[Weekly Retro] Too many layers. Too little judgment.
#279 - May.2026
Hi there!
💡 Here's a quick idea for the weekend:
More PMs will not fix the bottleneck.
Many people are concluding that, as engineers can deliver more in parallel, the solution is to add more PMs.
This observation makes sense with I'm seeing today: More delivery capacity = more options to choose from = more decisions that a PM needs to take.
But I don't think the solution is just increasing the PM:Engineers ratio.
It goes beyond: rethinking how PMs make decisions (high judgement over noise) and how they cut the coordination layers between customer needs and what gets built.
Every coordination step that isn't needed adds complexity, slows the team, and loses clarity.
This is the one thing PM can develop now: the taste and AI-steering skill to choose over an increasing amount of options, keeping the signal-to-outcome product cycle short.
Instead of delegating the hard judgment calls to AI, delegate the coordination overhead.
Let’s go build something great!
¡Saludos!
🎙️ Worth watching
This clip that started this conversation. Ng argues we should rethink the PM:Engineer ratio. The prescription is debatable. Good food for thought.
📖 Good tips for creative work
Interesting framing:
“Claude can't replace taste or imagination, but it can open up new ways of working.”
9 new connectors linking Claude to Adobe Creative Cloud, Blender, Ableton, and others. Tools handle the repetition. Humans owns the judgment.
🤔 Article I've been thinking about
Sena Evren
Copyright only protects human-authored work. How about AI-generated code?
📖 Article I've been thinking about
Kyle Orland
This is a bit odd (and scary). Meta is reportedly tracking employee computer activity to generate training data for AI agents.
🖋️ Quote of the week
“Good design is as little design as possible.” — Dieter Rams
