Context: a small student team, 2 weeks left on a competition deadline, and a working AI speaking-practice app for one niche: people who understand English but freeze when they speak (starting with Algerian students preparing for visa or job interviews).

The debate in our team is whether to add more languages now (bigger addressable market) or stay with one language and one audience until we have evidence of impact.

Here is how I see it, and I would like you to challenge it:

- Narrow: clearer problem, faster to test quality, easier to talk to 10 real users and measure a before/after change in confidence.

- Broad: bigger market story, but each language multiplies QA, content and voice work, and we have no demand data for any of them yet.

Questions:

1. What evidence would you require before expanding to a second segment?

2. How do you present a bigger vision to evaluators without building it?

3. Any examples where going broad too early hurt a product like this?

No link here to respect the rules, but I can share the product if someone is curious.

If you're adding embedded payroll to an existing platform, making it optional seems like the safer choice but then you're maintaining two different experiences for customers who use payroll and those who don't

I want to see whether anyone has dealt with this when expanding a SaaS product into a new service

1. Everyone in the company wants to be a product manager except the product manager.
2. The product manager probably would want to be the product manager without everyone wanting to be the product manager.
3. Being a yes person is the easiest path to keep a career even as you watch your product turn into a lump of mouldy cheese.
4. New tech companies wants a PM with X years experience when the industry / sector is only 0.5 of X years old.
5. Old tech companies want a PM with domain experience + sub domain experience literally down to have you worked in an office that is southward facing if not we don't want you your not experienced enough.

Moan over prayers for product.

EDIT: I can't believe this got so many responses thanks for being a highlight in my 10 month "career break"

A PM in my company recently left, and I got moved to take over their portfolio. Part of the projects handed over included this major feature that they’re already well into the development cycle.

Here’s the problem: it is a customer facing feature which solves a lot of internal problems, but there’s virtually zero actual benefit to the customer. In fact, it even makes life harder for some of them.

I’m now due to present to the whole company about this supposedly new fancy feature the team spent months working on as the new PM. I genuinely have no idea how to defend this feature.

This sub can get pretty negative and pessimistic. I know that people mostly post their negative experiences online, so i'm hoping to see some positive experiences.

Maybe share your #1 tip for job enjoyment as well.

I worked as a BA for 10+ years and still feel it's not my cup of tea. Jumping from meeting to meeting just to discuss the same requirements again and again, try convince different stakeholders and then explain it to Dev and QA. Firefighting almost everyday. Maybe I worked with the wrong teams or I really didn't learn / grow up in the role. Though I work as a fractional PM for very early stage Saas startups, i want to understand from veterans what your day looks like? Is all the theory we learn about PM is actually applied while doing the job? How do you manage work between meetings? How you manage playbooks and other documentation and maintain it over time, If I have to prepare for full time roles for higher package or get freelance work with higher pay, what is your suggestion? Kindly guide me to become a PM

I have found conversations here to be useful because, unlike LinkedIn, the anonymity of Reddit allows a community to discuss topics without the back-drop of self-promotion. In recent weeks I’ve seen more and more screenshots of this sub in my linked in feed.

I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it but it does somewhat sour the feeling of this thread. Maybe that’s just Reddit in general now. Anyone else feel the same, or feel that it isn’t a big deal?

Within our org, there’s very little product leadership. It’s created a culture of product management being essentially project management and not really ever giving proper requirements. It’s closer to ‘let’s build this’, then we all have to figure it out.

We don’t want to throw the person under the bus but we want to call out to management that product as a function is very weak.

How would you go about it?

Anyone here work at a B2B data business that has introduced AI summarisation and/or MCP?

How would you say it has changed user behaviour? Are you noticing a change in the way users navigate to your data on website/dashboards?

Hey,

I’ve started in a small shop with two devs. My tasks include the product and project management. Unfortunately our devs aren’t really capable of implementing stuff to spec, so I thought okay let’s give them leeway but then they don’t think about UX or implications. I’m also told that they’re architecturally weak. Now my solution was to jump in as I’ve worked as a dev for multiple years, but that takes away from time engaging with customers and moving the business further.

How should i handle this situation since ultimately a buggy not functioning mess delivered to late falls on me. I’ve proposed to hire a engineering manager or at least very senior dev but that looks like very slim chances.

Thanks in advance, this situation puts a lot of stress and pressure on me

I am subscriber of both Lenny's newsletter and Stratechery (by Ben Thompson). I have been thinking about both products and their businesses.

The value of lenny's newsletter (including the podcast) is primarily helping mid and mid+ product managers to land a promotion or a better job. The product is the opinions of lenny's guests. If you think about it, you listen to his pods because of his guests. It's a lot of best practices and a lot of takeaways from his guests.

Stratechery is a different product. I subscribe to read and listen to Ben Thompson's opinion and reasoning. That's what I pay for. It's to think better and honestly, it's also intellectual entertainment.

Lenny's business is, by revenue mix, an ads business from the podcast under sponsorship. Lenny has one of the best audience for tech ads - tech managers and executives. They have the corporate budget to spend for tech solutions. You can see the product is more and more skewed for this audience.

Stratechery is 100% subscription. The audience has a certain overlap with Stratechery but not by much I bet. Stratechery is very useful also for tech investment. There are a lot of tech investors. Ben would have helped these folks made a lot of money if they followed his take on Facebook. That's for sure.

I found lenny's podcast is getting more and more skewed towards AI for product managers. It's no longer for me anymore. It used to be much richer in terms of content, like product marketing (April Dunford), Strategy, JTBD, etc. Now it's just like SF AI echo chamber.

What's your take at this moment for Lenny's newsletter and podcast?

I've seen people posting about Winter Arc challenges for other professions. And, I wonder how about PMs having Winter Arc Challenges. It's better late than never. If someone has something, I would like to try it out.

Let's learn, complete challenges, and build together :)

Demo and onboarding videos are usually nobody's job, so they stay outdated until a customer notices.

I built DemoForge to fix that for my team. The demo is a short script: the clicks, plus one line of narration per step. One command records the app with auto-zoom on every click and a voiceover, then exports an MP4. After a release, you run it again instead of re-recording.

Free and open source (MIT): https://github.com/DixitRam/Demo-Forge

Curious how other PMs handle this today.

have two young kids and every job i’ve had has been 50-60 hours a week. looking to downshift to spend more time with the kids while i can. don’t mind taking a pay cut and willing to get out of product.

if you’ve transitioned out or successfully managed to get into a less demanding role, what do you do? how did you land your gig?

I figured out that wireframe is very imp in product management because it helps PMs to show their idea visually and other stakeholders can understand what PMs are trying to show but how to actually make wireframes? What are the things to remember while making wireframes? Are they really matters that much?

I am trying to transit into product management and I see that trying to design and build KPI trees is tricky interesting and essential. Do we have any website with practice questions or answers that help us deep dive, learn by practicing and getting feedback?

In mid June 2026, I was told by my company that I would be let go after a 4 weeks notice.

A lot of emotions, both up and down. 2 school Holidays, an overseas trip and a retirement(my Dad), I have a role in the same industry with a better pay and a great team.

Lessons learnt:

I am not my role

I can survive a few months thanks to emergency savings

Family, sunshine and good friendships are very important

Don't feel emotional after a rejection

Keep moving on after a rejection and say "Not this one"

Use a careers coach(PM related)

Read

Don't be authentic in interviews. Don't lie but tell your careers story how a manager wants to hear.

Watch out for scammers

Stick to your industry in this market. I had interviews with 4 companies, 2nd rounds happened only in my industry. 4/70 applications isn't bad.

Don't let the interviewer dictate the interview, have a conversation

Use AI to your advantage. CV, jobscan, JD review, anything with words, Use AI.

Hi All, I understand the many reasons to vent about product jobs, but I'm a little worried these days by how rarely I have a conversation, see a post, or read about "good" PM jobs.

I'd love to hear from folks who are in a good spot or feeling like they are in a role where they are adding value and contributing. What's your day like? What do you like about the company or the team that helps you?

It is sad to see that many aspiring and current PMs want this job only to get to dictate what to build. It is a seductive thought to be the person who calls the shots.

Many experienced PMs in my company have no substance and yet feel entitled that they should be the ones every partner defers to. Why!? And this stupid idiotic buzzword called strategy. I deeply believe, being good at strategy is an outcome of deep expertise and domain knowledge or experience in solving a breadth of problems that engenders cross pollination. Sigh!

My experience has reaped rewards by being whatever it takes to deliver value. If a PM needs to be an analyst, or a designer or a coder or an interviewer - doesn't matter, get shit done.

Yes, structures matter. And not all places may be suitable for doing whatever it takes or worse people may steal credit and what not. But it's what allows me to sleep at night.

My value system is that of earning a seat at the table by virtue of competence not title.

Hello all - first post here.

With all the AI that is happening how are PMs, Digital PMs finding new content to help drive ad revenue and sign-ups? Is AI doing a lot of that for you now or do you still rely on traditional means (i.e. real journalists, newswires, other content sources etc)
Reason I am asking is we provide content for financial media (business or investing sections - stock market focus). I also do a column every 2 weeks (stocks or commodities) as well as stock market research for readers and am trying to scope out what the next year or 2 looks like for this space. Comments very much appreciated. Brian

There are a lot of people here working on projects of some sort - side projects, startups, podcasts, blogs, etc. If you've got something you'd like to show off or get feedback, this is the place to do it. Standards still need to remain high, so there are a few guidelines:

• Don't just drop a link in here. Give some context
• This should be some sort of creative product that would be of interest to a community that is focused on product management
• There should be some sort of free version of whatever it is for people to check out
• This is a tricky one, but I don't want it to be filled with a bunch of spam. If you have a blog or podcast, and also happen to do some coaching for a fee, you're probably okay. If all you want to do is drop a link to your coaching services, that's not alright

Hi community!
I am a principal PM. I have 10 years experience in a single company - a rather household name in a particular niche of e-commerce saas. We've been working in pods of senior eng,pm,design in a pretty agile web 2.0 way.

Now our work is completely different from what it was 3 years ago. Rules are being overwritten daily. Earlier this year, when engineers sped up so much I almost felt to have become the bottleneck. And after reading few comments and replies on this sub, I am wondering if our collective answer to that wasn't to stop talking to customers? Which is obviously the most time consuming part of the work.

The whole idea of "double diamond" thinking was to speak with wide range of customers, define the most common denominator problems and then speak with them again to validate the solutions, so that your product captures the biggest problems with as many customers with the limited resources you have.

When Claude's (or any of your favorite bots') assumptions are turning out to be pretty good anyways and you have developers to feed work, not talking to customers is pretty tempting. But it feels like the biggest mistake we can make! That's the whole PM job anyways.

And so I am thinking whether the way forward in the era of super personalized software could be to embed ourselves with a smaller set of forward thinking customers. Build bespoke solutions for them, get results quickly and then put engineering and design resources towards what works empirically, not through user research. Would that make sense?

One challenge I see is about going off the traditional pm career path.
And another is that this space super close to customers is often occupied by customer success and solutions teams. And you will cease to be a pm if you start to act as a regular service person for those accounts. So the goal would be to retain the company-wide outlook and strategic leverage.

I'd be keen to hear your thoughts or experience going down this route. I am hearing the word "forward deployed" quite often lately. I am not sure if that's actually what I am imagining. I also wonder what's the best practice in AI native startups?

Thanks for comments!

I have been a PM for a year. It was a promotion. I was very quickly put on a brand new product in an area of the platform I had zero experience in. I am also a secondary product manager for a reporting platform that helped develop in my previous role. For the new product, I succeeded in running an EAP and getting the product to general availability. The ultimate goal of this product was to allow our customers more self service opportunities in one platform area, prove success then make the case for other areas of the platform to move to self service. Basically a centralized admin panel for all of our disconnected platforms.

During this time this product shared a dev team with another related product. It was hard but I got through it. After GA our head of product was promoted. During this time another leader stepped in and has created chaos with new initiatives and value streams. Basically messing up everyone’s roadmaps. I was not able to deliver anywhere close to what I wanted and make some many pivots to still deliver incremental change This leader is also my interim boss.

On Monday I found out that shared dev team for my product is moving to a new ART in 2027. This means my product won’t be resourced at all. I wrote a business case for the future of my product, but it was pretty weak with only 5 months of full customer usage. However it did help me understand what paths I could take.

I reached out to this leader and said I can’t plan for 2027 without knowing resource allocation. I also gave 3 options for where this product could go strategically based on all of the new things that have come up in the last few months and what resourcing each would require.

One option was to catch up with the original roadmap, expanding self service capabilities, integrating AI, and creating deeper connections to the other platforms. Another was to pivot to address the needs of a new customer type we just started serving. And the last was to stop development and merge with an existing product.

The leader pushed it back on me saying that I need to have a plan for our entire admin experience and how to centralize all of our platforms into one admin panel before any resourcing is committed. We are in AOP now. This new product has been GA for 5 months.

How does one deal with this type of chaotic leader?

I feel this leaders expectations are too high? Are they? Or was I wrong to take a slower approach to prove success and then start to think bigger?

Has anyone ever been in this situation before? What did you do?

Am I not thinking correctly that I need committed resources in some form before I can plan?

I am struggling and feel wildly unprepared.

Also none of the other product managers are having to fight for resources or being asked to plan in this way.