Product leader (Stripe, Twitter, Google, Yahoo) and advisor known for frameworks on product sense and high-agency leadership.
ON TOUGH TIMES AT WORK People are different, and different people need different things to get them through tough times at work — times when work is stressful, or you’re dealing with annoying politics, or just when the motivation tank is running low. For some, it’s energizing
The most important idea that most product people forget somewhere along the way: Everything you do with your product originates in your thinking, so the best (and really the only) path to consistently build successful products is to greatly improve the quality of your thinking.
This happens to smart people because of: 1. Deep-rooted identity of “I am good at product” (vs. “I am good at winning” or something like that) 2. Moral aversion against marketing & distribution 3. A habit of seeking virtue points by proclaiming “I just want to serve my users”
Most mid-career product people who are doing reasonably well make 2 implicit assumptions that affect their quality of life: 1. the ceiling of key product skills is just an inch higher than where they are now (i.e. they’re basically already at the ceiling) 2. the point of any upskilling is to get a…
From coaching 100s of people over the years on career decisions, LinkedIn Envy and the Impact Lie are the root cause of many career regrets of otherwise-smart people. How to avoid such regrets? As with many such situations, the knowledge is the cure:
This is also true in tech careers. A lot of people I speak with are successful by every conventional metric, but they find it difficult to decide what to do next, in their career and their life.
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…
If it is useful to know, this private playlist provides deep, super-candid answers for the following 23 questions, with 1 video for each question: What signals do you look for that indicate a PM is ready to be promoted to the Director level? How do you get better at storytelling? How do you decide…
The source text provided is only the title, subtitle, author, date, and type, with no body content to analyze. The title suggests an essay on the Antithesis Principle, framed as something smart people overlook and wise…
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…
Shreyas Doshi argues that founders and senior leaders in high-leverage roles benefit from clearly identifying what they are really selling, meaning the core value or outcome their product or leadership delivers beneath…
Shreyas Doshi argues that many ambitious mid-career people in tech feel dissatisfied not because of a single failure but because their career growth has stalled relative to their own expectations. Drawing on years of…
Shreyas Doshi argues that blunt feedback can be transformative, but its value depends heavily on the giver's intent and judgment. Feedback delivered bluntly without care or accuracy can cause harm rather than growth…
Shreyas Doshi describes a founder asking whether to go wide or deep, and argues that abstract framings like this feel productive but avoid the decision. The core advice is to push past comfortable generalities toward…
Shreyas Doshi argues that most people are poor listeners and that effective interpersonal communication can be built from a small set of foundational axioms rather than memorized tactics. The core idea is that once you…
The essay argues that as AI makes execution cheaper and faster, the scarce skill for product managers becomes product sense: the judgment to decide what is worth building and why. Mechanical PM tasks like writing specs…
The essay challenges the common assumption that publicly expressed vulnerability signals humility. The excerpt, which is cut off early, suggests the author will argue that vulnerability performed with a veneer of…
Shreyas Doshi argues that when two highly competitive, ego-driven product managers must negotiate with each other, the outcome tends to be poor for everyone involved. The piece frames this as a recurring pattern in some…
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…
Shreyas Doshi describes a counterintuitive lesson he picked up from observing a manager at Stripe: the most persuasive way to win people over is often to stop selling and instead be genuinely candid about tradeoffs…
The essay argues that mid-career professionals tend to believe the ceiling of mastery in their craft sits just slightly above their current level, a belief that feels humble but quietly limits growth. This assumption…
Shreyas Doshi argues that many behaviors large companies encourage, such as answering support tickets, talking to many customers, and responding instantly to email and Slack, are designed to keep average performers…
The source text is a single sentence: 'For high-stakes situations, the outcome is paramount.' Because the full essay is not provided, this summary is limited to that claim. The core idea is that when stakes are high…
Shreyas Doshi argues that a common implicit assumption, that everything should be meant for everyone, is mistaken, and that treating narrow fit as a defect leads people to create and consume poorly. The essay's framing…
Shreyas Doshi argues that clear thinking underpins everything product people do, yet most of us have significant gaps in how we reason. In this year-end essay he offers ten ideas for 2026, framed explicitly as useful to…
Shreyas Doshi argues that peer-reviewed studies on human psychology and behavior are often over-trusted by smart people. Such research typically reports averages and correlations across populations, which says little…