Product managers are both exhausted and energized in the AI boom — a paradox defining tech right now, says former Meta VP of product Nikhyl Singhal.
“It’s smiling exhaustion — I see it in my community, everyone,” he said in an episode of “Lenny’s Podcast,” released Sunday.
On the one hand, AI is making the product manager role more engaging by enabling them to build and test ideas directly with tools like Claude and by simplifying parts of the coordination process. But that upside comes with a catch: the pace of change is relentless, to the point that workers are struggling to keep up, Singhal said.
“I’ve never seen an industry that’s more tired than they are now,” Singhal said of product management. “Nothing’s constant,” and “everyone’s in a state of alert.”
Singhal isn’t alone in describing this sense of fatigue within the tech industry.
In a blog post in February, ONA software engineer Siddhant Khare said that AI tools had made him more productive but also more drained than ever.
Simon Willison, the co-creator of Django, said juggling AI agents is “mentally exhausting” and can leave him “wiped out” before noon, while veteran engineer Steve Yegge warned of a “vampiric effect” that pushes workers to overextend themselves.
Even researchers are flagging the trend: a Harvard Business Review study released last month found that some workers surveyed experienced mental fatigue or “AI brain fry” from excessive use of AI.
On the “Lenny’s Podcast,” Singhal said that AI tools evolve so rapidly that skills can become outdated in a matter of months, creating a persistent sense of unease, even among top performers in certain roles.
“People, even if they’re doing well, they feel more stressed because they worry they’re either not keeping up, or they worry this industry is going to change, and essentially they’ll be roadkill along that way,” he said.
Singhal predicts the next 12 to 24 months will bring “massive shedding of staffs and then massive rehiring,” with new roles focused on AI-first skills.
“If you don’t love building stuff, you’re in trouble,” he said.
“The pace is relentless,” Singhal said. “There’s nothing I can say to sugarcoat that point.”
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