Industry News

I enjoyed Bill Gates’s post The Age of AI has begun, right until he got to this bit:

When productivity goes up, society benefits because people are freed up to do other things, at work and at home.

The idea that increased productivity gives people more time to do other things that are more useful and fulfilling is a thoroughly-debunked theory. First, there’s the question of what we even mean by “productivity”, especially in the context of the Productivity Paradox:

The...

This is such a great post by Will Larson about onboarding executives into a new role. His recommendations for topics to cover in the first two weeks are especially good. Like this:

Where can the new executive find real data to inform themselves, rather than relying on existing narratives? The best executives will listen to you, but won’t fully believe anything until they’re able to find data to substantiate your perspective. That’s not because they don’t trust you, but because any...

In What we’ve learned from our users about designing for accessibility Andrew Gosine describes how their team lived out one of Slack’s primary design principles, which is to design with users, not just for them:

In another proposed update, we tried to get clever about where we placed a user’s focus when they opened a thread. If there was an unread message, we’d drop them into that first message in the thread. If there were no unread messages, we’d move focus to the message input. We...

The Beauty of Earth From Orbit.

Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation shitshow. This is fine. “If you ask Microsoft’s Bing chatbot if Google’s Bard chatbot has been shut down, it says yes, citing a news article that discusses a tweet in which a user asked Bard when it would be shut down and Bard said it already had, itself citing a comment from Hacker News in which someone joked about this happening, and someone else used ChatGPT to write fake...

As you know, Google has started to roll out the Google March 2023 Broad Core update on March 15th, it should probably continue to roll out through the first half of next week and complete. But like most Google updates, we see tremors and fluctuations during (and sometimes after) the roll out.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Blake Thorne on The LaunchNotes Podcast. I think I’m a little rusty with the speaking thing, but I did have a lot of fun here. We covered a bunch of topics, including how people got into product management before Inspired was published, how to enable autonomy and ownership in product teams, the value of writing and publishing what you learn, and also somehow… my favorite kettle. Give it a listen if you’re into that sort of thing!

I think about The Fog of War in the context of product management often. The term started as shorthand for an important concept during battle:

The fog of war is the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations. The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding one’s own capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign.

Of course, most of us of a certain age know this concept mainly...

Yesterday, Google began to slowly roll out Google Bard to some initial reporters and also Google opened up a waitlist to users in the US and UK. I personally do not have access just yet, but I have a feeling I might have access soon.

Shift left on go-to-market to build better products is a great post by Frank Tisellano on why product managers have to consider Go to Market efforts while they are still deep in the understanding/planning phase of a project:

Great PMs recognize that building a good product is table stakes and that the way to truly differentiate themselves is by taking a strategic approach to how customers or users find and adopt their products.

In other words, great PMs shift left on go to...

David Poblador writes about The Pitfalls of Hyper-Growth: How Companies Can Do More with Less. Startups tend to operate more with a scarcity mindset at the onset, but as they grow…

As businesses grow, they often rely on flawed indicators of success that do not necessarily correlate with sustainability. One of the most common measures of success is headcount growth. Unfortunately, hiring lots of new employees can create inefficiencies, harm company culture, and reduce productivity....