Ranking 15 PM Skills: What Survives vs. Gets Disrupted by AI | Nan Yu (Linear)
Plus a live demo of Linear's AI agents that can analyze user feedback, triage tickets, and code while you sleep
Dear subscribers,
Today, I want to share a new episode with Nan Yu (Linear’s Head of Product).
Despite only having 2 PMs, Linear has scaled to over 15,000 companies including OpenAI and Ramp. In our chat, Nan and I did a fun exercise where we ranked 15 PM skills for the AI era and he also demoed Linear’s new AI agents that can write code, triage tickets, and analyze customer feedback.
Watch now on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Nan and I talked about:
(00:00) Why Linear is a billion dollar company with just 2 PMs
(03:22) Ranking PM skills: What survives vs gets disrupted by AI
(11:10) Why strategy is actually being disrupted by AI
(21:51) The new skills PMs must build: context and agent management
(26:57) Craft vs speed: Linear's 10% rule for shipping fast
(38:09) Live demo: Using MCP to analyze customer feedback instantly
(53:04) Delegating entire backlogs to AI agents with one command
(57:12) Linear's future as an operating system for human-AI collaboration
🎙️ Coming up next on Behind the Craft
Build an AI Co-Pilot for Your Life with Claude Code | Alex Finn
Interview with Claude Code’s Product Lead | Cat Wu
Top 10 takeaways I learned from this episode
Strategic thinking is being disrupted faster than PMs expect. "Strategic thinking and prioritization is something that [AI] is excellent at." LLMs excel at analyzing evidence and reasoning through decisions logically. At the minimum, you should be working with AI as a thought partner on this task.
Product taste remains the most AI-resistant skill. AI handles logical reasoning well but struggles with determining what interactions feel good to users. Product taste comes from talking to users and dogfooding your product to understand what emotions users feel when using your product.