mean, I think we retired during COVID, but for roo different reasons. Now I think Uh nothing's Constant. There's you know, once you figure out how to do your job.

6:49 In the past, you would be fine for a decade. Until you became a manager and then you would be fine until you became an executive. Now, if you don't stay up in the next three months, they'll be like, Oh, you're you're doing that thing. That we we stopped doing that three months ago. We don't do that anymore. Oh, you know, PRDs. Well, you know, that's not even a pro you know, everything feels like uh everyone's in a state of alert. And

7:13 I think that in addition, now you're hearing right tens of thousands of people are being shed by larger employers. that are also hiring And paying. Triple wages. So like that's like mind boggling, but you know, depending on your perspective, you might be on one side or the other.

7:32 And I think that particularly a lot of the mid career people People that are like Let's Hall in their thirties. You know, life plays this cruel trick on you. Where You end up

7:46 having your best most energetic years of your career, your power years of career,'cause you finally have figured out what you're doing. But at the same time, you may be settling down, you may have kids. Your parents are aging And you for the first time have those aches and pains in your body. You have to think about diet. You can't eat cookies every day.

8:08 You have to exercise And so between your health The family and friends that you hardly ever see, your parents, which are now worrying uh because you have to build a different relationship with them, they're becoming dependents. Your actual dependents with your kids, and then oh, by the way, your work, which is You know, will take whatever time you have, but it also changes all the time.

8:31 That generation is insanely Stressed historically. And now we're like, Hey, stay up, you know, what's the latest in cloud code? They change it this morning. I it it's It's dizzy. So I think there's joy, but there's fatigue in a way that I haven't quite seen before.

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9:40 It's essentially Stripe for Enterprise Features. Visit WorkOS.com to get started or just hit up their Slack where they have actual engineers waiting to answer your questions. WorkOS allows you to build faster with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs, and a smooth developer experience. Go to workOS dot com to make your app enterprise ready today. So you talk to I don't know, hundreds of product leaders regularly run these communities for CPOs and senior product leaders. I guess on balance are people doing

10:11 Would you say better than the last than like two, three years ago, or is it just like, oh man, everyone's like s like burning out and in big trouble. I think that how people would describe it and how I describe it is slightly different. I tend to be More around like

10:27 When people are doing better, I think they have more choice and they're long term gonna be happier. From that perspective. I think people that are at the top of their game. Are doing much better. For the reasons I mentioned, they're they're just more interested in their jobs.

10:42 I think that They're more stressed. But I think they're stress because They wish they had more time to feed the LM at night. Which is a different form of stress.

10:54 than the stress that they experienced in the past, which is I don't know if my point or my team is gonna get through the m the malaise of decisioning that exist here. So I think that people are doing better. However, I think our industry Yeah. very much in stress. I think that on average people Even if they're doing well.

11:16 They feel more stressed. because they worry they're either not keeping up or they worry that this industry is gonna change and it's gonna essentially there'll be roadkill. Along that way. And so that has a lot to do with, you know, people are not, you know, generally that arrogant and they don't always believe that everything's gonna work itself out and there's a lot of evidence that things are changing and so change is hard on humans. And so I think that There's a combination of both, but I think the best people tend to be feeling great right now.

11:45 We're gonna talk about of the people that are doing best. What are they doing differently? But before we get there. Let's think about the future of where things are heading. You talked about a bunch of the things that are have already changed and how different the world of product management is. What do you think will change further in the next couple of years to give people a sense of where things are heading? Yeah, I I I had this uh this meetup uh last Thursday. And it was a fun meetup, you know. I have a group of about a hundred and twenty five heads of products and we tend to gather once a month in San Francisco.

12:17 And during this meetup, you know, we took an approach where lots of people were building things for their own companies or on their own to help themselves with productivity. And so we said, Hey, why don't we do a show and tell? Why don't we just have you, if you're ahead of product, just show kind of things that are interesting that are worth worth worth uh explaining. And so we had a startup go up and and show what they're doing. And then we had some mid size companies and some late stage companies. And you know What it was a few things that were really palpable.

12:49 Um one was There was so much joy in the audience. Yeah. People were like, Oh, I've been building this thing and let me show you and everyone had their laptop and they were like one uping each other and they're like, Your chief of staff does that, my chief of staff does this thing. So that w sort of builds on my point that people are having fun being hands on.

13:10 But the second thing Is that the way they talk about how product decisions are made. The way they talked about how prioritization is determined. The way they talk about how information moves within the company. Look like

13:24 completely foreign animal from anything that I had experienced when I was working, you know, a few years back. And I Got up on stage, and I said, You know, if you think about how we work right now. And how you folks are all talking about

13:41 You know, using agents in your uh Enterprise, how you're using uh chief of staff apps to essentially drive more productivity. How all of you are essentially spending all your time just focusing on judgment. And you're spending all your time taking anything that can be obsoleted and writing software around it. I none of that was even in the language, even in the vernacular.

14:04 Twelve months ago. So now what is it gonna look like in twelve months? And everyone kinda had a pause and they're like, Yeah, if this was sort of un You know, it was impossible to anticipate what this conversation would look like twelve months ago. It's pretty hard. To understand where things are going. But

14:23 But I would say I think maybe I'll answer your question around where things are going the next couple of years. based on kinda how I think companies are gonna change and how people are gonna change. So I think on the company side. I think that

14:37 And then maybe I'll slant it more towards product for a second. So product leaders will increasingly get paid and be asked to drive judgment. And then B. The tip of the sphere. on trying to essentially obsolete everything else through software through AI.

14:55 Through agents. And this is partly why. There's a lot of excitement. Because just to be very honest with you, and you were a PM and I was a PM. Most of the stuff.

15:06 That you didn't like doing. are the things that AI is really taking a real uh Crack add. And so um I think that's super interesting.

15:18 Uh, I think that there's a ton of that change that's gonna happen. Some companies are are doing it now, some companies will do it, but within two years, I think most of these companies will obsolete all the mechanical parts of building product. I think that There will be ten to a hundred times. More uh changes

15:36 that will be presented. to products than ever before because now the the cost of testing something, the cost of changing is gonna be much, much lower. And so When things are changing that rapidly, that judgment piece becomes like pretty much paramount. Just to make sure we understand when you say judgment, what do you what should people be thinking of when you when you talk about judgment?

15:57 I think that it's sort of evaluating whether the thing that we're changing is a good or bad thing. Mm-hmm. I think that it's also evaluating whether, you know, we should change the product in one way versus another. You can't. build a hundred custom versions of the same product. It doesn't aff it affects your brand. It affects the maintainability, et cetera. So When customers are asking for things, when you're trying to think through how do you build something that's sustainable, differentiated? That's judgment.

16:24 And and evaluating whether it's successfully met that criteria and whether it's worth building and worth releasing. It's almost like the system skill. That's existed from the beginning of the internet. It's you know, hey, it's not about the feat, it's around the system that we're putting together, or the platform, if you will. that's you know kind of uh enabling capability. Right. So that's the the judgment of boy, there's all these changes coming in. They're gonna happen more if we want me.

16:52 You know, as an aside, because of all these changes, I think that in two years I think there won't be any more bad software. I mean, this is maybe more of a wish and a dream than a prediction. But I think that if you count in the weak

17:06 in your given week, how much bad software you uh come back with, right? You know, I have a house and it has like fifteen different apps. That run.

17:17 control everything from the shades to the air conditioner, to the you know, garage door. And almost every one of those apps Are for it.

17:27 They don't work particularly well. They never get monitor, things break, and no one never checks it. Like all that stuff's gonna get fixed. Because someone's gonna basically sit down and tell Claude to fix it and it's just gonna fix it. And it's gonna fix it, it's gonna be more secure to so I think that that's changing and so people will have a lot less tolerance. For for bad software. Along those lines, just real quick at a quick aside to your side. Uh the prompt I constantly find myself using with Codex and Claude is just How can we make the product experience better?

17:57 How can we make this better? And just ask that and it's like here's ten ways we can make it better. And so he's like, Wow, these are really good ideas. And then cool, do it. Do s do the first seven. Exactly. There's gonna be like some super skill. That's gonna run against every piece of software that's in in the app store. And it's gonna basically go in and it's gonna fix them all. And then they're gonna get released. They're gonna be like, Oh, that this is like just a significantly more consistent, better, less buggy experience and more maintainable. And so that's why there's a lot of optimism, right? Because there's these changes can be done pretty automatically. Yeah, just like it's easy to just to kind of finish that loop real quick. Like

18:32 So many of these apps are built by engineers that are not the best engineers. They're engineers that, you know, like Uh Companies hired that don't really care about their software. They're just like this is just like a side thing building this

18:44 thing that we have just app. We just need to build an app. Let's find someone to build it. They're not like product first companies. And now all these companies have access to the most skilled Software, Claud Code, a codex, and all these other jewels. So I I I totally see what you're saying. Like everyone has the best engineers available now.

19:01 And it's just the English to ask them to build the better thing or build a better app. So that's a really interesting point. It still boggles my mind. Yeah, everyone's like, Oh, what's the cutting edge and all that. I mean I think there's still I I don't know if this is true even today, but very recently there were more lines of cobalt. than I think any other language uh out there. And mainframe sales continue to do

19:24 pretty well and they're unusually large line item for companies like IBM. And Part of the reason why these systems like You know, I I think I spent an hour and a half trying to get my mileage plus account on United to work correctly with my daughter's phone and all this other stuff. Partly because these systems are so uh complicated, but they're built.

19:49 In main friends, right? And a lot of the engineers, and this is gonna sound kind of morbid, but you know, I think it's true, is a lot a lot of the engineers have Or are dead. Like they literally are passed away. They were written, you know, ten, twenty years ago.

20:03 And and like going in and touching that code. Is you know the probably the last thing anyone wants to do. So nobody goes in there. You know It's all the outside.

20:14 Now we can change that. So I'm like very excited about what it means to go in and improve things that people take for granted, right? That that's a big one. And that that's a bit of an aside. I think that um the other thing that I think it's worth kind of signaling is I think that the way We We the skills that you need to be s effective in today's world.

20:37 Is that a Uh is an acceleration or what we were talking about last episode. We were talking about I Cs, we were talking about hands on, we're talking about opinion, even back then. before you know Claude and Tribe G B T and others kind of came came about. Uh I think what we're s now seeing is

20:55 companies are looking very, very um carefully at their staffing. And they're asking themselves One, do we need this many people? Did we overhire? And part of the reason is they're looking

21:10 Hey, maybe we doubled our staff in the last five years. Lots of companies that are public have done that. Do we get twice as much for them? You know, it was funny when I was at Google Um now over ten, fifteen years ago.

21:23 We used to ask ourselves, you know, I was on an ancillary team. I wasn't in the search or the ads team. We used to ask ourselves like, How many people are really needed? For Google to hit their numbers. And you know, there were like at the time twenty, thirty, forty thousand people. And you know If you ask someone who wasn't in tech, you're like uh probably like ninety percent of those folks, obviously.

21:46 And you know, the answer's probably closer to like nine percent. You know, probably you need like five hundred people to keep the lights on and to build that business. You don't need twenty five, thirty, forty thousand people. So there's a huge amount of overhead where companies hire not just because they want to, you know, have bureaucrats because they want to expand. They want to try new things.

22:09 But I think that there's a judgment day that's come back. Where companies are like luck. We aren't getting as much for the staff that we grew in the last five years. And this AI thing requires a totally different skill set. A combination is gonna mean

22:24 This year, I predict in the next twelve to twenty four months. We're gonna see massive shedding. Of staffs. And then massive rehiring. Um but the re you might see a company shed thirty thousand and hire

22:39 Eight thousand. But the eight thousand people they're gonna hire are gonna all be AI first. And the thirty thousand they're gonna let go of are gonna be in combination of we didn't get as much for those folks that we needed and we wanted to sort of set the We we wanna set the uh the destination differently with a much lighter uh payload. And that's

23:00 That's dark. That's gonna make this uh year and the next two year you know, year gonna be Pretty, pretty challenging. So I'll transition a little bit to my thoughts on people, but I'll pause for a second to see if this resonates with you. That's uh scary to hear.

23:15 We're gonna talk about what Folks listening can do to Mm-hmm. to do do their best to be in that second bucket of being rehired and and kept

23:27 know they need to change and adjust and they're not doing anything and that we want to talk about Maybe some of the blockers there. One thing I'll note is I I should have mentioned this earlier. I just did this uh report on job the job market. And interestingly as of

23:40 Today at least. We have the most open PM roles. globally at tech companies. uh in three plus years The last

23:50 Time it was this high was Kind of during Covet, basically. So there's some good news there, at least for the P M roll. I don't know. Did that surprise you, Lenny? Yeah, it did.'Cause there's always the sense that, you know, why do we need PMs? What's the point? We have AI, just build stuff in. Like my sense I've always been saying this, I feel like the PM skill is

24:07 the most important valuable Skill of all the skills. And I know every role thinks this about their role. It's like no design. We design with anything now. Like but but I feel like What you said where it's But

24:20 Deciding what to build, deciding if this is good and great and ready and Prioritizing. I feel like that's What remains. So

24:27 Uh so to me it makes sense. We report came out in a fortuitous time because it was right before I was preparing to kinda come on the show and There are the three points I was gonna make is, you know, builders are gonna have the time in their lives. comps actually up and the Bay Area is, you know, essentially back in in uh

24:47 Yeah, and in favor. And I think those three things came very much loud and clear in your rapport. Um and I think your the question around hey, why are product managers doing so well? Why are there so many jobs? When in reality a lot of product people that all of us know are struggling to find a role or we're hearing about these layoffs.

25:07 I think it depends on how you define what a product manager is. And I think that For the first time I think that we did have a dramatic shift in what's defined. We three years ago talked about hey, product managers, there's lots of archetypes. Some archetypes are actually more in favor. This was the I C conversation. Builder conversation.

25:26 Now what we're essentially saying is the the the information mover Is essentially going to become a dinosaur. And I think about half of the product people

25:38 that were kind of that grew into the industry, you know, have that skill and superpower. And then there were a set of people who got in a product because they like to build stuff. You know, and you know, folks like yourself who were founder through that was sort of the motivation into joining kind of the industry. And then they found themselves into this thing called product management. Those folks are builders.

26:02 You know, and Those people Are the ones that are being hired by your survey. I mean those product managers, everybody wants a builder. And I think that interestingly, lots of engineers are builders.

26:16 Lots of designers are builders. Lots of uh marketing folks are builders. And I think builders wanted Is gonna be the big tagline. For the next couple years.

26:29 And it is So fun to build. I I I'll bet you, and this is a prediction, that if you had to choose between preparing a podcast And sitting in Kodaks or sitting in Cloud Code. And like working on your laptop, you would prefer the latter.

26:46 It is so fun. Yeah, just like progress. You just make so much pro it's like look at this thing go. It's getting better. I mean When I was a PM I used to take a break and go cho and go change the light bulbs in the house. And the reason why I would change the light bulbs

27:02 is That light bulb. was broken But then I replaced it. And the light came on, and man was that satisfying.

27:12 Because in a product job There is very few days of satisfaction. Because you don't really have the ability to see something broken that gets fixed. It's just part of The challenge in having responsibility without authority until now. Now

27:30 You can then participate in the joy. You can create a design. You don't have to wait for the designer and convince the designer to go and actually work through this or to put your stuff on a backlog. You don't have to do that. And so I think that the builders are gonna have the time of their lives. And I think they're going to be very focused on judgment. I think that they're gonna invade Other functions.

27:55 I think there's going to be, you know, when when I started the group five years ago. We had For the first two to three years, until we got to about sixty, seventy people in this community of of head of products, we had one founder. In the last Twelve mods.

28:13 As we've gone to about a hundred and twenty five, we have fourteen founders. Fourteen people Essentially have decided That their next job was not to take another product executive role, but to found. Founding CEO is now open to us.

28:30 I I have one person, very senior person on uh in my group. Who interviewed For a CHRO position. Because they wanted a product. Manager.

28:43 Background. for the C H R O position? That's the chief HR person in the company. Right. So you would never think that an HR person would be a former product manager. But now forward leaning companies are starting to say, Hey

29:01 We need someone who can bring this obsolescence skill, this judgment skill, this empowerment skill, this builder skill. to the function. In fact, the function might be easier to learn. Than the other parts of the job. And you know, we're seeing that trend. That product builders are gonna have, you know, both a broad range of for opportunities.

29:22 up and down the stack and it won't be product managers and engineers can become product leaders and product builders and and all of this blurring of the lines is gonna take place. I think that unfortunately the flip side has to be mentioned. I think that non builders And I think that anyone who sort of sees themselves as not loving Like sitting down and building something. And there may be reasons why and we'll get into why you may not be in a position to to find the time, let's say.

29:51 But If you're not a builder, if you're like look, my skill was never to be I'm not really into tech, like people say this all the time. I'm not really into tech. I I just really found it to be a lucrative job. It's a you know, it's a role where My ability to communicate. My ability to move information was, you know, where I ended up enjoying it. I love team building, you know, those kinds of nodes, which by the way, I love all those things.

30:14 Um But if you don't love building stuff, you you're in trouble. And and I mentioned about half the people are in that camp. So we're gonna have that challenge where they're gonna have to find Perhaps leave the tech industry.

30:31 They might have to You know, it might be that they um You know, want to go build a a new business outside attack, but use some of these AI tools, or maybe they they want to find a job completely foreign. Tech, but I think that this non builder

30:46 piece is a is sort of a mirror image of the builder growth that story that we're seeing. There's so many directions we can go here. One thing I wanna throw out it's kind of a hot take. And this came from a chat I just had with Amol, the head of growth and Growth at anthropic. So he's at a growth, he's a PM.

31:03 And he had this really interesting point that As engineers Can do so much more. PMs are Getting squeezed. because they have to stay on top of so many things, so many features, so many ideas, so much doc, so many things being sent at them.

31:16 And there's this Porsche. four PMs at companies to Shipyards. Bill

31:23 Stuff themselves. And What we took away from that chat is like the leverage that PMs Often have is is a lot higher. not spending time coding and shipping

31:34 But instead just like staying on top of all this stuff. And he's like we need more PMs now. There's so much for PMs to do because engineers are So fast. So there's still need for like prototyping to Explore ideas and ideate and get feedback and align. But he had an interesting take that, like I don't wanna be s like it's better I don't spend time.

31:51 Shipping stuff. It's better I do higher leverage work as a PM. It depends what he means by shipping stuff. Because I think that if you have An engineering team of fifty people building things for your customers.

32:08 And you're like hey, I want to be the fifty first. Because that's how I get leverage. I'm like, eh, it's kind of a cheap knockoff of an engineer. If on the other hand The thing that you're building is ways to stay on top of what the fifty people are are doing.

32:24 When in the past That was building tickets and backlogs and all of the things that we used to do to figure out organizations, manage standups, you know. That's the information overload that's happening. What we saw when the CPOs got together is all of the things they're building are ways to drive efficiency out of their product organizations. There inside the building.

32:49 kind of development efforts. And I'm not sure that for the next five years we'll continue to build software that way. But I think in the next two years. People are gonna change the product operating system.

33:02 That they're working on. And we're already seeing companies that like stand up and they say, Hey, we've fully automated the way we do product reviews. We fully automated the way we do product stand up. So to his point look if there's fifteen, ten times the amount of stuff happening

33:20 We need judgment to determine whether it's good. These are good or bad changes. And right now, if it's manual, we're cooked. So it's a combination of hiring good product builders with judgment and then hiring increasingly folks Who's entire job

33:37 is to kind of build the internal tools necessary to improve the decisioning, but it's not through hiring of humans. and building management ethos, which is what it used to be observed. It's actually through technology, but it's a totally different way of building software. And that's what gets people excited because they're like, wow, if I do this, I don't have to ever do a status report. I mean, that was a comment that was made. I hate doing status reports. So now I just wrote something and my boss is happier because they get more detail.

34:08 And I that to me is incredibly exciting, but it is a different direction of what you're trying to deliver. than something that goes out the door. That is such a good distinction and and it makes all the sense. Uh Make yourself scale through software as much as possible. There's a big opportunity and it's fun. It's like you're building your own thing.

34:26 That's right. That's right. I think a few other things that I would just note around how things are going to change the next couple of years. I think that adults are still going to be needed. I think companies are gonna grow, they're gonna grow quickly. I think those that are driving some of these initiatives are are classic founders. And AI is great at supplementing a lot of things, but I think Judgment comes in the form of

34:51 uh a combination of expertise and wisdom. And so I think that increasingly I hear from my groups that hey I'm attractive. to this company. Because I have wisdom, but I stay hands on. I have credibility with the founder. So I can have a conversation with that individual in his or her language.

35:12 But I have Way to my thinking, I have seen the movie, I have experience. that actually would help them as they take this turn. So adults are still gonna be important.

35:24 I think Pace. Will continue to go up. Partly because people will want to feed the beast, the the sort of LMs that are running at night. And I think partly because there's just such an opportunity to keep moving so much faster.

35:38 Ah, and I think that's gonna be dizzying, and I'm not excited about what that uh causes for burnout. Um sadly, I think that geography and and actually diversity. is going to take a step back. I think that we were very good.

35:53 About driving more br as we grew the industry, we started looking at people who were from different backgrounds. To populate it. Including different locations. But I think that because the AI wave is so heavily and you know coming from the the the the Bay Area.

36:11 And because companies are hiring fewer folks. They're hiring people that look and act like themselves. So Age. gender

36:21 I think uh you know, ethnic uh backgrounds. All of those are taking a hit. А на тінь да ви. quite a number of years. in the diversity of what we do. And so I worry, um I mean this is my personal worry, but I worry about that. Um

36:39 Probably more now than I did. In the last five years. Um, because I think it's an underbelly of what we're we're seeing. And I don't think that anyone's intentionally doing anything. But I think when pace is so high The fact is that you know

36:54 women are having kids and in those power years and And they just don't have the time. uh to a lot to spending their nights and weekends on cloud code. And so that's an impact. And you know, we don't talk about it as an industry, but it's absolutely true. Um and then the last thing I would just say, and maybe this is this goes into some of the the advice as well, is

37:17 I think that the one of the most surprising shifts we're seeing is You know, your brands don't matter as much. as how modern you are in your ability to deliver product. Yeah.

37:31 In the past, I think for last ten years. It's like have you seen the movie before? I remember I even in this last podcast episode we did, Lenny, we talked about hey, brands matter. You really need to make sure. They're personal brands. Hey, I've worked for this company, they've delivered products, they've been at scale.

37:49 So then people are like, Oh, that person Certainly. We're doing, right? And and you know, it's like well tell me about all the different experiences you've had. But now if every way of building software

38:03 And how we deliver product is completely alien to how it was in the last. you know, ten years. How you delivered in that sort of version one. Is gonna be less and less relevant. So lots and lots of feedback from that I'm hearing from interviews is like

38:22 put you in a scenario, what tools do you use, what's your judgment, how do you think? It's not about Five years ago you shipped this thing, what was your thinking that went into it? And so How modern you are now becomes the career advice.

38:39 Not did you pick up. the established brands. Cause what if the established brands is very much an uh working in a way that's not current. You work there for six years, you come out, and it feels like you're in a totally different world, right? So That's why I think the next two years and these changes are so profound and and quite friendly. Frankly, confusing to people.

39:00 That is such an interesting insight that The logo, like used to be fancy to have all these logos in your resume. And now you're saying sometimes that may hurt you because that company's not seen as a very AI forward company. And second of all, people are looking for just like what have you actually done? You're actually aware of what's going on.

39:16 Well, I was just gonna say some of those biggest brands, it's hard to even talk about what you've done. You know, it's like, you know, if you're working in meta and you spend two years and I managed to make this, you know, piece of this algorithm, you know, go a little faster, and by the way, it had a huge impact and You know, frankly, it was incredibly hard to navigate the hallways and to make that decision and to find incrementality. I mean As someone who has worked there, I understand and respect that, and that is a promotable You know, achievement.

39:42 But it just Falls very flat. on a conversation where someone's like living in the future and product is now totally different, right? So that distinction is the is the thing that I wanna just call out that hey, that's happening every day. Right now. So what you're saying there in a

39:57 Which is a really powerful point is that the skills that used to be really valued In product managers are changing pretty substantially. Yeah, and in fact maybe uh almost looked upside down in terms of importance. You know, in some ways We start our careers as builders, many of us.

40:14 And then we get taught. that leverage scale. organizing, streamline, empowering, enabling Don't do the build yourself, get others to do it. Stop working on the car, work on the factory. Right. That's that's the That is the maturation of our industry.

40:34 And then you find out Well what if it turns out the scale can be done Very differently. And all we care about is your opinion and what you build. That's

40:46 Very sure. Charm. And that's What we're living through right now. So let's follow the thread of Specific advice to

40:53 PMs. Right now. Whether they're mid career Senior getting started. What are some specific things that you think

41:01 People should do. to do well in this Emerging future. Change is really hard for us. And I think

41:10 As humans were not really designed. Two Change very easily. Like if you think about it. You know, I was thinking you you know, about why is it hard for us to change when in some ways change can lead us to much better outcomes. You know, we're almost like told to change less as we grow older.

41:31 You know, when you're a kid you fall down a ton, but like Lenny, when was the last time you fell down? Uh not not often except my f my son loves to pretend like we're falling. So there's a lot of pretend fall. And when you forget fall, it's probably pretty dark. It's probably relatively new. Yeah, for him it's so fun. He loves it. But yeah, for me, such a long way down. Yeah, and I think it it's funny because you watch kids and it's like normal for them to reinvent everything they do. Oh, I'm learning to crawl. Oh now this walking thing. Yeah, crawling's not that's not for me You know, it's why kids learn languages so quickly, because they are not afraid to make mistakes and they go through things much more uh rapidly. It's why you

42:14 Teach your kids to learn how to ski early. Because boy, I you know, I just made a decision. Hey, I've never been a skier and I'm just like too old to do it. I think that We are trained to find a happy medium and then make as few changes as possible. Find a partner, get settled down.

42:33 You know to find a job, try to stay. It's a failure. to transition to a new job if you can avoid it. Yeah, that's our entire ma m model. And so we create also in some ways a mental block. around this idea of reinventing oneself.

42:51 You know, you when you are told to reinvent To when you are told to change, your first thing you think about is is it really necessary? Boy, it seems exhausting. I work so hard. To get here. Why would I need to?

43:07 And I think in the most inner psyche of some of us it's That just wasn't the deal. The deal was I did what I was supposed to.

43:19 Went to school, I worked hard, I got a job, I built the brand, I Got to be a manager, I'm making the income, I have the you know, whatever it might be, the partner, the the the family, you know, all this stuff. You're telling me After all this time. I gotta start over.

43:38 Like it. It sounds fun. You read Twitter and you're like, Wow, all these people are doing all this crazy stuff. But in the back here, my Just don't know why. Why did we get here? I I don't I don't want to do it. I want to go back to the world where I can just keep doing things. So I think this

43:55 block. is actually at the heart of the matter today. And it and it's just skill reinvention. And it it requires time. But time is so hard to find in your power years.

44:09 You know, for the reasons we mentioned with so many, you know, your goal when you're in your power years is to equally disappoint everyone in your life. Which sounds like a horrible statement, but it's true. You have to you you have six hours to give, eight hours to give, twelve hours to give, and you have twenty hours of demand. What is your prioritization mechanism.

44:31 I am going to equally disappoint everyone, not disappoint one group. My parents will not be more disappointed than my kids. than my health, then my family, then my friends, and my partner, then my work, then You know, my retirement account. Like that's essentially what your my mindset is. It's I need to equally disappoint everyone. Now you're telling me But the number one thing is to reinvent

44:54 When I'm barely able to manage this this disappointment algorithm, it's quite dark. that I think that you know that there's the setup. And then the worst part is these two other psychological factors. One is Okay. Fine.

45:10 I'll put. The week I'll take a week off. And I'll go figure out what people are doing and what the latest is. And then it turns out three months later that week off. was is now antiquated. You gotta keep doing it because the target keeps changing. It's not like

45:27 I went from not having a job to having a new job and then I kind of br grinned in bear and got through it. And now I'm back in flow. It's like I'm never in flow'cause I gotta keep doing this over and over and over again. And the the most surprisation I made is that the

45:44 The ones that were the best at working in the past. The the ones that mastered the old game. find it the hardest to go through this reinvention stage. It's this sort of shadow superpower thing that I talk about. You know, you've The better you are at mastering one system.

46:03 The less likely you are to sort of recognize the new one. Because your entire world is like this is working to me. And so the weaker you are The more excited you are about changing. Hey, what I'm doing isn't working, might as well change it. But if you're really good

46:21 You have no incentive to change. And perhaps even your employer sees you doing great and the company itself is in this moment. So All of these things whether it's The shadow, whether it's the exhaustion, whether it's the time, whether it's the fact that the target's moving. creates this reluctance to reinvent. But

46:41 The number one piece of advice to answer your question. Is you have to have the courage. You have to believe, you have to have the power to essentially say, look, I know the way we work is changing and I need to stay modern. I need to stay current. So I am going to. cross that mental threshold. And I'm going to prioritize that above all else.

47:01 That crossing the threshold. Is the key. And I'll talk a little bit about how one does that, but I think that I mean, if there was one thing to get away from today's discussion is Every person listening to this podcast needs to find it in themselves to cross the threshold around embracing reinvention. That is the world that we live in now.

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48:39 What I think about as you talk about this is um I don't know if you saw this. They asked all the heads of the AI labs. Like Demis and Sam Altman and Dario just like okay, if everybody agreed. To slow down and stop this stuff. Can would you would you do it?

48:54 And they all said yep. Which says a lot about just like they're all like Oof. Freaked out a bit about how fast everything's going, how much is changing. And then there's the reality of but that is not gonna happen because the

49:09 The game theory of it all is it doesn't work. You can't slow down'cause no no one will actually slow down, whoever doesn't. That's a huge advantage. And so I think a It's just a big part of this.

49:19 Insight is just like this is happening. And there's nothing you can do to slow it down or stop it, and you could either Try to Pretend like it's no big deal and it's gonna be all right. Or you could

49:30 As you said, get over this. hump of just like okay, I need to lean into this and see see what I can do. Well, and and maybe there's a baby version of this that perhaps provides a bit more kind of solace and optimism. A baby version of this is that You know, the way that people did let's call it product management back in the day when HP and Cisco

49:53 And AMD and these other companies built products that were, you know, physical hardware. They had long engineering cycles. There is a discipline called product management that was birthed. А на дисплен.

50:06 had a very, very specific a very structured way of working. That was essentially imploded.

50:16 When the internet companies came along. And Google, for one, built the APM program because they felt like, hey, this product thing that exists in the market isn't really What we need. And we're not seeing success. And in fact, we're gonna just train from the beginning this new breed.

50:34 And you know, that then birth to a lot of the current product managers, Microsoft and Meta and other big employers started to kind of create a new New version. And for the first few years. There was it's very jarring.

50:48 Because everything that they did that we they call product management resembled old product management pretty much a name only. And there wasn't like you go to become in a business school, uh, you know, you get a business school degree and all of a sudden you're a product manager. You would have to work You'd have to build some expertise, then you'd have to come in and and help organize and collaborate and all this other good stuff. The next couple of years are gonna be like that. Where

51:12 You know, every three months we're gonna have more agents, different forms of judgment, they're blurring the lines on what the the role responsibility. People from different backgrounds coming in, people uh leaving the it's gonna be kick. But As a couple years go by.

51:29 Things will settle. Companies will be built a certain way, and it won't be that you'll continue to change the way you're working. You'll have reached some form. of optimization. We're just not in that optimization in any way, shape, or form right now. And so The speed of iteration and how you think about look, my job is not to

51:49 move information, my job is to evaluate. I know I have to think through what is success look like, whether this makes sense for the system. It's a totally different skill. But after a couple years There's gonna be some routiness to it. There's gonna be some training, there's gonna be consistency. The job you had next is gonna look like the previous job. Lots of this is so all I'm making a point. is that you need to cross the threshold to stay modern because things are changing.

52:14 But it I don't want to send the point that for the next thirty years you're gonna be on this merit round that's gonna spin s faster and faster and faster. And then you're just gonna have to run off the merry ground and go vomit in the corner. That's not At all when I'm suggesting. I'm just saying that right now Is the moment

52:31 When if you love building you Have to stay current. Because you will be happier and you'll be more relevant. And if you don't love building, you have to recognize The industry is moving away from you. That is the key point. And and I don't think there's a person

52:46 That's looking at the current way of building prior. I don't think there's a person that's been on this podcast that would disagree with that statement. That is a a really empowering point to make there that this is not forever. that it's a couple of years potentially, maybe. I don't know. Could be a little bit longer, but It's not a forever thing where you have to do this, you have to lock in and

53:05 And sacrifice forever. It's uh this is the moment to To get on the rocket, to get on the ship. I don't know. To not miss the the boat. Uh whatever metaphor you want to use. Whatever transportation. So I think that makes That would make me feel better. I think

53:20 The other like I don't know, the the good again, just to remind people, like this, you know, there's a it sucks to have to change. the good, as you shared earlier, comp has never been higher. There's a lot of open roles. Uh people that are embracing this are having a lot of fun. Like your Like most PMs are sitting there all day waiting for stuff to happen, waiting for meetings and approvals and all this lineman and all this.

53:44 PR reviews and now it's like you can ship stuff so often. Right. Good. Maybe just remind us again of anything else there, just to inspire people to like okay, this is worth it. Let's go to the individual you're describing. There's someone who's sitting who's uh really afraid. Who's a builder or

54:01 Who's like man, my job. is changing so rapidly and I'm so nervous and I have to think through what's my career gonna look like. But I I tend to ask the question like, do you really love your day? Like if you put green, yellow, and red next to the meetings you had. And did that for a week and then we looked at the color chart.

54:23 I'll bet you. The vast majority of Oh. PMs that are in a product organization. They show mostly yellow and red.

54:32 And I'm telling you The ones that are moving into more of this build mode. It's mostly green and yellow. And and and and that yet Yet most of them are sitting very, very afraid.

54:46 Feeling stuck. So what I'm suggesting is How do you then transition mentally and then physically into a moment of going from this moment of fear and being on the sidelines to being in the game.

55:01 What I have noticed And this is sort of a big kind of surprise to me is There's a moment where they experience the first joy. And using the new tools. Everyone has a story.

55:14 And it's always different, but it's super personal. It's gonna be like, Oh, I was doing it a certain way, and then all of a sudden I built this thing. And I it oftentimes it's like my partner and I use this app that I built. Or I built a chief of staff app.

55:31 To keep track of my inbox. Or I now manage You know, the lights in my house using this thing, and it's some silly thing. And

55:42 Usually accompanies with a story like and I stayed up all night. Or I Spent a bunch of time talking to my friends or Or or or or or hacking away, or I just spent time talking to Claude about it.

55:56 You know, even my wife has a story. About how She has this business that she's thinking through and she went from using the AIs to you know, do business plan to actually do test market. And

56:09 Everyone has this moment of joy and then they're like hooked. It's like uh they're they're caught a bug. А нами крас the threshold. Between Fear to joy. Enjoy

56:23 is the biggest antidote to burnout. And it creates opportunity. Because the moment you have joy, the moment it doesn't feel like work. And I think most product management Feels like work if you're not building. And we are now moving into a world where product management will be

56:42 Building and joy. not work. So you just need to find a path to get there. And the moment you do, your the rest of your human psyche creates time. Doesn't feel like you're disappointing others and builds energy.

56:57 Because people have more energy than they realize. They're just so exhausted by the monotony of what was defined as product management. And so that is The number one piece of advice is have you found joy? Now there's a class of person who's like none of this is joyful. Like I find the whole thing to be kind of boring, nauseating. I don't really like it. I'm like, well then you're probably not in for the next version of our industry.

57:22 You know, and and you should be respectful of that and you should be honest with yourself. Yeah. There's a lot of product people that are right now very anxious that actually are going to be happier once they cross the chasm. And all they need to do is find a way to create that moment of joy, you know, whether that's an app on their side or the app at your work.

57:43 And if you're a leader listening to this, you should find those moments of joy in your staff. Because that's contagious and it gets people excited. And that's what You know, that's why I like doing what I do. It's like I like building stuff and I caught the bug and uh you know, I'm all there all the time. I mean, you know, I I I try to find T V shows that I can vibe code in parallel to because Well, I wanna watch TV, but I wanna be vibe coding at the same time. It's a good show for vibe coding.

58:09 I think I I a lot of the Amazon Prime shows are good. They're built on books. You know, these books are like they're like structured and all that. So, you know, Alex Cross or You know, Jack Ryan.

58:24 А іноват силая с Uh and you know, when you get older, you stop you you remember shows that you love, but you don't remember the plot. So One time I just binge watch. A season of twenty four.

58:38 The show that I loved when back in the day. But frankly, I watched it and I kinda knew what was going on. But I vibe coded the whole time. Because it was like hey, I'm paying attention here, but I'm staying engaged. Well, let's actually follow this thread. Just like what's what's it? What's your AI stack? What are you using to build and what what are something what is what's something you built and something you've vibe coded? I kind of am pretty all in on Claude these last three months.

59:04 I was uh for a month pretty aggressive on codecs. Um, because I found some of their newer stuff to be uh, especially the with with sort of the highest level of reasoning to be to be quite advanced. I find it hard to switch between tools so I try to standardize to be to be direct. Like the things that I build I build uh a bunch of web properties for my community. So you know, any time I see something that I can obsolete encode.

59:31 I try to build code around it. So If you had a hundred people one natural thing you want people to do is to meet each other. And you know, a hundred people can't meet ninety nine other ears. So it's it's you have to be thought around who's the best person to meet.

59:46 And how do you mash people up? How do you make sure that you match people with people they haven't met before? You know, what are their haves or their wants. That entire thing used to be me sitting down and thinking like, Oh You know, Jay Z would really appreciate meeting Annie. But I don't know if they've met before. Now I write software to do that. I write an agent that

1:00:05 goes in and actually does matching. I read an age uh to figure out hey, what are all the jobs that my head of products are hiring? How do we make sure That we uh make those available, but then

1:00:17 Build a mailing list of folks. who I think when they're interested in work can get matched up automatically. So like the next generation of recruiting. Um, I I think a lot about using AI for content. So when I sit down Um, I have an AI.

1:00:33 that takes questions from people and then it's trained on my content like your And it gives answers. But then I read those questions. evaluate the answers and I'm like, hey, this is a theme I'm hearing. And then I sit down and I write down when do the LLMs and I disagree.

1:00:51 I go through and so all of these things are are Anything that I'm doing that I think I can, you know, replicate. I try to obsolete myself. You know, when I fur started my first job. I asked

1:01:04 The best engineer that I work with, who still is one of the best engineers I've ever met. What what's the what's the definition of a great engineer? And You know, I thought it would be like, Oh, someone who's got this degree or is well versed in this technology stack, he's like, Well

1:01:19 The best engineer I know is my dad. And of course this was before tech in that case, and he's like And my dad definition is still my favorite, which is An engineer is someone who obsoletes themselves from everything they do.

1:01:35 That's the definition of a great engineer. And I've taken that. to every job that I've worked at. And it's funny because you'll run into people that are like, I don't know, I don't want to obsolete myself. That's my job. And I was like, ah, I think if I'm obsolete, they'll be a better job for me.

1:01:52 What AI has done. Is turn that. You know, has basically put an Apal on that. If you can if you you can obsolete by just asking the AIs to do this for you. So why I'm saying that is I'm my stack is what can I do to obsolete anything and everything I do on a daily basis.

1:02:10 That is super cool. I love this I love hearing these stories. Like what I find is the best Uh tactic here is just Solve your own problem. Think about some does not

1:02:20 Right, in your day to day. Or something you just wanna Uh improve and just like And it's like it sounds so easy. All you do is you go to I don't know, lovable or s install cloud code, download codex and just

1:02:32 Tell it. I want to uh build the dashboard to control my sonos. And then it just tells you all like walks you through everything you need to explore. And that's that's a pretty advanced thing to try, but it's just like English. Like It sounds like I have no know how to do this.

1:02:49 Like you just tell it, here's what I want to do, just like a person and it helps you figure it out. Well, and I I agree with you. And then I think the question is like what skill do you have to have? Like for a while I was like oh that's a systems engineering skill because you need to be able to like train, you know, the AIs to go after things. But I'm watching my wife and how she works and she's not an engineer by any means. And she's getting tons of value. You don't even need to be an engineer. You just have to be opinionated on what you want to see.

1:03:15 And know what you want, yeah. Know what know what good looks like. And then the moment that you get it, it's when the light bulb turns on when it wasn't working before. And now you sit down and there's this moment where it's like, hey, I used to have to go and work to do this. But now my agents do this. And then what's the next agent I could do to make my life a little bit better? That's where you catch the bug.

1:03:37 It's such a powerful thought. That your job can be Much more joyful as a product manager. Has any function, but you know, we're focusing on PMs. Just like if you look at your pie chart today of how much happen how happy you are during the day. You can actually be much happier.

1:03:53 In this future. And I think that's hard for people to like really think just realize, Oh wow, okay, I can actually love this job so much more. I did not imagine that. Yeah, and I think that it's because You're staring at change. And I think change is such an alarm bell, it's hard to hear.

1:04:14 The voice that says the thing that you are changing or the things you don't love. Биз є сорф. That it's so scary. You know, and I I respect that. So I think that if your listeners are able to sort of understand that hey, there is a world which is better, but I have to go through the tunnel and the tunnel sucks.

1:04:33 In the tunnel may mean that I'm gonna have to change jobs. I mean my prediction Is the vast majority of people that are listening to this will be in a different job. In the next five years. Because they will either choose to move to something

1:04:48 Because they Will that company will struggle to stay modern, just like we're describing. People need to stay modern, companies need to stay modern. Or their companies are gonna be shed in and re and re returning off staff. And so because change is apparent. I think it's just so deafening. People are very much gunshot to be

1:05:06 uh excited about something that's sort of forced on them. And you know, let's be honest, it's been forced on everyone. And it's not something that they chose. So that that's why I have a lot of empathy, but when I talk to people, I try to dig through. Forget what's happened. And you know, why? How do we make the best out of it? And the best is pretty good.

1:05:25 So say we've convinced the listener, okay. I Nite make a change. I need to lean into this. I need to take this seriously. I can't just sit back and Hope it all works out okay.

1:05:35 And then they Maybe s found a moment of joy. They build something that's super cool and just like this up. What other advice do you have for folks listening to help them be To sort I don't know. Let's not say survive, but just like thrive in this future that is emerging for project. Yeah, I like thrive. I I definitely think that you you know, you find the moment of joy, you have the engineering mindset.

1:05:56 Which is hey, I want to obsolete myself on something that I do today. Again reduce my the the the less joyful parts of my job is a good starting point. I think that you know you have to find ability to increase pace. You know, this is not a job. This is the next two years. Requires a lot of um fire in the belly.

1:06:20 A lot of agency that I know everyone talks about. So For example If you were to leave a job and start a new job, you probably don't view the new job year one at the same pace.

1:06:31 that you you know, viewed your year five in your last job. You need to kind of Bring it. If you have a new relationship. You know, and if you've come off of a long term relationship, my suspicion is your first year of that relationship. You put your best foot on. Y this is what I'm asking. You gotta find that reserve. You've gotta make time. You've gotta maybe disappoint.

1:06:52 others in a way that you haven't in the past in order to create time for you to Stay current. Find that joy. obsolete yourself from the things that are are are not worth it. I think the other thing you have to do is you have to swallow your ego.

1:07:08 You know, I don't want a single person saying, Hey, I was a XYZ leader. I would only consider roles at that same level. I I want people This is an extension of our last conversation is not only is it in vogue to be hands on and I see it's kind of a necessity. I need everyone to sort of say, look, if everything's changing, it doesn't matter what we've done in the past.

1:07:32 That brand. Doesn't matter as we discussed. You have to have an ego list perspective of how to stay current. And you would be not only willing, but actually look for ways. To even take something smaller.

1:07:46 In order to make sure that you're kind of going through the tunnel correctly. I mean Ultimately part of the way we we do we swallow that ego is you stay long term focused. You say, look, if the way we build product is changing so aggressively. My job

1:08:02 used. To spend the next couple years. Being on the boat. That's you know, leaving the station and going to the new world. Once I get to the new world, the cream rises to the top. I'll take my skills, my leadership, and I'll go through it.

1:08:17 In the next few years, if everything's changing I definitely want to be, you know, current and that means you have to have a long term focus. You know, my property is called the Skep. the community and everything, they all kinda come down to this word called the skip. And I Chose that word.

1:08:33 Because the best career advice is always not thinking about the next move, but the move after. Вот the skip job, what's the skip opportunity? Во із воро. It's not about what's an opportunity now and what's the journey. It's about making sure that your skip opportunity is saved. And you are able to get that high salary. you're able to get one of those premier builder jobs. And that's the world that you have to have and the mindset you have to have.

1:08:59 Something you mentioned earlier was really interesting that in the next five years you predict that Most people's jobs will be very different. What are you imagining there? Like will there still be this product manager role? Well PMs need to move closer to engineering. What's kinda like the Venn diagrams or spectrum.

1:09:16 You're seeing of where current PMs may go. Yeah, I I definitely think that there's a world where PMs. Go

1:09:27 To every industry. Has the is what I would call the agents of change. Because the PMs are the ones that can talk. They're the ones that have the broadest view of the organization, but they look at it through the technical lens.

1:09:45 And my hope is that most of our PMs are the first to the tools. And hence they're the change agents within their company. So let's just play this out. In the next year We start to see all these product organizations changing the way they build product.

1:10:01 And all of a sudden The way we build product is gentrified and really, really thoughtful and really far along. And then twelve months later the marketing, the sales organization

1:10:14 The H VAC company that was bought by the pri uh private equity firm. the school down the road. You know, everything's like, boy. We are just not a we're not current. We're gonna get obsolete.

1:10:28 Who do we bring in to be in charge of this change. Well, you know, this person works in the future. We need to get to future. So I'm like really bullish that product leaders Are gonna be like

1:10:42 You know, like those like dandelion, whatever you call it, seeds when you blow it and they just go everywhere. I I have that vision. Meanwhile, I think a lot of people going into product might be coming from design, might be coming from data science, might be coming from engineering. Because The ones that have judgment. The ones that can talk.

1:11:02 The ones that want to stay current. They might be like, Well, well, I don't necessarily want to just stay in my lane. I want I have a point of view as to how this should work. You know, as you said, from a designer point of view. Designers may have a lot of those skills and opinions on what it should look like. Maybe they're

1:11:17 Uh platform won't be the pixels or the visuals, they will be the product itself and they can adjacently move into product. So I think you're gonna see this crazy influx. And then this amazing ex you know, kind of exodus. And then you'll also see folks that are like, ooh, I don't know if I can get in. So th I I know that's a confusing uh kind of Set of three.

1:11:39 changes, but that's explains why so many people have anxiety is all three of these are happening instantaneously. There's a a line. They thought they buried us. They didn't know that we were seeds. That I think about it.

1:11:53 I love that. We're into a lot of the darker. Speaking of that, there's this hilarious tweet that just came out the other day that I have here. Where this guy describes the only four jobs that will remain in the future. Uh so the only four jobs that exist in the future. One is Product engineer vibe coder PM slob cannon. Number two is security SRE infra.

1:12:17 Person. Uh Number three is hot people. Which is like you know, like getting people to buy your stuff, customer service kind of Yeah, like people the way they say remember there are many ways to be

1:12:29 No, th here's how they put it. Present a easy UX to the world is is that category. And then grown ups, which is your Yeah. So Yeah, I think there's I I read that and I I agree with that. I mean I think the adults ex exist and I think anyone that's the top of their field that can talk. And that's that essentially is opinionated I can go broad, that's kinda the third point of hot people. So that's actually that was reminds me so Amole, the head of growth at Anthropic, made this really interesting point that so much of his

1:12:57 Time now more and more is alignment. as a product manager. And we were joking, what's the harder alignment problem? Aligning people in a company or like AI's AGI and Any And it feels like that's like a remaining And it's part of what you described, somebody that can m get shit done.

1:13:14 a change agent. And a big part of that is like what a PM often i is doing a lot of their time is alig creating alignment internally around what There we will be doing what we're prioritizing, that kind of thing. Yeah, and I think that if you r dissect what alignment looks like, a lot of alignment was getting people the right information. The ground level truth.

1:13:34 That problem. is dramatically better. That part of the job. frankly, just absolutely sucked. Whether it was the status report

1:13:44 Or P you know, I I was on projects where There was like Docs that were sent to me, and then I would change the dock to then send it to my boss, and then that boss would send it to some you know, and it was just like this movement of information. where the ground truth was buried in some part of the organization and then there were like all these people that were putting on their spit.

1:14:05 That I think is changing. But to your point. Now someone has to decide and someone has to have an opinion and what to fight for. And that conversation is now much clearer to have. Because you know the ground truth, there's less spin.

1:14:21 You know, the CEO can literally ask their agent, Well, what is the situation? What is how is this performing? What does this customer really want? You know, how does this affect the system? You know, is this really something that we want to change the product to enable? So that conversation can happen. But now people can like fight it out. You know, with with w with real with real credence, right? And And if you're a product person that that really does have an opinion and wants to make a point, you you have a forum.

1:14:47 So alignment won't go away. It's just It's not going to have as much theatrics. And I think a lot of companies that are larger do have theatrics that I think the eyes are gonna remove and I don't know many PMs. There's some that lived for the theatrics, but frankly, most of them were like

1:15:05 This just seems like a frickin' waste of time. I mean it's so telling That eighty percent, I bet you this is the statement, eighty percent if you truly ask. Their you know, your PM do you really want that boss's boss job? But do you want their day? Not the pay.

1:15:21 Not the credibility. Not the stature, but do you want their Bla back to back meetings. I bet you most of them will say no. And what I'm suggesting to you is that answer is gonna change in the next two years.

1:15:35 What's really also interesting is as much as this role is changing. Engineering is changing even more. And In my What I feel like

1:15:45 is that the engineers that will continue to thrive are just are basically gonna become more PM y because the coding part is now gonna be solved and now it's just what should we build? Is this great? Is this the direction we wanna go? Is this gonna what does success look like? So if you're like, Oh shit, my job is changing, just imagine being an engineer right now and how crazy that must feel. Yeah, and I think that the one advantage that engineers have is they think in systems and they think s they think about obsolescence more effectively. So I think that you know when you make a change

1:16:16 You have to decide is this change gonna be sustainable in the product that you're offering? I think an engineer is an edge there. I think it the other edge they have is like I bet you we can build this to be more automated to be some more. Yeah. So I think that every one of us, like the product person, probably has a little bit of an edge in judgment and communication. Engineer's gonna have a little bit of edge in the system scaling. And how does this change a fact?

1:16:43 Folks, the designer's gonna have a little bit of an edge with taste. And All of these things will still remain important. And yeah, obviously people that have all of these will do better than those that have one or two, but the the industry's more than safe, as evidenced by your report, that there's more hiring. And I think

1:17:01 gonna grow. It's just different class of individual is what we're trying to communicate. Uh the design piece is really surprising to me, the fact that the there's data show that the number of design Rolls as plateauing. And just how Teams are just not

1:17:14 Uh valuing design as much as you think. Like you would think that design becomes much more important. As the number of products grows exponentially, that it's like a a way to stand out to build something really beautiful and

1:17:29 and ex and have a really Thought through experience. And it's interesting that that's not happening right now. Also just I've been thinking about like Like there's no world where I'm a great designer. I can't just like use AI and become a great designer.

1:17:43 Unlike an engineer Like maybe a PM. I could become a much better PM with AI. AI is knocking. Like it will, you know, do some cool stuff, but I'm not ever gonna feel like I am a great designer now. So it's really interesting the design isn't m more successful right now with the rise of AI.

1:17:59 And it might be that we just don't know what to make of design. In this era. You know, that might be a piece of it. The other piece might be just like there's Product builders. And then you know

1:18:11 product, uh you know. information movers. And they're split up. I think that there are Pixel generators. And then there are

1:18:20 Taste makers. And I worry that in design, maybe the industry itself conflate design with more Production. And not with taste.

1:18:32 And so I think there's a lot of companies that you would talk to, and even when they were hiring out of design, they were thinking more around we need more production. And great designers are much more case makers. And I think that is probably That bias is entering into the hiring plans in this era that we have today. What a wild time we are living through, Nicole. Holy

1:18:53 Holy moly. Yeah, isn't it funny that neither of us are operational. There are days When I'm like, Man, am I so happy I have the time to work on this? And then other days that I think this is some of the most interesting Like being operational right now is quite a ride.

1:19:10 And so there's good Good and bad. And you know, COVID wasn't easy. I mean there was a lot of challenges around, you know, working and and seeing so much change. There there's always something, but this one This one's you know, everything's being questioned and you know, including how you how you define joy, which I I think is just absolutely fascinating. Chaos as a ladder as as the uh little finger. Famously said.

1:19:33 Um, Nikel, is there anything that we haven't covered? Anything else that you think is important for people to hear? Any other advice, anything you wanna double down on before we Wrap up and get to our very exciting lightning round. I would just say that There's a lot of room to be optimistic right now.

1:19:51 But you have to find it within yourself. to recognize that there is a small Period. Of change and exhaustion that's required to find that Moment of joy.

1:20:04 And I just urge everyone. to find those reserves to get there because once you do it's infectious. But the longer you wait. The harder it is to cross that chasm. And so I really want people to feel optimistic and find that moment of joy.

1:20:21 But I also recognize that there is a lot of activation energy that it takes to get there. And so My hope is that, you know, you you've and there's a lot of people going through it. And so, you know, there's some safety in numbers here, but definitely I urge everyone to try their hand at at rethinking their craft. And just to be clear, you are seeing many people in the community Doing well, enjoying this

1:20:45 Thriving, this is possible. Yeah, it's smiling exhaustion. I see in my community. Everyone and before it was just Exhaustion.

1:20:57 So I take smiling exhaustion over exhaustion. Um, but uh the pace is relentless. I I don't have any uh There's nothing I can say to sugark at that point. What a time to be alive. Well, Nikel, with that we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?

1:21:17 Okay. Go for it. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? You know, Lenny, I'm not a reader. So I don't you know, I don't I I I I hate to s admit this, but

1:21:31 I kind of vibe code instead of most consumption of code right now or content right now. You know, all of the reading I do is like trying to stay up to date, and that was a casualty. You know, so I don't listen to as many podcasts I want to. I don't read as much as I want to. Um, because I have so much information coming from the agents that I have deployed and all the stuff that's going on with. You know, on on Reddit and Next and all that. Uh so I I don't have a great set of book suggestions, not unlike

1:22:02 You know, all your other um all your other guests that are great at this, you know, they they read prolifically. And you know, I I I just don't. I mean I'll tell you I I I read um Okay.

1:22:14 I don't know how much I loved it and I'll just leave it in here in case people are interested, but I read this book called James. Which James is um the story of Huckleberry Fenn. Told from uh Jim's point of view. I thought that was absolutely fascinating.

1:22:33 Because Any time you take a classic And then you look at it through the eyes of someone else, and what you realize is that story is quite powerful, but you know, very haunting. And when you read Huckleberry Finn, you're a kid. So the distinction

1:22:49 between seeing the innocence as not only the book was written from Twain's perspective, who was quite forward thinking, by the way. But You remember you were a kid at the time and now as an adult you see the the book from another angle. I thought that was interesting. I don't know if I'd recommend it to your viewer readers, but I I thought I always look for things that I'm you know. uh unnatural um stories that exist, you know, right in plain sight. So that was an example of that.

1:23:18 I think somebody else has actually recommended that book. So that's the second mention. Uh next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show? You've already shared some vibe coding favorites to be in the background. Anything else? Yeah, I mean, I think everyone's talking about paradise. I I mean, if you haven't watched the season one and season two, it's all Oh season two out? I didn't realize that. Season two just is almost wrapping up and I haven't watched season two yet, but You know, it's a little apocalyptic in nature, but it's absolute.

1:23:46 Fascinating character drama. about how um you know how people deal with you know very, very challenging times. Uh and what motivates individuals. The other one that I really like is Lioness. Which is on Paramount Plus um Lioness is a story uh really about

1:24:05 Uh sort of a covert CIA group. and how they deal with, you know, protecting security for America and the importance and what it means to commit to a bigger cause. I thought that was a r really well written show. So both of those I recommend. I do watch a a ton of television. In uh and and as I mentioned, I I vibe codes to certain shows and these two I don't vibe code to'cause I have to pay attention. That's the new bar.

1:24:34 Okay. Do you have a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love? Could be an app. Could be a gadget could be some Something else. My favorite product that I've discovered of late might be um kinda obvious to a lot of folks, but Uh I um

1:24:50 Yeah, I'm not a car guy. So I'll just start by saying that though I've um enjoyed kind of riding like the the newer electric cars, I just I'm not there's a large large number of people that love cars. I love driving cars and you know, talking about cars and repairing cars. That's like the opposite of me. I just want my car to be super reliable.

1:25:09 Um, and uh I've had a Tesla for a really long time, a Model S for just a long time. And I've had it since pretty much they came out with them. And they uh my daughter recently passed her driving exam. And because she passed her driving exam. Uh one day my wife said, Hey, you know, we gotta get her a car and I was like, We do? I never actually connected with dots that she's gonna need to draw a car. And I was like, Well where's she gonna go? And eventually I'm like, Okay, uh uh maybe we should buy her a car, but she's not gonna drive that much. Maybe I should.

1:25:40 Use this as an opportunity to upgrade my car. And so I drove the latest Teslas. that are out there and the ones with the s the self driving. And The self driving works quite well, just to be clear. I mean, I I've had it now for the last month and about ninety five percent of the time I self drive.

1:26:00 But the most interesting thing is I had no idea that I actually have mild Anxiety when I draw it. That goes away when I self drive.

1:26:11 And I had no idea. And I my my wife noticed it when we were driving up to the mountains one day and it was crazy snowing. And I'm like, We're gonna do it. And she's like, You are so anxious when you drive. And I'm like, I am because Lenny, I've been driving since I was fourteen years old, because I grew up in Kansas. And so I passed the test when you're I was fourteen. So I've been driving literally For nearly forty years. And I had no idea as I've gotten older that this pressing a button and going places and cycle is just so awesome. So anyway, the reason why that experience is interesting. Yeah, and there's the tech and all that. It's just like I look for ways to reduce my anxiety.

1:26:46 Anything that causes anxiety, I try to eliminate at this point in my life. And this is one of them. So that's a cool product for me. I love that as a rule. I've also become all in on self driving. I've had a Tesla for a long time. From the beginnings of their

1:26:59 explorations into self driving and it was always just like I don't know this scary. And now it's the opposite. Like my wife prefers I self drive, even though I drive well. She just like feels safer when the self driving is on.

1:27:11 And there's and there's this like uh in the actual settings they give you a stat of a percentage you're driving is self driving. And they've noted it since uh fourteen point two, I think was the release on like that. So that was like the release that everyone started being like, Wow. It's actually very good now.

1:27:29 And I don't think a lot of people realize that it's actually incredibly good. Like I haven't had a single Concerning moment. This is one of those examples and product where so many people try the previous versions. That when you then tell your friend a lot a lot of people have Tesla's obviously in California, but across the world.

1:27:45 When you tell your friends, a lot of people are like, Oh yeah, I tried it, I turned it off. So I think Tesla's got this unusual challenge of getting people To turn it back on. And obviously the newer hardware is better than the older one and the new software. But once you go through one experience, it can be hard to convince someone to try it again.

1:28:03 And that's an adage and product and certainly applies here. It's the downside of releasing early enough, and sometimes people just have a memory of what it might be. I feel like I feel like this like Uber where you most have to just start hearing about it from your friends. Telling you, hey, I'm doing this thing. Wait, really? I guess I should Try it.

1:28:19 Yeah. Yeah, they ought to just like so uh here's a Tesla suggestion for anyone who's listening is Lenny and I should be able to gift thirty days free to our friends. Of self driving.

1:28:33 People that have turned it off because the referral of that That plus the endorsement allows people to experience it for free and then they can get their monthly subscription. That uh That viral plus enablement, I think, is a is is a growth technique that you know they can have for free from us. Such such a good idea. By the way, I love Mad Max mode. I love the just the personality of the stuff just

1:28:56 I are you a hurry mode m guy or are you a standard mode guy? I flipped between them, but I do feel like I'm hoping that the new release of the software Keeps us in the lane. Like I don't love it changing lines, but it's like where it's trying to hurry a little bit. I'm not going to be able to do it. Okay, uh next question. Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself coming back to in work or in life? Ah, my high school quote in my yearbook. Still is my motto, which is

1:29:29 Uh Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration. uh by Albert Einstein. It's it's something that Um, even an early age, uh and you know, it's not about genius being capital G, you know, I wasn't a New York combat. It was more like Hard work is really what matters in life.

1:29:48 Oh what's interesting. Is If you read that quote, Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine per percent perspiration through the lens of AI. Right. It's absolutely fascinating. 'Cause it turns out the AI will do the perspiration. Unlimited.

1:30:04 So I think what we're leaning towards is we all need to we're moving to a world where we're all gonna be inspired. And it's the inspired individuals in all of us that will that will, you know, essentially continue to proliferate. And don't worry about the perspiration.

1:30:20 But recognize that it it is the perspiration that that is that is a necessity to make things go. So Um anyway, I I I think it's an interesting quote, especially in the today's era. Final question. People may have noticed that we've started collaborating on your podcast and your newsletter. It's this it's such an under appreciated, under I don't know, scene.

1:30:42 Uh Thing that you do. This podcast, this newsletter. It fills such a gap in in the content in out there around product building of just like very tactical import non sugar coated career advice.

1:30:55 Um and it what I love about it is it's not AI most of the time, in spite of this conversation we just had. It's like Very much like your stuff you need to know. uh that is not flashy and shiny AI. Yeah, I all the time.

1:31:09 So I'm gonna give you a chance just to tell people about this the podcast, the newsletter, just What what the what the idea is where they where they can find it. I started this property called SCAP. because I really felt that there was a a dearth of content from operators. Sharing best practices.

1:31:27 with uh with emerging operators. And the idea was look, I had been a founder before, I'd been an executive before. And I wanted to be in a position where I can say, Hey, this is exactly what I experienced, and this might apply to you. And I noticed that most of the podcasts and the content out there Or from folks that

1:31:45 hadn't spent as much time in operating more time in content and and I was kind of the opposite. Then I started building this community that w I spoke about last time, which was You know, about twenty three at the time. Now it's over a hundred and twenty five. Head of products. who are all kind of these builders top of their game and kind of reinventing what product management looked like.

1:32:05 And our goal It was too Collectively share our wisdom as operators. To help people advance in career. And that probably that calling is probably more important now than ever is everything's changing.

1:32:19 Um, and so one of the things that we're launching Next month, but by the time that you know, we end up launching this episode is something called skip dot help. Where we have агент. On about fifty Of our community leaders.

1:32:33 And so you can go and ask a question. It might be preparing for an interview, it might be a question around navigating your current environment. It might even be, you know, how do I build a chief of staff app? And fifty of us. Not just me. will respond.

1:32:49 Uh and this is powered by our friends over at Super Me, which is a great startup that um that actually by having these agents you get the sort of wisdom of the crowds. And so th those are the things that I I love. And and obviously there the community itself is a very um curated group and it's you know, there's an infinite wait list, a lot of people want to be in it. I'm only growing it slowly because I want to maintain trust. But I do have this mailing list called skip dot coach.

1:33:15 Where we share our wisdom to a broader audience, so Um, I know I've kind of gotten every single domain name that starts with Skip. Skip community, skip shows by podcasts, skip coach, skip help, but anyway, go to any of them and you'll triangulate to all of them. I always appreciate Lenny your your support and your help and and and and building this property with me. So it's been it's been great. You know, when I came on, I don't think I had done my podcast yet.

1:33:40 Now I'm about ready to hit my fiftieth episode and you're a big inspiration and you're you're past three hundred, obviously. And so Um You know, it's fun to see uh how things change and then some some how uh how things happen. So it's been great. So fun. Uh I was gonna ask you to show the y domains, but you did. So it's skip.coach, skip.community, skip.sho, and then there's skip skip help is their new one. Skip.help, which is launching around the time this goes out. And then you also have your sub stack. I don't know if one of those takes you there, but it's the skip.substack.com.

1:34:09 Yeah, yeah, exactly. The skip is the name of the podcast and newsletter and skip show takes us to both. Mikael, thank you so much for Being here, this was exactly what I was hoping. I feel like people are gonna leave this being like, Okay, I get it now. I understand what I need to be doing. I appreciate that. And you know, thanks for all you do for the community and for uh all the guests that um

1:34:29 But you know, you c you still have now probably two dozen of the folks on Skip that have been on the show or that will be on the show, so Thanks for supporting uh all of our efforts. We're trying to Help as many product builders as possible and that's a great journey to be on together. It is. Nikel, thank you so much for being here.

1:34:45 Thanks, Laddy. Thanks, everyone. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show.

1:35:05 at Lenny's podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.

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