The piece argues that organizations asking their teams to find ways to use AI for company benefit are undermining that goal by stripping away the agency people need to experiment and decide. The core claim is that…
The article argues that product and corporate leaders should manage their teams the way professional sports coaches and general managers do: continuously evaluating talent, upgrading skills, and filling critical gaps…
Marty Cagan reviews Tony Fadell's book "Build," written from a CEO's perspective, and argues it is a standout guide to what the best product companies do. Cagan notes that Fadell's advice is deliberately old-school…
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…
“Just recently SVPG Partner Christian Idiodi hosted Shreyas Doshi on his Product Therapy podcast, where they discussed the role of product leadership. If you haven’t yet listened to this interview, I would strongly encourage it, as I loved hearing Shreyas’ thoughts on this critically important topic. You can find the full episode here. Shreyas described... The post Product Leadership Archetypes…”
Lenny Rachitsky and Noam Segal report results from a survey of over 8,200 tech workers on burnout, optimism, manager effectiveness, work setup, company size, career clarity and AI anxiety. The core argument is that…
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…
Lenny Rachitsky relaunches his dormant newsletter as an advice column on growth, product, and leadership, built from reader questions he previously answered privately or on Twitter. The first installment answers three…
Marty Cagan argues there is a wide gap between how the best product companies work and how the majority of companies work, and that many people don't realize how different the two worlds are. He notes that practitioners…
This essay extends an earlier sports-management analogy about actively managing a team's skills and composition, now using gardening instead. It argues that managers cannot simply hire people and wait for results; they…
John Cutler, writing in response to a friend who wanted his unpolished, opinionated view, presents a set of candid operating takes for product and team leaders. The piece's premise is that leaders often hedge or present…
John Cutler introduces a leadership archetype he calls 'The Standard-Setter', a manager who is skilled at advancing their own career while misreading pressure as motivation. The core belief is that everyone has another…
Tal Raviv, a long-time individual-contributor PM, argues that flatter tech orgs demand PMs build their own systems to stay effective and healthy. The post offers practical tactics such as finishing meeting action items…
Cagan argues that beyond empowered teams hitting measurable outcomes, the best product companies also pursue a harder-to-define standard of excellence: desirability, delight, or 'spirit.' He acknowledges the tension…
Marty Cagan describes the Group Product Manager (GPM), a hybrid role between an individual contributor and a first-level people manager, which he has seen work well in fast-growing product organizations. A GPM is…
Marty Cagan distinguishes coaching from mentoring using a distinction he learned from Bill Campbell. Both are valuable, but mentoring is offered as honest opinion the mentee may or may not act on, so the mentor carries…
Executive coach Joe Hudson argues that as AI commoditizes knowledge and effort, the scarce advantage becomes emotional clarity. He lays out a "wisdom stack" of four traits (discernment, productive conflict, willingness…
Teresa Torres argues that product managers often wish their leadership, engineers, designers, and sales teams would behave differently, when the more productive move is to change their own behavior first. For each…