Lenny’s Podcast118 min
Tom Verrilli · Aug 2, 2026
Key learnings- Don't hire a PM by default for every team; hire one only where there is a specific need, since engineers and designers can often…
- Product management is a trade built through repetition, so spreading PM reps to engineers and designers strengthens their…
- Map PMs to problems and six-month company priorities rather than fixed teams, so ownership follows the work and people build…
The Beautiful Mess · John Cutler♥ 49
Aug 1, 2026
John Cutler argues that visual maps of product work, such as value streams, dependency diagrams, or process flows, can create a false sense of clarity and hide real problems. When the underlying system is incoherent, a…
The Beautiful Mess · John Cutler♥ 81
Jul 28, 2026
John Cutler's essay uses the image of a border collie, a dog bred to be intensely focused and productive, to examine the trade-offs organizations make when they optimize hard for a single drive or output. The argument…
Substack · Shreyas Doshi♥ 138
Jul 26, 2026
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…
Lenny’s Podcast102 min
Dianne Penn · Jul 26, 2026
Key learnings- Treat evals as the new PRDs: turn vague user complaints into concrete, reproducible test sets that researchers can act on and…
- Dig into user transcripts, not just pixels, to find where the model actually failed, such as wrong tool calls, bad retrieval, or…
- Keep strong conviction about a theme or area while staying loose about the specific prototype, and revisit bets across one to two…
The Beautiful Mess · John Cutler♥ 63
Jul 26, 2026
John Cutler reflects on his early product career, when a single product manager bundled research, analysis, design sketching, requirements writing, release coordination, support, and even coding into one role. He notes…
@ttorres · Teresa Torres on X♥ 2
NHS clinicians get ten minutes with a generalist, if they can get an appointment at all—leaving little room for the specific, personal questions women's health actually requires. Hertility Health made a longer intake mandatory before purchase, and something unexpected happened: conversion went up…
HEY World · Jason FriedJul 24, 2026
Jul 24, 2026
Jason Fried argues that how fast a product is built, how many commits or people went into it, and how many hours were spent are all development metrics about the work, not the product. These measures say nothing about…
SVPG · Marty CaganJul 23, 2026
Jul 23, 2026 · 3 min
Marty Cagan argues that the so-called AI productivity paradox, where teams ship faster but outcomes do not improve, is not really a paradox at all. Most organizations use AI to accelerate the old project model, which is…
@ttorres · Teresa Torres on X♥ 4
How do you build trustworthy AI diagnostic tools in one of medicine's most historically under-researched areas? In this episode of Just Now Possible, Teresa Torres talks with Tulsi Patel (Director of Product and Technology), Lorna Brightmore (Head of Data and AI), and Jack Pickard (Head of…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresJul 23, 2026
Jul 23, 2026 · 3 min
This episode of Just Now Possible features three Hertility team members discussing how they build AI diagnostic tools for women's health in the UK and Ireland. Hertility combines online health assessments, at-home…
@ttorres · Teresa Torres on X♥ 3
I'm seeing a huge difference in performance (in a bad direction) across my evals moving from Sonnet 4.6 to Sonnet 5. Previously, my service ran at temperature 0. I'm wondering what prompt strategies people are using to constrain Sonnet 5 now that temperature is no longer an option.
The Beautiful Mess · John Cutler♥ 54
Jul 19, 2026
John Cutler argues that organizations measuring AI success often fixate on the wrong denominator, counting outputs or usage rather than the outcomes that actually matter. The piece is framed around a simple model for…
Lenny’s Podcast87 min
Elizabeth Stone · Jul 19, 2026
Key learnings- Expect a 'storming' phase with new technology; don't abandon AI, but be deliberate about capturing benefits while limiting costs…
- Let product, design and data people prototype early against a clearly defined business problem, while still working with…
- Invest in source-of-truth data, guardrails for shipping and testing, and review processes where AI output needs verification, and…
@ttorres · Teresa Torres on X♥ 2
🎙️Quality of Evidence You've got behavioral analytics, support tickets, sales call notes, and a feedback inbox that never empties. With all that data coming in, do product teams actually still need to go out and talk to users? In this episode, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres dig into why not all…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresJul 14, 2026
Jul 14, 2026 · 3 min
This podcast episode between Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argues that product teams are flooded with data but that not all evidence carries the same weight. Low-effort signals like support tickets and app reviews are…
The Beautiful Mess · John Cutler♥ 39
Jul 12, 2026
The essay argues that AI does not remove the core difficulties of product and engineering work, namely complexity, coupling, coordination costs, uncertainty, and system decay. What AI changes is the cost, speed, and…
Lenny’s Podcast103 min
Annual AI sentiment survey · Jul 12, 2026
Key learnings- AI is splitting the tech workforce roughly in half: about half feel amplified and energized, while the other half feel redefined…
- Burnout rose sharply from about 45% to 55% in a year while optimism fell, driven less by job loss fear than by being asked to do…
- AI-driven productivity gains may come with a quality cost: people report doing more faster but not better, and worry about…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresJul 9, 2026
Jul 9, 2026 · 3 min
Teresa Torres interviews the founders and CTO of Snapbar, a 14-year-old company that started as a wedding photo booth business, pivoted to a virtual product when COVID eliminated its events, and then rebuilt itself…
Lenny’s Podcast84 min
Adam Mosseri · Jul 9, 2026
Key learnings- Small pods of four to six generalist engineers plus a generalist 'product staff' role can move faster than large specialist…
- As building gets cheaper, spend more time deciding what to build; taste and judgment about strategy become the scarce skills, per…
- Keep investing in tomorrow's senior talent in each function, not just today's, or the organization will regret it in a few years.
Product Talk · Teresa TorresJul 7, 2026
Jul 7, 2026 · 3 min
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that individual contributors can build real leadership skills before receiving a title. They suggest first clarifying what leadership means in your own organization, since official…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 628
Jul 7, 2026 · 23 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky reports results from his second annual tech worker sentiment survey, finding the workforce splitting into those amplified by AI and those destabilized by it. Burnout has risen sharply, career optimism…
The Beautiful Mess · John Cutler♥ 158
Jul 6, 2026
John Cutler introduces an intended-but-unwritten book about thriving at work when you think too much, framing his years of TBM posts as already containing the material. He describes a recent breakthrough that clarified…
The Looking Glass · Julie Zhuo♥ 57
Jul 6, 2026
Julie Zhuo's short essay looks back at what daily life was like during the early Internet, framing the piece around a nostalgic exercise rather than a product or strategy argument. The source text provided is only a…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresJul 6, 2026
Jul 6, 2026 · 6 min
This reading guide kicks off the Continuous Discovery Habits five-year anniversary book club, focusing on Chapter 8, 'Supercharged Ideation.' It argues that generating many ideas, rather than settling on the first one…
The Beautiful Mess · John Cutler♥ 30
Jul 3, 2026
John Cutler reflects on the growing role of AI in product and team work, framing it as something that can play several supporting roles: a scribe that captures notes, a thought partner that challenges ideas, a tool that…
Substack · Shreyas Doshi♥ 42
Jul 2, 2026
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…
SVPG · Marty CaganJun 30, 2026
Jun 30, 2026 · 4 min
Marty Cagan argues that great products are necessary but not sufficient for a great company, because a company known for strong products attracts predatory investors and executives who strip value for quick financial…
Product Talk · Teresa TorresJun 30, 2026
Jun 30, 2026
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille argue that people who feel their problems are too small for AI are mistaken; the real blocker is lack of exposure to what AI is good at. Teresa describes her habit of testing one to-do item…
Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 328
Jun 30, 2026 · 13 min
Subscriber post — summary onlyLenny Rachitsky, introducing a guest post by Colin on AI leverage for product managers, argues that PM work is shifting from coordination toward hands-on building with AI. The post lays out three ladders of leverage…