Structured AI Context, How PMs are Being Affected by AI, A Conversation with Junior Designers

Episode 40 starts with a quick note that it’s launch week for Dan’s debut novel, The Restoration, then turns to the week’s news. Nik covers Anton Sten’s method for giving AI structured context with two markdown files: a chronological running-notes log and a stricter decisions log with the newest entries first. Dan then walks through Casey Winters’ interviews with product managers about how AI has changed their work. PMs are shipping more without matching business results, prioritization has to be relearned now that engineering scarcity no longer forces it, and trust in AI drops as PMs’ workflows get more sophisticated. Last, they discuss Ron Goldin’s case that “product designer” no longer describes a job, and his replacement of four attributes: Style, Strategy, Builder, and Operator.

In the second half, four recent CMU HCI graduates describe what entering the field is like right now. Lisa, Nava, and Qiyu work in design roles, and Sean is a PM. They talk about a brutal job market (Sean’s company got roughly 80,000 applicants for 14 new-grad roles) and about roles blending as designers write PRDs and PRs they can’t fully verify. They also talk about mentorship increasingly coming from engineers, LinkedIn, and Claude itself. Their organizations handle AI very differently: one product team has banned AI-written PRDs because everyone’s agents reached the same conclusions, while elsewhere design is the last step still done by hand. Their advice to students and educators: learn by doing, build with AI out of curiosity rather than FOMO, keep returning to first principles, and make sure you are the one who actually understands the work.

LINKS

Dan's debut AI novel The Restoration
https://mybook.to/TheRestoration2176

Where Decisions Live – Anton Sten
https://www.antonsten.com/articles/where-decisions-live/

How PM Work Is Changing in the AI Era – Casey Winters
https://www.caseyaccidental.com/p/how-pm-work-is-changing-in-the-ai

Product Designer Is No Longer a Job Description – Ron Goldin
https://rongoldin.substack.com/p/product-designer-is-no-longer-a-job

Gartner Hype Cycle
https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hype-cycle