Novus: Catch and fix usability issues automatically as you ship by @belsito and @seandotexe producthunt.com/products/nov…

The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen. Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation). Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there. Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI. As a result, 1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb. Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more. 2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future). Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire" 3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed. Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies. 4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either. No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money." I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here. Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success". Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.

Hosting an event in NYC for creatives and gen AI founders. Who should we invite?

"The ones who were the best at working in the past, the ones who mastered the old game, will find it the hardest to go through this reinvention stage." Every PM needs to listen to today's episode with @nikhyl. This is the most honest, real-talk conversation I've had about what's actually happening to PM careers right now. We discuss: 🔸 Why the next 2 years will be the most chaotic in PM history 🔸 Why half of today's PMs won't survive the shift 🔸 Why the fancy logos on your resume now matter less than ever 🔸 The 'smiling exhaustion' he's seeing across top PMs 🔸 His prediction: companies shed 30,000, rehire 8,000 — all AI-first Full episode here on X 👇 Also find it on: • YouTube: youtu.be/yUohoaC8_Hs • Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6OO… • Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… Thank you to our sponsors for supporting the podcast: 🏆 @WorkOS — Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs: workos.com/lenny 🏆 @TrustVanta — automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI: .

Me trying to trying to convince @rabois that he's wrong about PMs being unnecessary in the AI era

"I vibe coded an MVP in a weekend and nobody signed up." I hear this at least 3 times a week now. The tools work. The process doesn't. Validate in week 1. Vibe code in week 2. Evidence before architecture. Always.

"we pitched investors when it was just a drawing on a napkin" Think we'll be hearing this a lot less if you can draw it on a napkin, you can prompt it into existence. No excuse to be pre-product unless you're building a robotics startup or something?

X is the worst place to judge how far ahead you are. You're comparing yourself to the top 1% of the top 1%. People who: • Live online • Post daily without fail • And have been doing this for years Step outside. Go talk to your neighbor about AI. About building a personal brand. About making money online. Dude will look at you like you just explained cold fusion. You're not behind. You're surrounded by overachievers and somehow convinced yourself you're the slow one.

👋 Meet Leo—Pendo’s intelligent AI layer, built across the entire platform. Leo surfaces what matters, helps you act in the moment, and brings product intelligence directly into the tools your team already uses. Less digging, more doing. See how Leo is changing the way teams build and manage software: bit.ly/486MN1c

I tried Paperclip - an open source project that lets you set up an "autonomous company" with multiple AI agents. The concept is wild: you act as a board member setting vision while agents coordinate to build and run the company. More >>

This is why we need more people building consumer AI that solves real problems for real people. The ability to task an agent with a responsibility ie: find opportunities to make me an extra $5,000 this month. More than half of Americans have less than $8,000 in their bank account. You can read all of the blogs, books, Subreddits, but nothing comes to close having an agent do work for you while you’re busy at your actual job.

If your friends aren’t talking about Claude Cowork… you need new friends.

Coming soon 👀🦞

I’m an older millennial. We had a pretty great run. We grew up with actual childhoods before everything moved online, but we still got the internet early enough to understand it before it took over everything. We had landlines, AIM, mall culture, good music, and just enough technology to make life fun without making it weird. Old enough to remember life before smartphones. Young enough to adapt to all of it. That was a sweet spot.

No-one is using openclaw X is a bubble. Walk into your local supermarket, how many of them do you think are using openclaw? You are still SO EARLY. Get building.

STATE OF THE PRODUCT JOB MARKET IN EARLY 2026 In spite of the headlines about layoffs and AI taking jobs, we’re actually seeing a lot of promising signs in tech hiring, and some interesting new trends: 1. PM openings are at the highest levels we’ve seen in over three years 2. AI hasn’t slowed the demand for software engineers (at least not yet) 3. AI roles in general are absolutely exploding 4. Design roles have plateaued 5. The Bay Area is increasing in importance 6. Remote work opportunities continue to decline 7. Despite ongoing layoffs, the overall number of tech jobs continues to grow More in 🧵