Week 18: Moar onboarding, how to land that PM job, LILLI, AI 2027 takes and that sweet Lovable magic 🪄

Your weekly roundup of all things product management, technology and work life.

Happy Friday everyone! Welcome back to The Millennial Product Manager, your weekly product manager newsletter.

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On to this week's thoughts and updates:

1. The cylinders are finally firing a bit again, time heals many onboarding wounds

We’re not machines unfortunately. That’s what I have to tell myself anyway every time I get frustrated with the speed at which I’m able to onboard. The brain needs to connect ideas, and it just takes time.

But FINALLY, this week I’m not feeling completely useless. Not all cylinders are firing yet, but I’d say one or two are.

Eureka! Enjoy this beautiful modern art, $10.5 million for prints baby…

It’s nice to be useful again. I’m sure I’ll get knocked back down to earth at some point. But I’m going to enjoy the moment after transitioning to a new job.

Speaking of getting a new job…

2. If you need help landing that PM job, resources below

Let’s face it, the job market is terrible. So I wrote this post on what I believe is the most important factor in you landing a great job as a Product Manager…the referral.

Land that Product Manager Job: How to Get a Great Referral

I spent extra time on this one this week because it’s just that important and I want anyone looking for their first or next opportunity to succeed. In that one is a step-by-step guide and resources, I hope they’re useful.

On top of THAT, you can book time to mock interview with yours truly here! And if you’re a subscriber, let me know and you’ll get a special deal. Let’s get you that job!

3. One of the more useful AI implementations I’ve seen: LILLI @ McKinsey

Unfortunately in this frothy age of AI we’re living in, we’re going to see a lot of what I refer to as AI “fart apps”. Just lots of stuff that’s not that useful leveraging new tech just because. I already lived through it with mobile apps. The cycle continues. 🤷‍♂️

But with all of the froth comes genuinely useful things like Uber, Whatsapp, Doordash, etc. And here’s an example of a great use case:

evolving.ai

A post shared by @evolving.ai

So genius, this is one of those products that makes oodles of sense and has crazy product-market fit. 70% of employees using it?! Of course! Who wouldn’t want to have 100 years of knowledge, pitfalls that no one else has at their finger tips.

I feel this way about the copilot experience I’m building in the construction industry. So useful in cases where other tech just falls flat. I’m excited for this caliber of innovation.

Speaking of fart apps…

4. AI 2027 & a reasonable take on our AI future

I have to admit that I didn’t exactly know what AI 2027 even was until I ran across this excellent

Understanding AI

article first:

Three great articles on the modest pace of AI progress

Mr. Lee does a great job of referencing articles that paint a more realistic picture of where we are with AI and market adoption.

Listen, I’m not going to be Mr. Curmudgeon here. I believe our future with AI is going to be very bright. But I’ve actively participated in one of these huge technology shifts in mobile before. One of the few things I know about big tech shifts like this is that:

1. The future is super murky. It’s extremely hard to know who/what will win/lose.

2. The future happens in fits and starts, which is exactly what’s happening with AI.

So maybe it’s 2027, maybe it’s 2032 or 2037. Maybe it’s OpenAI that wins, maybe it’s Google, maybe it’s DeepSeek, maybe it’s no one, maybe it’s someone we’ve never heard of. Maybe it’s agents, maybe it’s something else we haven’t even foreseen or seen yet.

I’m thrilled to be on the ride, I never thought I’d see this innovation in my lifetime. So in my view, it’s best to keep up as much as you can, stay alert for opportunities and just enjoy being part of it all playing out.

5. My Lovable love affair continues

I’m going to put together a video about this soon, but I wanted to see if I could rebuild my personal website with Lovable instead of paying Framer to host it and it did not disappoint.

A design example and a few prompts later, voila!

The design quality output of Lovable and the way it leverages prior art to make you something great is fantastic. I gave it design examples from Dribbble and it just went to work.

This is the example I gave it, ridiculous…

I haven’t tried many of the other tools yet, but that’s in large part because of how much I love Lovable. And with Lovable 2.0 I can’t wait to see how that makes building on personal projects that much more fun.

More to come here soon, video is in progress…

That's it for this week!

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I’ll be back around this time next week with more useful product manager things!