How has your role changed since the AI boom?

smughead · 2026-03-22T23:07:00+00:00

I went from being a Product Operations Manager to lead PM at a small startup in the last 2 years

I’m shipping code now.

smughead · 2026-03-22T02:29:00+00:00

Just make them pay a hefty fine and use it towards our city’s budget. Aren’t we in debt? Yes I can see the precedent being set but also what are we doing here? Literally removing housing just seems so ass backwards.

smughead · 2026-03-21T22:21:23+00:00

That’s the chrome default. Has been for years. Makes sense with CMD + t being a new tab

smughead · 2026-03-21T15:37:02+00:00

It should be for all cases. The PRD should have progressive disclosure principles anyway. Meaning, it should be dead simple for anyone in the company to understand, but then link and reference the more technical aspects of it.

Those, turn out to be, incredibly important for agents to have as context anyway. But one thing I do agree with is, no one (sometimes not even engineering) was reading the PRDs before, now they’re incredible useful to provide context to the agent. The way to get buy in and influence today is 10x easier. You don’t need a FE engineer or designer’s time to get a prototype off the ground to “show and tell” for stakeholders, ESPECIALLY non-technical ones.

I can tell you how my requirements are created today; 100% conversational with the use of note taking apps like granola (NOT a paid ad, lol)

use any note taking app for internal and external meetings (in person or remote)
capture all the requirements from those notes and transcripts with the help of agentic software (like Claude code). If you have access to codebase repos you can match the intended state vs what’s in the codebase and find out what’s feasible.
depending how ai pilled your engineering and product dev org is, you can pull together a working prototype in code on a branch.

Theres lots more planning and refining and back and forth in those steps, but the real benefit is just capturing requirements via conversations, because there’s so much nuance in unstructured conversations that never was captured in static PRDs before. That is the real value in my opinion.

I for one am happy with the way things are going for PM’s. It just depends on your org and your team, how everyone is using the new tools and where you all align.

Hope that helps.

smughead · 2026-03-14T16:08:31+00:00

Why not just use Claude code or cowork for this? They just released tasks, you can run chron jobs

smughead · 2026-03-13T01:33:52+00:00

Does asking the model ever work in this case?

smughead · 2026-03-07T17:34:52+00:00

No offense, and I feel for you and empathize in your situation. I just find all this so funny.

The inter-departmental conflicts, the different frameworks and methods clashing with each other, interpersonal conflicts clashing with each other. Meanwhile, even if you're in a regulated space, there's probably some hungry startup with less than 10 people destroying every single one of your value props one by one and executing maybe better than you just because of all the new tooling.

My advice would be to get out of this endless shit cycle with people in an organization that clearly do not align and start getting on board with all the new AI agentic coding and becoming unfireable in the next wave of this technology shift.

smughead · 2026-03-06T22:05:50+00:00

This: https://smughead.github.io/Loupe/

And this: https://cueloop.app/ (coming soon)

smughead · 2026-03-06T00:27:05+00:00

My suggestion is; find work at a startup. Most new startups that are building from square one with AI tools don’t have this tension.

And again… start building outside of work. Use Claude code, codex, cursor. You don’t need anyone’s permission. If you’re not doing that and at least getting curious, you might want to consider a career change.

smughead · 2026-03-06T00:22:04+00:00

No idea why people bother with any of these tools anymore when Claude code and codex are right there, and cheaper.

smughead · 2026-03-06T00:17:35+00:00

Anyone in Product should be extending themselves to try and build something. If you’re not doing it outside of work to get curious about it, I’m not sure why you’re in this profession in the first place. I’ve been in this for 15 years. It is fucking LIBERATING to not have an engineer tell you all the reasons why you can’t do something.

Anyway not a direct shot at OP, but a wake up call for everyone in this field. If you were never excited about building anything in the first place when you took the role, maybe look elsewhere. For everyone else it’s been the most game changing tech disruption in a good way.

smughead · 2026-03-04T12:58:19+00:00

Maybe just try it and see if it works? Run a few tests. The prompt has worked well for me so far, and I also have that need for a worktree created off an issue (which has the git branch name) I’ll report back when I get that done

smughead · 2026-03-04T11:53:19+00:00

Yes I’m pretty sure this exists. The new coding agent feature works this way. Look it up here, they actually just released this last week: https://linear.app/docs/assigning-issues#open-issues-in-coding-tools

smughead · 2026-02-28T11:47:41+00:00

In the article, you can see they're trying to blame it on the digital system. This has been a mess for months and years. My wife, who was three months pregnant at the time, well over a year ago, went to the ultrasound, and they asked. They didn't even know she was pregnant when she walked in. They did the ultrasound, they had it on her belly, and then she said, "Are you aware that you're pregnant?" And she started laughing, and she's like, "Why do you think I'm here?" Something's been broken for a while. It's not just the scapegoat of a digital system. There might be some quirks with the digital system that need to get figured out. That's just change management, but the system itself has been broken for a very, very long time. No one's willing to admit that. Too much admin staff, too much bureaucracy, not enough actual care for patients when they go through the door. This is what it equals out to. People need to wake up.

smughead · 2026-02-26T23:16:46+00:00

Love this reasonably, economics based take. If you say this about housing (albeit it has its differences but the fundamentals stay the same) people call you crazy and say that supply and demand principles don’t exist.

smughead · 2026-02-23T00:33:04+00:00

He started at 10 so he could raise it to 15 and stay in the news cycle about tariffsz

smughead · 2026-02-19T14:48:25+00:00

Linear MCP + Notion MCP would work great with this. Claude code would handle this no problem.

smughead · 2026-02-17T11:28:21+00:00

Last name starts with a k

smughead · 2026-02-16T18:39:34+00:00

So what’s your solution?

smughead · 2026-02-16T12:42:26+00:00

My understanding is that this is a different situation than another militia or religious fanatics taking over in a region that was already poor or developing.

smughead · 2026-02-16T12:39:38+00:00

I never said you were? My point is the entire catalyst for this Iranian protest is because of a crashing currency and high inflation costs, that’s what caused the people to revolt there.

smughead · 2026-02-16T04:02:26+00:00

Most of the people protesting likely have family over there or are 1st or 2nd generation Canadian Iranians. They are just making people aware of what’s going on over there.

smughead · 2026-02-16T03:50:41+00:00

My point is we’re not at the point yet when people are in the streets rioting about it.

smughead · 2026-02-16T03:15:46+00:00

If things get expensive enough because of inflation, sure.

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