Marty Cagan argues that managers of product managers must actively develop their people, since talented PMs will leave for other companies if they lack growth. He presents a gap-analysis skills assessment as the…
Chris Jones, an SVPG partner, describes the hard transition from being a strong individual-contributor product manager to managing other PMs. He recounts advice from his own manager, Steve Roop, that a new hire should…
.@thsottiaux (Head of ChatGPT & Codex) on the skills trending up and down in the AI era. Trending up: great taste, passion to build something that matters, knowing what good looks like. Trending down: typing fast.
Marty Cagan argues that when product managers find themselves working from home, they should treat the unexpected free time as an opportunity rather than a loss. Most PMs struggle to find time for the deep, high-value…
Marty Cagan pays tribute to Bruce Williams, a Silicon Valley marketing leader and close friend who died of pancreatic cancer in May 2016. The essay uses Williams's life to explore two topics important to product people…
“This newsletter just hit a big milestone: one million subscribers. This is both exciting and absurd. No part of me imagined it would reach these heights. What started as an “experiment” just over five years ago is now the world’s largest product newsletter, podcast, and community. I’m feeling very proud. Milestones like these are a great opportunity to pause and reflect, so I put out a call on X and LinkedIn and asked y’all what…”
A guest post by Kyle Poyar compiling 25 low-effort, high-impact quick wins that operators at well-known tech companies used in their first months in a role. The ideas span funnel friction, pricing tweaks, workflow…
Melissa Perri announces the launch of a new podcast, Product Thinking, built around answering questions submitted by the Product Management community. The post previews three example topics: escaping an individual…
Lenny Rachitsky and prompt engineer Mike Taylor ran a blind test to see how close AI comes to doing core product manager work. They argue that most headlines saying AI 'can't do X' rely on weak models and basic prompts…
Teresa Torres recounts a difficult period in 2011 when she was CEO of a struggling startup, dealing with severe anxiety and feeling unable to ask for help. After the company was sold and she stepped away, a master's…
Jason Fried argues that people should not spend much energy thinking about legacy. His core point is to do the best work you can right now, since usefulness later only follows from usefulness today. He challenges the…
Jason Fried defends the continued use of cover letters in hiring, responding to people who think they no longer matter. He argues that a cover letter is the first and most revealing signal of an applicant's effort…
Marty Cagan argues that the most damaging way companies try to scale product management is splitting the PM job across two people, the so-called 'two in a box' anti-pattern. The core problem is that the PM on an…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that product practitioners should trace frameworks and best practices back to their original creators rather than relying on social-media summaries. Simplified takes often dilute the…
Lenny Rachitsky's annual year-end roundup revisits his past newsletter posts and podcast episodes and reorganizes the best of them by reader job-to-be-done, such as sharpening product skills, growing a product, scaling…
Marty Cagan examines the adage that product managers get blamed for failure but rarely credited for success, and asks whether that is fair. He explains that on empowered product teams the product manager owns value and…
In this podcast episode, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille examine why product leaders underinvest in their own development. They argue the real blockers are less about budget and more about stigma around coaching…
Chris Favorite Interview Question describes a hiring question a PM manager can use: ask candidates to rank four work attributes (execution, creativity, strategy, growth) from strongest to weakest. The exercise reveals…
This podcast episode, hosted by Teresa Torres with guest Petra Wille, argues that product leaders are stretched thin by shrinking headcount, AI disruption, and constant context switching, and that they tend to…