“I met with a designer yesterday who shared with me that she wants to learn user experience design and asked for my advice. I asked her what she was reading and if she had joined any local groups. What had she found useful so far? She was reading Alan Cooper.”
Lenny Rachitsky compiles practices from six companies known for work trials (Linear, Automattic, 37signals, Gumroad, Auth0, PostHog) into a guide covering what work trials are, why they help, example projects, time and…
This podcast episode features Teresa Torres and Petra Wille discussing how they build conference talks from scratch and how new speakers can get started. They share their distinct processes: Petra works with mind maps…
Marty Cagan argues that companies often confuse product roles, and that one person can legitimately cover more than one role. He focuses on a combination he increasingly recommends: a strong engineering lead or CTO who…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that the best way to develop a team's skills is often a small, intentional learning group rather than either training everyone at once or leaving people to self-direct. They contrast…
Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader struggling with frequent reorgs, arguing they can accelerate careers and offering five tactical moves to position yourself for bigger roles. He then brings in executive coach Katherine…
Cagan argues that many companies remain stuck in failed models of product management because they misdefine the role. Rather than restating what the job is, he lists common misconceptions and explains why each one…
Shreyas Doshi announces a new resource: a playlist of 23 candid video answers to career questions and dilemmas submitted by readers. The announcement frames the content as blunt and practical, aimed at ambitious…
Marty Cagan argues that many product releases fail because the product manager role is poorly defined in companies, and that this is a root cause of wasted release cycles. He defines the product manager as the single…
Teresa Torres, a discovery coach, explains that her high-touch coaching is only available to companies willing to invest heavily, so she is designing a lighter-weight course for individual practitioners. She argues that…
The post, written by a former senior PM turned PM manager, explains how the role shifts from doing product work directly to multiplying a team's output through leverage. It outlines the unexpected responsibilities of…
The piece opens by naming a core cognitive bias that product builders tend to share, framed as four beliefs that reinforce one another. Only the opening line of the source text was supplied, so the full argument, the…
Guest author Terrence Rohan shares how five early employees who joined multiple iconic companies, including Palantir, OpenAI, Stripe, and Spotify, spotted breakout startups early. The post argues that three signals…
Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter answers two reader questions. The first, with guest Lex Roman, argues that a PM can keep designers and engineers motivated around metrics by involving them in the whole measurement cycle…
Teresa Torres describes mentoring a design intern with no prior design background, who is learning interaction design over a summer. Her approach blends reading (Don Norman's and Alan Cooper's books), iterative…
Julie Zhuo argues that as AI systems get better at producing polished work, the traditional signals of skill and craft are eroding, pushing people to ask what human contribution still matters. The essay frames this…
The source text opens by describing a common complaint among product managers: that PMs lack enough influence over product decisions at modern tier 1 software companies. The excerpt is cut off immediately after this…
Julie Zhuo announces the launch of her book on management and offers predictions about how the manager role will change in the era of AI. The piece frames management as a path many product and design people will…
Teresa Torres describes her Continuous Discovery Habits (CDH) community, built on the idea that people learn best in community rather than from reading alone. She explains why she shifted from being the expert to…
Marty Cagan argues that the most important thing a product manager coach brings is the right mindset, not just the right tools. Techniques like 1:1s can backfire if the manager uses them to assign tasks rather than…
Teresa Torres explores how the opportunity solution tree, a continuous discovery tool, can be applied beyond digital products to personal and organizational challenges. Through three examples, she shows how the tree…
Teresa Torres interviews product coach Petra Wille about her path from computer science and concept work at SAP and XING to becoming a general manager and then a coach. Wille argues that product leaders, who often come…
This weekly Q&A from Lenny Rachitsky covers three reader questions: how to communicate a failed MVP to leadership, how a product manager can persuade a founder to change a core idea under board pressure, and what to…
Marty Cagan follows up on his earlier critique of 'process people' hijacking product ops. He notes that 'product ops' has no settled definition, and he has identified at least six different versions in his work with…