Why half of product managers are in trouble | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google)

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:00)
The skills that used to be really valued in product managers are changing substantially.

**Nikhyl Singhal** (0:04)
It's going to be chaos. Our industry is very much in stress. Nothing's constant. Everyone's in a state of alert. If you talk to product leaders three years ago, their day was largely moving information. The information mover is essentially going to become a dinosaur.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:22)
I just did this report on the job market. Interestingly, we have the most open PM roles globally in three plus years.

**Nikhyl Singhal** (0:30)
This is a complete renaissance for the product industry, but it comes with a lot of strings attached. In the next 12 to 24 months, we're going to see massive shedding of staffs and then massive rehiring. You might see a company shed 30,000 and hire 8,000, but the 8,000 people are going to all be AI first. The builders are going to have the time of their lives, but if you don't love building stuff, you're in trouble.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:56)
What are some things that people should do to thrive in this future that is emerging?

**Nikhyl Singhal** (1:01)
You have to find ability to increase pace. You've got to find that reserve. The next two years requires a lot of fire in the bell.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:11)
Today, my guest is Nikhyl Singhal. Nikhyl is, in my opinion, right now, the number one best source of career advice for product managers and for tech people in general. He was a longtime exec at Meta and at Google, a CPO at Credit Karma. He's also a four-time founder, and he leads the best community out there for heads of product and chief product officers called the skip community. He also has a larger community for tech professionals called the skip coach. And through these communities and his 30 years of building consumer products at scale, and also his podcast, which I've recently partnered with, he is constantly gathering and meeting with and speaking with top product leaders around the world about what's happening and what's changing the lives of product managers and tech workers in general. And the answer is a lot. This is an episode that every single product person needs to listen to. And you won't find a more real talk and actionable overview of what is going on and where things are heading in your career and also what you should be doing about it right now.
Seriously, do not miss this conversation. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennysproductfast.com for an incredible amount of deals available exclusively to Lennys Newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Nikhyl Singhal.
Nikhyl, thank you so much for being here. Welcome back to the podcast.

**Nikhyl Singhal** (2:33)
Yeah, thank you, Lenny. I appreciate version two. All my notes were like Lenny version two. So I'm quite excited about being back on the show.
You've done so well since the last time that I visited and appreciate the opportunity to share with you my current thing.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:51)
Yeah. So you were actually one of the launch episodes, the first 2030 guests that I had on the podcast. This was two or three years ago, something like that, and a lot has changed in the world of product management since then. We're going to be basically spending this entire episode talking about what is changing in the role and the career of a product manager. What I especially love about you, talking to you and hearing your insights is you don't sugar coat what's going on. You're very real about like, here's what you need to know about what is going on. We're going to be talking about the good and the bad, and just a lot of advice for product managers in particular.
To kick things off, give us just the big picture view into what is changing for product managers, the good, and then maybe the scary stuff.

**Nikhyl Singhal** (3:37)
Yeah, it'd be a lot shorter of an episode if we just talked about what didn't change.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:43)
Wow, that's a lot.

**Nikhyl Singhal** (3:45)
Maybe I'll start with this. I think that when we first had chatted, it was like in maybe the end of COVID, I think the ZERP era as we called it, zero interest, free money from investors was just cresting.
We talked about how ICs are now more in demand. We talked about how these first round of layoffs are existing, that ex-growth companies are going to be a struggle. But if you really talk to product leaders that were kind of in that mode maybe three years ago, they weren't very happy.
And what I mean by that is their day was largely a day of moving information from one to another. Let me frame the way that my team is presenting the information to my boss so that that person can frame it to their boss' boss. And generally the function had become extremely focused on responsibility without authority. And so that is the greatest form of workplace stress. Now we don't talk about that. We talk about all the stresses that we have today. Boy, AI is going to replace our function, et cetera, et cetera. But the honest truth is if you think back, if you've been in product for a handful of years, that was a tough time. Now people were being paid well. Layoffs were just starting. The industry was huge. It was the biggest it's ever been. There were more product managers, more CPOs than ever had existed in history.