Check out the conversation on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. What is a builder PM? (1:53) Aakash: PMs are being asked to push PRs, PMs are being asked to code. This is the rise of the builder PM. But what is a builder PM? Today I have Mahesh Yadav, who has been a PM at Microsoft, […]
I’ve interviewed hundreds of PMs, and the strongest ones do something weaker candidates rarely do. They can take a product design example, strip away the visual polish, and explain the underlying decisions that made it work. That’s the skill that changes your interviews, your product reviews, and your day-to-day judgment. Great PMs don’t just say […]
You’re in a product review. A chart on the screen shows that users who finish your onboarding checklist retain better than users who don’t. The pattern looks strong. Engineering effort is scarce. Leadership asks the only question that matters: should we act on this, or are we fooling ourselves? That’s where a lot of PMs […]
You’re probably at one of two points right now. Either you’re a strong Senior PM who can run a roadmap, influence engineering, and ship meaningful product work, but your scope still ends at your own team. Or you’re a first-line PM manager who has learned that managing individual contributors is hard enough, and now you’re […]
Introduction and the four question categories (0:00) Aakash: Companies are hiring AI PMs everywhere right now, but the problem is there isn’t enough data on the internet to know what they’re asking for. I’ve helped over 50 candidates get AI PM jobs paying over $300,000 in the last year. Here’s what I’ve learned about those […]
Introduction and the interview question (0:00) Aakash: Product design is dead. That’s not clickbait. It’s actually what candidates are telling me after their AI PM interviews. AI product managers are making millions of dollars. At OpenAI, the average stock grant per employee is $1.5 million. At companies like Google and Meta, employees are getting huge […]
A bloated story usually looks harmless in backlog grooming. Then engineering asks where to start, design asks what’s in scope, QA asks what “done” means, and the sprint slows down before anyone writes code. That’s the moment when create sub task jira stops being a clerical action and becomes a product leadership skill. The PMs […]
A growth review once opened with applause. Sign-ups were up, activation looked healthy, and the team felt fast. Then the retention cohort closed, renewal conversations started, and the business learned the ugly truth. We had improved motion, not outcomes. The Ten Million Dollar Mistake We Saw Coming Too Late We celebrated a quarter that should […]
I’ve watched teams spend months building polished features that died on contact with reality. I’ve also watched scrappy PMs validate the same core idea with a doc, a fake door, and a week of customer calls, then earn the right to build. That’s the job. Not shipping more. Reducing uncertainty before you ask the company […]
A PM once brought a sprint plan to review with stories like “improve onboarding” and “fix auth.” Engineering didn’t push back. They just spent the next week asking clarifying questions, splitting hidden work, and shipping less than anyone expected. That’s what bad agile story writing does. It doesn’t just create messy tickets. It burns team […]