“Early in my product career, I wore many hats. I conducted research, analyzed data, sketched interfaces and wireframes, wrote requirements, coordinated releases, answered support questions, and even, shudder, wrote some code. Some of that was empowering. Some of it was amateur hour. But it was all bundled into the loose idea of “product management.””
Marty Cagan argues that product management certification is premature and counterproductive for the software industry. He notes that the field is far from scientific, that software product success rates are poor, and…
Julie Zhuo writes a letter to her 11-year-old daughter about the value of struggling through hard work when AI can make almost anything effortless. The piece frames the problem as a question of cultivating the eye…
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.
Marty Cagan argues that the core of the product manager job is product creation: working daily with designers and engineers to solve customer problems in ways that are both loved by customers and viable for the…
Teresa Torres argues that public portfolios are a poor fit for product professionals, since they encourage over-claiming credit for team work and expose proprietary or employer-owned material. Hiring managers still want…
The article argues that Chief Product Officer roles have multiplied since 2020 as companies become more customer-centric, but the title is inconsistently applied and poorly defined. It distinguishes the CPO, who sets…
Lenny Rachitsky's follow-up report uses data from TrueUp (new tech job openings) and Live Data Technologies (job changes) to map the state of the product job market. It covers a slow recovery, a tilt toward senior PM…
Marty Cagan argues that the best product managers think like owners rather than employees, taking responsibility for outcomes instead of merely completing activities. He draws on Jeff Bezos's shareholder letters to…
Lenny Rachitsky follows up his tech worker sentiment survey by investigating how people who avoid or effectively manage burnout do it. Drawing on open-ended video surveys and interviews, he introduces ARMOR, a five-part…
Teresa Torres, after returning to coding for a product launch following five years away, argues that product managers and designers do not strictly need to code today, but that everyone should learn the basics. She…
Marty Cagan argues that the product management field suffers from a widespread problem: many people become product managers after only a Certified Scrum Product Owner course, which teaches delivery-process rituals…
Marty Cagan argues that most product coaches and trainers are steeped in the feature-team model, which is the opposite of what companies need when moving to a true product operating model. He frames a good coach through…
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…
Marty Cagan responds to a CTO's question about whether a strong product designer and technical lead still need a product manager, arguing the PM's contribution is often invisible or poorly done. He frames the discussion…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille examine the sudden popularity of "taste" as a prized human skill in the AI era. Teresa argues the term is rarely defined, hard to teach, and can disguise personal preference as expertise…
Marty Cagan responds to a public interview with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky by examining alternatives to product managers. He defines product management as owning the value and viability of what gets built, and argues that…
Marty Cagan argues that some of the best product people are not product managers at all, and that many strong product thinkers he knows are engineers. He defines a strong product person as someone obsessed with solving…
Marty Cagan uses the social contract that Stanford's d.school Launchpad course requires of its students as a lens on what strong product leaders must commit to. The contract centers on not complaining about workload…
Lenny Rachitsky shares practical time-management tactics for product managers, who often lack hard deadlines and get pulled into shallow work. The post centers on protecting deep work blocks and keeping a simple…
Teresa Torres argues that reading about a craft, whether storytelling or product management, does not make you good at it. Just as the Pixar story rules circulated widely without producing new Pixar-caliber…