Product
The Off-Balance-Sheet Roadmap
Every roadmap has an official version and an unofficial one. The unofficial one carries real risk and doesn't show up anywhere leadership looks, until it does.
Geoff Anderson
Product
Guardrails Are Not Constraints
Move fast and break things works great when you can fix what broke. Surveillance is different: once the data exists and the capability ships, “guardrails” are often just policies standing between power and abuse. Hard constraints aren’t optional.
Product
The Verb Is Not the Moat
TiVo eventually collected $1.6 billion in patent settlements, which was almost enough to distract everyone from the fact that it had lost the actual business a decade earlier. A case study in revenue that funds avoidance.
Wisdom
Product Management, Meet Winston Wolf
You don’t involve Winston Wolf if you have a "strategy." You call Winston Wolf to handle a messy shit sandwich and after it's handled, Winston Wolf does not call you back or visit you. And product managers around the world are nodding their heads right now.
Product
Faith Based Product Development
Faith-based product development runs on one belief: that a leader's confidence can substitute for a plan. Here's how to spot the symptoms before the gap between the story and the schedule collapses on you.
Product
Toxic Product Management
Toxic product management isn't rare — it's just rarely named. After watching one particularly bad case unfold firsthand, here's what actually lets unsuited PMs into roles where they can do real damage.
Product
The Scanner is the Symptom
Substack shipped a scanner to catch AI writing, on a platform whose own growth playbook spent two years rewarding the exact posting volume now under suspicion. A look at what happens when you build enforcement for a problem your incentive structure created — and never touch the incentive.
Product
The Vetting Function Nobody Owns
What a Senate campaign in Maine can teach you about proxy metrics, buyer/user splits, and shipping without QA, yeah, Product Management is a lifestyle
tech
The Fiberglass Plant and the Photomask Writer
Everyone's calling the AI buildout 'industrial.' A fiberglass plant and a photomask shop are both industrial — and only one of them can fund itself.
Product
Übermensch in a Cubicle Farm Pt 5: "The Reckoning"
AI isn't disrupting product management as a category. It's disrupting the execution layer of it specifically. If you've been telling yourself you're on the strategic side of that line, this post is about whether that's true.
Product
The Role That Hollowed Itself Out: A Eulogy for Product Management
The title survived. The ceremonies survived. The Jira boards are still getting groomed. What didn't survive: the function that made product management worth having in the first place. A diagnosis.
tech
Übermensch in a Cubicle Farm Post 4: The Ticket Queue Is Not a Career
Part 4: The promise bifurcated, and many were sold a bill of goods. For most, the grind of the feature factory was lived experience