Best of Product Management — 2025

1
Article
David Heinemeier Hansson·29w
The great falls of Boeing, Intel, and Apple
A critical analysis of how major tech companies like Boeing, Intel, and Apple have declined after appointing CEOs without engineering or product backgrounds. The author argues that it takes approximately ten years for company culture to deteriorate under non-technical leadership, citing specific examples of failed products and strategic missteps at each company. The piece advocates for technical leaders who understand the products they oversee rather than purely business-focused executives.
220
27
2
Article
Work Chronicles·45w
(comic) User Stories for Clarity
A comic strip that humorously illustrates the importance of clear user stories in software development, highlighting common communication challenges between product managers and development teams when requirements lack clarity.
208
4
3
Article
swizec.com·38w
What makes a senior engineer
Senior engineers are expected to go beyond just implementing requirements - they must push back on product decisions, own OKRs and roadmaps, work directly with stakeholders to solve business problems, and champion long-term technical vision. The role involves setting strategic direction, managing multi-month or multi-year projects, and ensuring all team efforts align with the overall technical vision. Engineers who only execute tasks without questioning or strategic thinking typically don't advance beyond mid-level positions.
188
8
4
Article
daily.dev Changelog·33w
The end of notification hell
Daily.dev has completely redesigned their notification system, replacing broad toggles with granular controls that let users choose exactly what notifications they receive and how (in-app, push, or email). The new system covers all aspects including comments, upvotes, mentions, creator metrics, and Squad activities, with specialized controls for admins and moderators. This major refactor unified years of patched notification logic into one centralized, user-controlled system.
178
13
5
Article
Community Picks·50w
What Will Software Engineering Look Like in 2027?
By 2027, software engineering will increasingly rely on AI, transforming roles and workflows. Engineers will need strong AI tool proficiency, product instincts, and systems thinking. Software architects will oversee lean teams integrated with AI, focusing on architecture and business goals. AI pair programming and code reviews will be essential, and continuous verification will replace traditional testing. Remote work and quantum computing will influence the field, demanding adaptability as industry dynamics evolve.
169
5
6
Article
Work Chronicles·34w
(comic) User needs vs. career goals
A workplace comic exploring the tension between prioritizing user needs and pursuing personal career advancement. The comic highlights common workplace dynamics where individual career goals may conflict with user-centered decision making in product development and design roles.
162
4
7
Article
UX Planet·44w
Stop trying to be Steve Jobs and start learning from the losers
Many companies blindly copy organizational models and practices from successful tech giants like Spotify, Google, and Netflix, but this approach often fails because these practices are context-dependent. The Spotify model, for example, has been abandoned even by Spotify itself. Instead of learning from winners who represent survivorship bias, teams should study failures to understand what actually breaks. Success stories are incomplete and don't prove causation - just because successful companies do something doesn't mean it made them successful. Organizations should think from first principles and adapt practices to their specific context rather than treating tech giant approaches as gospel.
156
11
8
Article
Linear·1y
Building what customers need, not just what they ask for
Building innovative products requires balancing customer feedback with strong product vision. While customers may not always know what they need, their feedback sharpens product teams' intuition. At Linear, the Customer Requests feature was designed to collect, organize, and interpret customer feedback, enabling teams to prioritize and act on high-impact needs, especially as companies scale. The goal is to integrate customer context directly into product decisions, ensuring that products solve real problems without merely tallying feature requests.
153
4
9
Article
Medium·35w
The Best Software I’ve Ever Used Was Written by One Person
Solo developers create superior software because they maintain complete creative control and focus on solving specific problems rather than pleasing committees or investors. One-person projects feel more coherent and deliberate, with every feature earning its place through ruthless prioritization. While these tools risk disappearing when their creators move on, they offer an intimate user experience and resist the bloat that comes from corporate growth strategies. The author argues these projects represent acts of resistance against extraction-focused software design, providing focused tools that prioritize user needs over monetization.
140
10
10
Article
Cassidy's blog·16w
I like when apps are "finished"
Software doesn't always need continuous updates to remain valuable. Many applications can be considered "finished" when they accomplish their intended purpose reliably, yet open source projects with older commit dates are often mistakenly labeled as abandoned or unmaintained. The industry should normalize declaring software as complete rather than treating every project as requiring perpetual development and feature additions.
130
18
11
Article
daily.dev Changelog·16w
We fixed duplicate posts in your feed
daily.dev has implemented a deduplication system to prevent the same post from appearing multiple times in your feed when it's shared across different Squads. The system uses a dedup key to track interactions across all versions of the same content, ensuring that once you've seen, upvoted, or interacted with a post, you won't see it again regardless of where it's reshared.
126
15
12
Article
Hacker News·26w
Your data model is your destiny
A product's data model—the core concepts and objects it prioritizes—determines whether new features create compounding advantages or just add to a feature list. Companies like Slack (persistent channels), Notion (blocks), Figma (shared canvas), and Rippling (employee records) succeeded by choosing non-obvious data models that became impossible for competitors to replicate without rebuilding from scratch. As AI commoditizes code execution, the data model becomes the primary moat. Horizontal tools innovate on how products are built, while vertical tools succeed by elevating the right domain objects. The key is identifying the atomic unit of work in your domain and ensuring every new feature strengthens that central concept.
120
2
13
Article
Itamar Gilad·1y
Why Is Product So Hard?
Building successful products that deliver high value is challenging due to three core issues: uncertainty, misalignment of divergent needs, and organizational culture. These challenges persist despite advances in product management, UX design, data science, and growth marketing. Addressing these challenges requires embracing uncertainty, aligning strategic goals across teams, and fostering a supportive organizational culture.
120
14
Article
The New Stack·38w
Software Architecture Is Finally Fixing Its Biggest Problem: Developer Experience
Software architecture should be treated as a product rather than a monument, focusing on developer experience and real-world outcomes. Successful architectures serve multiple users beyond engineering teams, including product managers, designers, and business stakeholders. The key is measuring architectural success through developer productivity metrics like deployment lead time and cross-team dependencies, while building roadmaps that align with business goals and reduce cognitive load for teams.
115
4
15
Article
Codemotion·33w
Why Tech Startups Are Doomed to Die
Tech startups have a 90% failure rate primarily because they're founded by technical teams lacking commercial skills. The main causes of failure include building products without market validation, running out of funds due to poor business metrics understanding, inadequate marketing, and having homogeneous teams without sales expertise. Technical founders often focus on perfect code rather than customer needs, leading to brilliant but useless products. Success requires combining technical skills with commercial acumen, active customer validation, and diverse team composition including non-technical co-founders who can sell and understand market dynamics.
111
16
16
Article
Linear·17w
Design is more than code
Design should focus on understanding and defining problems before jumping to solutions, rather than being reduced to code execution. The design process involves two stages: conceptual (finding the right form and direction based on problem understanding and product vision) and execution (building it out). While new tools and AI make execution easier, there's a risk of devaluing the strategic thinking that happens before coding—questioning problems, aligning stakeholders, and making intentional decisions about product direction. The concern isn't about whether designers should code, but whether the industry will lose the patience for deep consideration and problem-solving in favor of rapid output.
103
17
Article
daily.dev World·47w
We’re sunsetting AI Search
Daily.dev is discontinuing the AI Search feature due to low adoption and the retirement of its underlying technology. The decision allows the startup to focus resources on projects with more impact and prepare for future developments. Daily.dev aims to avoid feature bloat and maintain a fast, focused platform.
94
17
18
Article
Amir·27w
Google Just Made a Subtle but MASSIVE Change
Google removed the num=100 search parameter, limiting results to 10 per page instead of 100. This change significantly impacts LLMs that rely on Google's indexed results, reducing their access to long-tail content by 90%. The shift caused 88% of sites to see reduced impressions and affected platforms like Reddit. The change emphasizes the critical importance of distribution strategy over product quality for startups and businesses, as discoverability becomes increasingly challenging.
92
16
19
Video
Hiten Shah·36w
The REAL reason Duolingo users are deleting the app
Duolingo faced massive user backlash in May 2025 after CEO Luis von Ahn published a memo advocating for full AI automation with the phrase 'humans won't get us there.' While the company had been quietly integrating AI since 2020 and saw stock prices triple, users perceived a drop in content quality and felt the brand lost its personal touch. The crisis escalated when users called new AI-generated content 'AI slop,' leading to viral TikToks, Reddit criticism, and mass app deletions. Duolingo's response included deleting social media content and the CEO later walking back some statements, highlighting the challenge of balancing investor expectations with user experience.
89
26
20
Article
David Heinemeier Hansson·30w
Apple has no one left who can say no
Apple's leadership crisis is evident in failed projects like the $10 billion Project Titan car initiative and the buggy CarPlay Ultra release. The company lacks decisive leadership to maintain quality standards, with products shipping despite significant performance issues like 12fps lag and system crashes. This reflects a broader organizational problem where quarterly earnings take precedence over product excellence, contrasting with founder-led companies that typically maintain higher quality standards.
83
8
21
Article
DEV·32w
From Mid-Level to Senior: Why I Built a Product Thinking Simulator
A mid-level engineer shares their realization that advancing to senior roles requires more than technical skills—it demands product thinking. They built a Product Thinking Simulator, an interactive tool with story-driven scenarios that help engineers practice making strategic decisions about shipping vs. quality, technical debt, and user experience trade-offs.
68
1
22
Article
UX Planet·41w
Dashboard That Works: A Step-by-Step Guide for Startups in 2025
A comprehensive 10-step guide for building effective business dashboards that focuses on setting clear goals, assembling the right team, defining user needs, selecting meaningful metrics, and ensuring proper data preparation. The guide emphasizes collaboration between analysts, designers, and developers, warns against template-only approaches, and stresses the importance of user feedback and iterative improvement. Key principles include limiting metrics to 3-5 meaningful ones, avoiding clutter, automating data entry, and designing for specific user roles rather than trying to serve everyone.
61
1
23
Video
Awesome·43w
The most hyped browser just died...
Arc browser, developed by a team of ex-Instagram and Google Chrome engineers, has officially pivoted away from its original vision after realizing their innovative features weren't being used by most users. Despite having a cult following and raising $50 million, the company discovered that 95% of users simply want a reliable browser without complex onboarding. They're now developing DIA, an AI-native browser that uses agents to interact with web pages instead of traditional user-driven browsing, though the success of this pivot remains uncertain.
61
29
24
Article
Stay SaaSy·27w
How to Compete in SaaS
Competing effectively in SaaS requires actively engaging with competitors rather than ignoring them. Success comes from delivering 'knockdown blows' that force competitors to retreat from overlapping markets by targeting their revenue operations and sales team morale. The key is persistence over cleverness: consistently winning deals to make competing against you a career liability for their sales reps. Competition escalates from marketing battles when you're strongest, to sales when moderately stronger, to product development when evenly matched. Companies that build quickly pose the greatest threat, especially desperate, founder-led startups willing to fight to the end.
58
4
25
Article
thoughbot·17w
How a £20 mirror solved a £35,000 engineering problem (and why you, a Product Founder, CTO or Head of R&D should care)
A hotel elevator problem illustrates how perception management can solve customer complaints more effectively than expensive engineering fixes. Instead of upgrading the elevator motor for £35,000, hotels use simple UX techniques like lit call buttons, floor indicators, mirrors, and small distractions to make waiting feel shorter. The same principle applies to software products: addressing users' emotional experience through feedback, visibility, and reassurance often solves frustration more cost-effectively than performance optimization or rebuilds.
49
4

See all Product Management archives