Marc Baselga

The most AI-native product teams I talk to have moved their reviews to the two ends of the process: the plan, and the launch. I see the same thing in my own work with agents. When the plan is fuzzy, I end up spending a lot of time iterating and doing small fixes, and sometimes it's even faster to just start over. When the plan is really clear, the agents can work autonomously for way longer, so I can have multiple threads going at once and get a lot more done. Writing the plan out also helps me capture my thinking and catch things I wouldn't have caught otherwise. I think AI-native teams work pretty similarly. Time spent agreeing on the plan before anyone builds tends to save you a lot of small tweak rounds later, or rebuilding the thing from scratch. Then before anything ships, I do what you'd do in a real launch review, end to end, at two altitudes. First the high level, whether this is actually going to solve the problem we set out to solve. Then the nitty-gritty, whether the experience feels good, where the rough edges are, how usable it is. What's shrinking is the middle. Mostly that's the status check whose only job is finding out where the work is, and the tweak rounds a better plan would've avoided. I'd still keep the meetings that handle dependencies across teams and reporting up, but if a meeting only exists because nobody can see the work, that's the first one I'd cut.

It's planning season, and I keep hearing it from product leaders. The board wants 3x revenue (or 2x, or whatever the number is). Fair ask. Just don't hand that number straight to your team. On teams I've been on, when a metric got pushed down our throats and we had to report on it every week, we ended up with incremental improvements rather than big innovative ideas. It's really hard to innovate that way, because you don't get the space and the time and the creativity to do something cool. The number still matters, and for a lot of leaders their job can ride on hitting it, so I'd keep it where the whole team can see it. I just wouldn't make it the team's goal. Instead, I'd turn it into two or three of what Radhika Dutt calls "puzzles" (we hosted her for a Q&A in the Supra community recently). A puzzle is a problem nobody knows the answer to yet, one that would actually move the number if the team cracked it. An OKR usually ends up as a number to hit. A puzzle tells the team what to figure out. So every week, instead of reporting on a metric, the team reports what they tried, how well it worked, what they learned, and what they'll do next. She did this at Signal Ocean, a maritime data company. Sales had stalled even though they were setting OKRs by the book. Only tech-savvy brokers were using the product. So instead of jumping straight to fixes, the puzzle became how to serve the less techy people in other roles so the company could grow again, starting with how they actually worked. She says sales doubled within a year. You still owe the board the number, but your team gets to spend the year working on the puzzles.

Before a senior candidate's loop goes on the calendar, look at who's running the behavioral interview. When Austen McDonald chaired engineering hiring committees at Meta, he never let anyone below senior run a behavioral interview, even when there was pressure to widen the pool. His reason was that "you just have to have lived some life." Hand that round to someone without the experience and it can cost you. You might repel a strong candidate, who's also using the interview to figure out who you are. Or you might not get enough signal, and you pass people that shouldn't be passed, or the other way around. Putting someone experienced there takes a senior person's time, and I'd still take that over losing a strong candidate or making the wrong call.

Stripe just launched Treasury for agents. ChatGPT, Claude and other agents can now check a startup's balances, pay invoices and move money between accounts, and the startup picks which accounts they can touch and when a human has to approve. Spending limits are coming in the next few weeks. At some point one of these agents is going to pay the wrong invoice, and someone will have to answer for it. For me, being able to trace what happened is the first thing to get right. If it pays the wrong invoice, I want to open a log and see which invoice it was, what it read to decide, which rule let it through, and whether anyone signed off. That's how you tell whether the agent messed up or we set it up wrong, and I'd want that visibility in place before giving it more room. Then I'd treat it a lot like onboarding a new hire. You wouldn't give someone the company card in their first week. They shadow you for a while, you shadow them back, and they take on more as they earn it. With an agent, I'd set different thresholds for different amounts. It should double-check before anything important, and ask you once when something is ambiguous instead of guessing. I'd also want the product to look out for its customers and flag a setup that could get them in trouble before anything goes wrong, like an agent with access to every account when it only needs one. It'll probably still pay the wrong invoice someday, and so would a new hire. I'd just want it to be a small one.

Someone asked if I'd go back to PM if my companies stopped working. I think that's the wrong question. As a founder you do PM work, actually a lot of it, especially if you're early stage. To me, the more interesting question is "Would you work for someone else again?" That one is a lot harder for me, because I'd have to give up the freedom, learning trajectory, flexibility and agency that come with running a bootstrapped company with very few dependencies. I get to decide what my day looks like, and the only person putting pressure on me is myself. At this point, I don't think I'm willing to give that up for a full-time role. If you've left to build something too and people keep asking you the PM question, it's probably worth asking yourself the second one.

Searching for your next product leadership role but not sure where to look? Every two weeks, I'll be posting a curated list of open Product Leadership Roles at leading companies to help people who are actively looking for jobs. For context: I run Supra, a private community of high-caliber product leaders, so I have access to roles our community members are hiring for and jobs posted in our job-openings Slack channel. Here are the most interesting roles: Prefer to get the the roles via email 📧? Subscribe to this bi-weekly job listing here: buff.ly/8VjyxWy. 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐝 / 𝐕𝐏 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 - LaunchDarkly is hiring a VP, Product Management - buff.ly/cm2iDZN - Zuora is hiring a VP of Product for AI Platform - buff.ly/5lLGk2w - Mistral AI is hiring a VP Product, Cloud & Inference - buff.ly/LrPLYWq - Clarify is hiring a Head of Product - buff.ly/DCTJWiF - Pocket is hiring a Head of Product - buff.ly/OCuLBQ7 - Google is hiring a Vice President, Product Management, Core AI Foundations - buff.ly/5GVlKBp - Modern Treasury is hiring a VP of Product - buff.ly/Pyne3C9 - Hashgraph is hiring a Head of Product - buff.ly/0nocpBT 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫/ 𝐒𝐫 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 - Meta is hiring a Director, Product Management - APAC Products - buff.ly/8X2Cxwy - Uber is hiring a Director, Product Management - Ads - buff.ly/u0cCuD0 - Apple is hiring a Director, Product Management - Platforms (Apple Store Online) - buff.ly/SBvVbWe - Salesforce is hiring a Director, Product Management - B2B Revenue Automation - buff.ly/NsXUhKb - Oscar Health is hiring a Director of Product, Provider Data Management - buff.ly/qPjC5eP - Pinterest is hiring a Director of Product Management, Advertiser Growth - buff.ly/16c91pH - Roblox is hiring a Director, Product Management, Consumer Frontend - buff.ly/8H5pw3K 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩 𝐏𝐌 / 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝 - Google is hiring a Group Product Manager, Architectural Advances, Frontier AI, DeepMind - buff.ly/ZAvgnQW - Apple is hiring a Product Lead, Platform & Monetization, Apple Maps - buff.ly/wR9MHRI - Marqeta is hiring a Group Product Manager - Flexible Payments - buff.ly/cZn7d7a - Anduril is hiring a Senior Software Product Lead, ArsenalOS - buff.ly/voTbfOo - Rippling is hiring a Product Lead, Reporting and Analytics - buff.ly/C3aY9Vs - Discord is hiring a Group Product Manager, Data/ML - buff.ly/PLqZVBr - Airwallex is hiring a Product Lead, Embedded Finance - buff.ly/qeuqeKW - Faire is hiring a Personalization Product Lead - buff.ly/ou9grGG - Coinbase is hiring a Group Product Manager, Compliance Agent Experience - buff.ly/NZldV3Y 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐚𝐥 / 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐏𝐌 - Wild Alaskan Company is hiring a Staff Product Manager - buff.ly/muehrgg - Google is hiring a Staff AI/ML Product Manager, YouTube Shorts Feed Quality - buff.ly/Bwc9T5j - Uber is hiring a Lead Product Manager, Autonomous Vehicle Integrations - buff.ly/uy6kvIA - Twilio is hiring a Principal Product Manager - buff.ly/ArVcN6t - Stripe is hiring a Staff Product Manager, Enterprise (Industries) - stripe.com/careers/listing/s… - Anduril is hiring a Staff Product Manager, Manufacturing Software - buff.ly/JCYLIeT - Dandy is hiring a Principal Product Manager, Crown and Bridge - jobs.ashbyhq.com/dandy/4d89f… - Calendly is hiring a Staff Product Manager, AI Assistant - buff.ly/xzGbHUP - Pinterest is hiring a Staff Product Manager, Content-to-Discovery Infrastructure - pinterestcareers.com/jobs?gh… - Flodesk is hiring a Sr. Product Manager, AI - job-boards.greenhouse.io/flo… - Google is hiring a Senior Product Manager, Google Photos, Search - google.com/about/careers/app… - Uber is hiring a Sr. Product Manager - Consumer Fulfillment - uber.com/careers/list/154532 - Anduril is hiring a Senior Software Product Manager, ArsenalOS Quality - boards.greenhouse.io/anduril… - Verkada is hiring a Senior Product Manager, Access Management - job-boards.greenhouse.io/ver… - JustWorks is hiring a Senior Product Manager, Time - boards.greenhouse.io/justwor… 𝐓𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬, 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐫𝐚 𝐣𝐨𝐛𝐬 portal 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 +80 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 > coda.io/@supra/supra-job-boa… If you know someone looking for a job or hiring, tag them in the comments or repost this post to help spread the word. Follow me (Marc Baselga) to receive these job openings.

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You can finish an entire interview loop and then find out you need more interviews because you were interviewing for the wrong level. I've seen it multiple times. People get all the way to the end, realize they were in the wrong loop, and then either do more interviews or stay at the lower level. Before round one, ask your recruiter "Which level am I being considered for?" and decide whether you'd actually take it. Sometimes you can get upgraded during the process, but just know that it might not happen, and the loop might be a waste of time. If you really like the company, it might be worth taking that risk and trying to argue and convince them to up-level you.

"My problem with AI is that it now excels at the part of the job that was my favorite (writing code) and it leaves me to do the part that I suck at (being a manager)." That's from a Hacker News comment that's going pretty viral. The engineer, who goes by ryandvm, added that in 18 months or so his job satisfaction has gone from "pretty high to abysmal." Not everyone in the replies agreed. Plenty of engineers said they're enjoying building more now, but many others said they feel the same way he does. It's almost the opposite of what I'm hearing in product. I'm involved in Supra, a community of product leaders, so I talk to them all the time, and a lot of them are having a ton of fun right now. I keep meeting leaders who used to run big teams of PMs and are now senior ICs with zero reports, and they're enjoying the work more than ever. They're falling back in love with the craft because they can build things themselves again. I've been trying to figure out why the same tools feel so different depending on which side of the table you sit on. My hypothesis is that what we call product craft was never really about producing artifacts. Most of a PM's job was about deeply understanding the user problems, prioritizing the most important opportunity, and aligning people to build the best solution. And many of us wished we could build the thing ourselves. So getting way more agency over the output with AI feels like a gain. For a lot of engineers, writing the code was the craft, and that's the part AI is taking over. And both groups now spend a big part of their day directing agents. PMs come to it from aligning a room full of people, which is way harder, so it feels like a relief. Engineers come to it from writing code, the part a lot of them loved most, so it feels like they lost the craft and got handed management instead. Their job changed under them, and I wonder how many companies have actually sat down with their engineers and clearly told them the job has changed, the craft has changed, here's what we expect from you now. I'm not sure that reset has happened in a lot of places. So if you work with engineers, check in with them and see how they're doing with all this. Maybe even give them a hug.

The median Anthropic employee spends 20% more time in meetings than a year ago. Even technical individual contributors spend 16% more time in meetings. Anthropic published a report last week on how work has changed inside the company. They put it together from their own data: hiring, calendars and Slack. It's no secret Anthropic has grown a lot, and that's probably a big part of the spike in meetings. But I think another part is that as you create more and move faster, getting aligned becomes even more important. Many of the other numbers point the same way: ↳ Interactive Claude sessions spend around 80% of their time sitting idle, waiting for a human to respond. One engineer put it as people "bottlenecking the agents." ↳ Meta-work, which is basically setting up and keeping an eye on agents instead of doing the task yourself, went from 10% of the average employee's Claude sessions in fall 2025 to 22% in spring 2026. In an April survey, 20% of employees said their role shifted from doing work to managing Claudes, and one engineer said it feels like facing "an army of Claudes, with every one asking for my attention." ↳ There are around 17 engineers for every PM now, and that ratio's gone up since 2025. The share of people on technical teams who aren't actively coding fell by almost half, and commits from managers doubled. ↳ On hiring, juniors went from 27% of technical hires to 9%, and junior roles are just 6% of technical openings now. Around a third of ML managers and a fifth of software engineering managers said they're hiring less because of AI. ↳ Agents show up in nearly half of active public Slack channels. The report calls private work in DMs and unlogged meetings "invisible, confusing and discouraged," and one researcher said "leaders have to defend feedback out in the open." One non-technical employee said "that 20% that was strategic becomes 90% of the job." My read is that AI made a lot of the work cheap. What's scarce now is people's attention and judgment, plus the trust you still build face to face in all those extra meetings, which is basically the job leaders already had. Somebody has to decide which agent output gets a human read, because nobody can read all of it. Somebody has to figure out where judgment comes from when way fewer junior employees get hired, and even the authors admit none of their fixes "directly address the slowdown in junior hires." And since agents only know about decisions that get written down, feedback that used to live in a DM needs a more public home, which I'd guess many leaders find uncomfortable. And to be clear, Anthropic is not a normal company. They build frontier models and use them daily; the company tripled in size in the last year, and the authors say many of its employment practices can't be replicated across the economy. Still, it's the clearest look I've seen at what happens when agents do a lot of the work. And most of what got harder is the people stuff.

If your behavioral round felt like a checklist with no follow-ups, you probably got an interviewer who's too junior or hasn't done many of these. Say they ask "Tell me about a time you disagreed with a teammate." You give a solid answer, they nod, and they move straight to the next question. No "why," no "what happened next." You walk out feeling like you never got to show what you've actually done. We talked about exactly this with Austen McDonald, who chaired engineering hiring committees at Meta, on the latest episode of Supra Insider, the podcast I co-host with Ben Erez. He says less experienced interviewers tend to read down a list and don't ask many follow-ups. So steer it yourself. Before you answer the narrow question, give some context on the project, like the stakeholders you had to align or the hard problem you solved. And if it still stays shallow, I'd tell the recruiter. Something like "I feel like this conversation didn't go super deep, and I didn't get a chance to share X." On Austen's committees, they looked for chances to fill gaps like that, and recruiters will often try to find someone else for a deeper follow-up. I'd lead with what you didn't get to cover and mention the interviewer second. My guess is people appreciate that kind of transparency, but leading with the interviewer can sound like "I'm too good for this." It might not get you a pass, but as Ben put it, it gets you your day in court. Btw, if you've got behavioral rounds coming up, the whole episode is worth a listen.

An L7 principal PM at Amazon started presenting a six-page memo, and two minutes in, everyone in the room could tell he was reading it for the first time. Steve Huynh shared that story from someone in his community who was in the room. Nobody said anything, because he was the most senior person there. Huynh's point is that a six-pager used to be proof the author had done the thinking, and with AI that's just not true anymore. Clay, the go-to-market data platform, has an AI writing policy that gets at the same problem. Sophie Alpert wrote it for their engineering team, and other teams liked it so much that it became company-wide. The first rule is "You must stand behind every idea and every sentence in your docs." So if a reviewer asks what you meant by a line, "Oh sorry, AI wrote that, just ignore it" doesn't count as an answer. Without a policy like this, I think trust is the first thing to go. Once people suspect the author hasn't really lived what's in a doc, they start skimming, and once nobody's reading closely, there's even less reason to think things through before writing, so the bar keeps dropping. I'm not going to get on a high horse about this. I've definitely shared AI-created docs I hadn't fully read, couldn't stand behind every line, and I'm not proud of it. At Insider Loops, Ben Erez and I are trying to hold ourselves to a similar rule. If one of us can't answer for every line, whether it's in a guide or a message to each other, it doesn't go out. We call those slop grenades, and sending one isn't fair, because if you haven't done the thinking, why should the other person take the time to carefully review what AI wrote?

I used to picture the sleazy car dealership guy whenever I thought about sales. Now I mostly think of it as helping someone with their problem and figuring out if there's a match. I hosted a Supra session with four product leaders who left their jobs to go out on their own, and a lot of what they wish they'd known was about selling and distribution, way more than the product itself. Here were some of my favorite nuggets: ↳ One spent way too much time on the customer problem "because I'm a product manager." If you can't prove how you'll reach customers, don't quit yet. ↳ Another built an app, put it out, and nobody saw it, all in about a month. Building isn't the valuable part anymore. ↳ Sit in on sales calls while you still have a salary, as product discovery. The same one says selling ended up harder than the delivery work. ↳ Be shameless about asking. One said nobody's counting how many times you post the same ask. You're going to suck at selling at first, so get comfortable being bad and keep doing it until you're not.

I’m fine with an agent making a few assumptions as it figures things out. I’d just like it to check with me on the ones that could turn into an afternoon of “no, that’s not what I meant.” On Latent Space, Anthropic’s Thariq Shihipar talked about Claude Code’s Ask User Question tool and how it can help the agent draw out what someone wants. As more people use Claude Code, choosing when it should ask gets harder. Some people feel they’ve already given it enough detail and want it to get on with the work. Others need help figuring out the requirements and their own preferences. He thinks almost everyone has more to figure out than they realize, including decisions about how to structure the data that are better settled before it starts building. I use AI tools all day, every day, and most of the time I’m still not totally clear on what I want. The impatient side of me wants the agent to get cooking asap, but I’m also relying on it to help me figure things out as we go. I’m starting to pay more attention to how much time I spend correcting the agent or having to start over because we went down the wrong rabbit hole. At this point, answering a couple of questions at the beginning feels a lot less annoying.

If your interview has a take-home presentation, make it look like you already work there. It's easy, and very few people do it. Ben Erez and I recently talked to a PM who got his offer after a take-home presentation. Before he built his deck, he found a copy of the company's design system that someone had posted online, which is basically the fonts, colors, spacing and icons their own teams use, and had Claude build his slides in it. Now that he works there, he says his slides look just like the internal ones. He also showed the deck to a friend who had sat in a lot of executive reviews, and the main thing his friend told him was to move his recommendation up to slide 2, right after the intro. When he presented it that way, he said the whole room sat up, because they wanted to know why he was recommending it. I talk to a lot of people doing take-homes, and I rarely see this. Before you start on the slides for your next one, search for the company's design system online. If the take-home rules allow AI tools, Claude or something similar can apply it to your deck. If they don't, you can still match it by hand or look for the company's PowerPoint templates. Then give the deck to a friend who hasn't seen it, and ask for more than feedback on the content. Ask whether the structure and the high-level points land, and whether you're really starting with a point of view, ideally with your recommendation right at the top. This detail alone won't get you the job, but if you compound enough of these little details that show that you care and that you are different, that will make a difference in the long run.

Searching for your next product leadership role but not sure where to look? Every two weeks, I'll be posting a curated list of open Product Leadership Roles at leading companies to help people who are actively looking for jobs. For context: I run Supra, a private community of high-caliber product leaders, so I have access to roles our community members are hiring for and jobs posted in our job-openings Slack channel. Here are the most interesting roles: Prefer to get the the roles via email 📧? Subscribe to this bi-weekly job listing here: buff.ly/nbHOLt8. 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐝 / 𝐕𝐏 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 Mapbox is hiring a VP of Product buff.ly/NwpYxwQ Intentsify is hiring a Vice President, Product Management buff.ly/x1670Vi SpotOn is hiring a VP of Product Management buff.ly/OnGCimZ BrightHire is hiring a Head of Product buff.ly/ThYOkmp Rapid7 is hiring a Vice President, Product Management (MDR) buff.ly/JhpLuuu Formlabs is hiring a Head of Product SLS buff.ly/Y6RglU5 General Medicine is hiring a VP Product buff.ly/HXmxHot 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫/ 𝐒𝐫 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 NVIDIA is hiring a Director, Product Management Nemotron buff.ly/PMQTG59 1Password is hiring a Director of Product, AI Growth buff.ly/SSjteSo Verkada is hiring a Director of Business Systems Product Management buff.ly/PHLkioH Moloco is hiring a Director of Product Management, Ads Quality and Performance Moloco Commerce Media buff.ly/1g28ZWf StubHub is hiring a Director of Product Marketplace Policy buff.ly/f3zTBRW Meta is hiring a Director, Product Management Agents and Intelligence buff.ly/R6RiZ6I Google is hiring a Director, Product Management, Cloud Networking buff.ly/XvwOFYt Ethos is hiring a Sr. Director, Product Management, Consumer buff.ly/Q4zAM0C Uber is hiring a Director, Product Management Agentic AI jobs.uber.com/en/jobs/301366… 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩 𝐏𝐌 / 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝 Google is hiring a Group Product Manager, Frontier Model Protection, DeepMind buff.ly/Rr1cRdq Coinbase is hiring a Group Product Manager, Customer Engagement & Experience buff.ly/ZCwSpXO Procore is hiring a Group Product Manager Labor and Equipment buff.ly/M3rr051 Uber is hiring a Group Product Manager, Grocery & Retail Advertising buff.ly/gKn0Prw 1Password is hiring a Senior Group Product Manager (Apono) jobs.ashbyhq.com/1password/0… Juniper Square is hiring a Group Product Manager, AI-Native Data Warehouse buff.ly/9x1gRkD 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐚𝐥 / 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐏𝐌 Meta is hiring a Product Manager Lead, Integrity Measurement buff.ly/Wg3pOD9 Amazon is hiring a Principal Product Manager Technical, Platform Engineering & Emerging Technologies (AWS) buff.ly/ss4uk4u Microsoft is hiring a Principal Product Manager CoreAI (Enterprise Security and Governance) buff.ly/9EAk88Z Uber is hiring a Lead Product Manager Earner Growth Experience uber.com/careers/list/157504 Writer is hiring a Lead product manager jobs.ashbyhq.com/writer/ceb3… OpenAI is hiring a Product Manager, API Agents openai.com/careers/product-m… Anthropic is hiring a Product Manager, Safeguards Rare Harms job-boards.greenhouse.io/ant… Spotify is hiring a Senior Product Manager, Consumer Audiobooks jobs.lever.co/spotify/c5c82f… Citian is hiring a Product Manager job-boards.greenhouse.io/cit… OpenAI is hiring a Product Manager, API Infrastructure openai.com/careers/product-m… Google is hiring a Senior Product Manager, Discover Recommendations google.com/about/careers/app… 𝐓𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬, 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐫𝐚 𝐣𝐨𝐛𝐬 portal 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 +80 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 > coda.io/@supra/supra-job-boa… If you know someone looking for a job or hiring, tag them in the comments or repost this post to help spread the word. Follow me (Marc Baselga) to receive these job openings.

If a recruiter asks what salary you’d accept before you even understand the role, have an answer ready. That’s a pretty expensive thing to wing. Colin LernellI talked about this when Ben and I had him on the podcast. Even experienced product leaders get worn down by the question and eventually give a number because they just want to keep things moving. I’d have something ready along these lines: “I’d like to understand the scope and level a bit better before putting a number on it. What range have you budgeted for the role?” Then think through what you’ll say if they ask again. Colin sees this come up several times during a process, including when someone’s busy prepping for the next interview and tempted to just throw the recruiter a number. The recruiter can leave that conversation thinking that’s what it would take for you to accept. If you learn more about the job and decide you’d need more, you now have to explain why your number changed. You can still negotiate, but you’ve given yourself extra work before you even have an offer. And Colin was clear about the exception too. If they genuinely need an answer to move you forward, getting the offer still matters. I wouldn’t lose an opportunity just to avoid saying a number. Before your next recruiter call, spend a few minutes practicing your answer to the compensation question, including what you’ll say if they push. You’re already putting hours into interview prep. This deserves a little of that time. Ben and I get into this with Colin Lernell on the latest episode of Supra Insider, including what to say when the recruiter keeps pushing for a number. If you’ve got interviews coming up, give it a listen.

Most PM loops we've looked at this year never ask how you use AI. They let the take-home answer it. When there's a take-home, AI fluency shows up in the depth of the submission. People who get a lot of leverage from AI use the same window to go way deeper, with more evidence behind each call and a far more detailed prototype if one's asked for. A beautiful deck and polished writing don't prove much anymore, since AI gives everyone those, and on their own they can read as slop. If your take-home allows AI, I'd spend it on depth over polish. Pick the few calls that matter and go further on those instead of covering everything. Use AI to pull in more evidence behind them, and to build a prototype that actually works, even a rough one. Say up front how you used AI, and keep the thinking yours, because if they ask about your calls, it shows pretty quickly how deep you really went.