💡 “The kids are too soft” (and more)
“The kids are too soft”
This is another amazing AHP essay , this time about the critiques of Gen Z employees:
I’ve long argued that the critique of younger generations is a sublimated critique of a generation’s own parenting and child-rearing practices: no one wants to admit that the decisions they made (or tacitly endorsed) are responsible for the type of worker they find objectionable. But that sort of introspection requires, well, work.
It’s well worth reading the whole thing, but I also wanted to highlight the recommendations for what we (Gen X, etc.) can do about this:
So how do we break this cycle? If, upon encountering or even considering the attitude, ambition, or “work ethic” of a younger generation, your impulse begins to drift towards they don’t work like we do , my hope is we consider the following:
How have we, as a society — and how have I, as a leader — helped foster the conditions that encourage someone to work a certain way, with certain habits, or attitudes, or ambitions?
How much of my reaction is to the fact that someone is not working exactly the way I did at that point in my life — even though my circumstances were almost certainly wildly different?
How has our society — or our industry — tacitly agreed on an understanding of excellence that has little room for different ways of navigating the world, of making space to care for others, or collectivism just generally?
What if working differently is also an attempt to keep people in the industry for longer — and make the industry as a whole more sustainable?
What can I learn from the way they’re approaching work?
Thoughts and takeaways from the Lenny and Friends Summit
I spent the day at Lenny’s Summit with over 1,000 other product people. The line-up of talks was fantastic , but you never know how it’s really going to go. I am happy to say that the hit rate of good talks was quite a bit higher than some other conferences I’ve been to. I tried to write detailed notes, and below are my summaries and takeaways from 4 of the talks that I enjoyed the most.
There were also a couple of interviews that were really great—Lenny interviewing Shreyas Doshi and Sarah Guo interviewing Mike Krieger and Kevin Weil (pretty cool to see two major competitors play nice on stage together)—but those were a little harder to summarize so I gave up on note-taking and just listened.
Product Management is Dead (or Will Be Soon) by Claire Vo (LaunchDarkly)
I’ll start with this one since the title is obviously pretty controversial. I expected to disagree with a lot of it, but it was actually really measured and interesting. Claire focused on the rapid transformation of product management due to AI, and outlined the need for product leaders and teams to adapt to these changes. She highlighted the evolving nature of product roles, driven by automation, and offered insights on how to prepare for an AI-powered future.
Key Insights:
AI Will Transform Product, Design, and Engineering.
AI is advancing faster than anticipated, reducing the need for traditional product management tasks and roles.
The key challenge is to not be caught off guard by these changes.
3 Requirements for an AI-Powered Team
Automate to Speed Up Delivery
Use AI to accelerate common tasks such as:
Drafting documents, collecting feedback, writing updates, and creating agendas.
Monitoring goals (OKRs), tracking competitors, and preparing for interviews.
Creating customer stories, enhancing presentations, and explaining product functionality.
Aim to achieve 75% progress quickly with AI assistance, rather than striving for 100% automation.
Add New Skills and Expand Capabilities
The future of product management will include people with technical backgrounds (e.g., engineers) who use AI to gain product skills.
AI will enable individuals to learn and contribute across multiple domains.
Multiply Your Impact by Teaching AI Skills
Encourage your team to embrace AI for building products and improving efficiency.
Normalize the use of AI in everyday tasks to enhance overall team performance.
Impact of AI on Product Teams
Time & Creativity
With product work taking less time and requiring less mental effort, product teams can invest more time in creative problem-solving and direct user engagement.
Fewer PMs Needed
AI will consolidate previously distinct roles, leading to a new model where one person, with the aid of AI, can manage design, engineering, and product functions—creating an “AI-powered triple threat.”
Evolution of Roles
From Product Triad to AI-Powered Generalists
The traditional “product triad” (PM, designer, engineer) is evolving into roles where AI-empowered generalists can handle multiple disciplines.
Teams will need to adapt to this shift without being intimidated by the collapse of traditional job boundaries.
Takeaways for Product Leaders
Prepare for the New World of AI-Driven Product Management
Acquire more commercial and technical skills.
Learn to budget for AI tools and agents that enhance hiring and team structure.
Explore new team topologies beyond the traditional triad model.
Start Adapting Now
AI-driven changes will happen fast. Begin integrating AI into team processes and management strategies immediately.
Summary
Product teams must embrace AI now to remain competitive and efficient.
AI will consolidate roles, but with the right approach, it won’t break your team—rather, it will strengthen and streamline it.
Product leaders must learn to navigate and manage this new, AI-driven world.
→ Read the rest of the summaries here.
The benefits of giving an album a chance
Robin Sloan often seems to speak the words that are in my soul, and this time he really got to me . He bought a cassette tape of the new album by the band OOF and then wrote about the experience of albums vs. playlists:
I bought the cassette tape to play in my car and I’m glad, because it prompted me to listen to the album straight through, which, if I’m being honest, I might never have done on my laptop.
What happened (and this always presages a good experience with art) was that I surrendered to the strangeness, and the strangeness started to make sense. I entered OOF’s world, rather than insisting the band fit into mine, which is, of course, the demand of the Spotify playlist.
You’ve got to give things a chance. You’ve got to let them seep into your brain. […] OOF does not seem, to me, a band made for Spotify playlists. It seems a band made for cassette tapes in the car — for the decision, snap-thunk-whir, to give them a chance, and the slow but sure surrender to the dream of their world.
To be fair, not all albums are worth it—and that’s fine. But giving every album a chance to be worth it is something I think we should all do more of.
Thanks for reading Elezea! If you find these resources useful, I’d be grateful if you could share the blog with someone you like.
Got feedback? Send me an email.
PS. You look nice today 👌