Hiring

There is a pattern in senior resumes and LinkedIn profiles that makes me more uncomfortable every year. Someone “grew revenue by 38%.” Someone else “reduced costs by $4.2M.” Another “increased engineering productivity by 60%.” Sometimes I know the work behind these lines well enough to know that the link between the person and the number was much weaker than the sentence suggests. It is tempting to call this a problem of dishonest people. My view is that it is worse than that. I believe we built a market that rewards the performance and punishes the truth. In my experience, the candidate who writes “grew revenue by 38%” is more likely to get the interview than the one who honestly describes a shared effort. When the reward for exaggeration is high and the chance of being checked is low, I do not see exaggeration as a personal failure. I see it as the rational response to the system we built. ...

The bar for building has collapsed. Anyone with an AI assistant can produce a prototype, a draft, a working script. That is not the challenge anymore. The challenge is identifying people who can tell whether what was built is right, catch what is wrong, and make the call on what to do about it. That is a different hire than the one most managers have been trained to make. And the stakes are higher now, because your hiring decision is no longer a baseline. It is a multiplier. ...

The Full Stack PM I have always believed in the idea of the full stack product manager. Not because one person should do everyone’s job, but because product work does not respect org charts. Products fail and succeed in the gaps between roles, and when those gaps exist, someone has to step in and own them. Many organizations like clear distinctions: technical PMs, product owners, delivery PMs, growth PMs. On paper, it looks clean. In practice, it often creates waste. Handoffs. Waiting. Endless alignment meetings. Everyone does their part, but nobody owns the outcome. ...

“Why so serious?” The line is memorable because it cuts through pretense. The Joker was not asking for chaos. He was exposing hypocrisy. People pretending this is all very important, very controlled, very rational. When in reality, it is not. Lately, scrolling LinkedIn feels like watching that scene on repeat. Stories proudly shared. Lessons supposedly learned. And beneath them, a disturbing seriousness about work and people that has lost all proportion. ...