What it takes to be a top PM today | Robby Stein (Google Search)
Sep 28, 2026 · 19:13
Robby Stein, PM at Google Search who previously led Instagram Stories and Reels at Meta, argues that in the AI era a PM's true value is no longer coordinating work but making great decisions. At the Lenny and Friends Summit he lays out a three-chapter playbook: understand people deeply (using the Jobs to Be Done method from Clayton Christensen's Competing Against Luck, illustrated by a story where his wife's 'jump on the bed' test revealed motion isolation—not cooling or price—was the real buying job), diagnose root causes of why a product isn't working, and refine craft until the product works perfectly and sparks joy. He explains that Instagram Stories' low adoption traced to audience anxiety ('my ex is on it'), which two years of iteration resolved with Close Friends, while Reels' failed ephemeral launch in Brazil taught the team that aspiring entertainers wanted permanent, viral posts. At Google he describes early multimodal shopping experiences where users couldn't describe couches in text, an AI mode that needed Google's trusted maps and ratings to feel complete, and an agent-based tool that uses the product like a user to catch broken or off-spec responses at…
