The Main Thing: Is the product downturn turning around?

Lots of product jobs were cut last year across the board from product management, research, design and development. Luckily there appears to be signs that the economy had a soft landing and hiring is starting to come back.

But there are definitely mixed signals in the market. This week we have an article about the impact on design leadership, people have been posting on social media about development jobs getting 750+ applications, and the Product Manager role continues its trend of being questioned or merged with marketing.

I’d love to know your thoughts as we close out the first quarter of 2024. Have things improved or is it still as bad out there?

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

When You Have to Make a Strategic Decision Without Much Data by Scott D. Anthony
Scott shares three techniques to develop insights: customer insights, new technologies, and connecting two seemingly disparate concepts.

How We're Turning The Company We We Bought into a Force for Good by Pim de Morree
Krisos is a PE company that buys companies and installs flat hierarchies and empowered teams. They share the results of one turnaround.

Product Direction

Overproduction In The Product Lifecycle by Elizabeth Ayer
When exactly software is most vulnerable to overproduction and what can keep it in check.

Selecting The Right Product Metrics (KPIs) by Jason Cohen
A novel system for selecting and presenting product KPIs, satisfying not only the product team, but also stakeholders, executives, and customers.

Continuous Discovery

AI + Design: Figma Survey by Andrew Hogan
What do designers, developers, and executives think about the promise of AI? Figma's new survey aims to find out.

Designers: AI Needs Context by Paz Perez
How UX teams should embrace data to shape AI models.

Continuous Design

90% of designers are unhirable? by Matej Latin
Matej turns down over 90% of the CV's he gets because of the linear process where everything progresses neatly from research to design to implementation.

A Generation Of Design Leaders Grapple With Their Future by Robert Fabricant
Many senior design leaders thought their roles and value were finally established. They now find themselves trying to communicate the value all over again

Continuous Delivery

Navigating The Future Of Frontend by Rem
Rem looks at client versus server, distributed frontends and how the latest breed of frameworks tackle the same problems.

Observability Best Practices: How to Future-proof Your Software by Hayk Petrosyan
Discover the power of observability in software development, bridging the gap between controlled environments and real-world scenarios.

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New Video Released This Week

At UXDX EMEA23, Anderson Gomes, Head of Design at Bol.com, explores his transition from designer to leader, sharing key insights on adapting skills and mindset for successful design leadership, while emphasizing the challenges and rewards of guiding creative teams towards innovation and business success.
👇👇

The job of the Week

Product Manager – Trade Finance
🏬 IBM
📌New York, USA

About IBM
IBM is a global tech leader known for innovations in cloud computing, AI, data analytics, and cybersecurity, with a long history of advancing technology and driving digital transformation across industries.

See role details here

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question was: Are you excited about the prospect of full AI programmers?

This was a close one - it’s pretty evenly split between those who find the vision would help them to prioritise improvements and those who would just ignore it.

A common theme from the comments was how the vision is communicated to people. The vision should be communicated as an aspiration rather than an expectation. If it isn't communicated properly people highlighted that more than just ignoring it many people will actually be demoralised because they feel that they are being set up to fail.

I completely agree with both points of view. I think the aspirational vision is good because we should inspire people to move past the current practices but we need to communicate it that it is a long term aspirational vision rather than an immediate expectation.