Dec 4, 2025 · 1h 7m · lennys-podcast
Why AI is disrupting traditional product management | Tomer Cohen (LinkedIn CPO)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
LinkedIn Chief Product Officer Tomer Cohen breaks down how artificial intelligence is transforming traditional product management into a leaner 'Full Stack Builder' model. Through platform re-architecting, domain-specific AI agents, and cultural realignment, he explains how modern teams can collapse development cycles and elevate human craft.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Lenny holds 26% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Lenny as informed peer 3.9 Guest teaching 4.2 Guest disagreement 1.0 Lenny pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Lenny, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 48:12 Off-The-Shelf Tools Failure
Tomer emphatically rejects the premise that third-party AI tools can simply plug and play in complex architectures, emphasizing how off-the-shelf tools consistently fail without bespoke customization.
Hardest push from Lenny ▶ 14:33 Challenging the Solo Builder PremiseLenny pushes Tomer on whether the full stack builder paradigm implies individual contributors operating entirely solo, leading Tomer to clarify the pod model.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 27:59 The Golden Datasets ImperativeTomer educates Lenny on why dumping raw internal documents into LLMs produces hallucinations, illustrating the necessity of labor-intensive curation of golden samples.
Lenny holds their own ▶ 1:01:43 Revealing Tesla's Native Grok IntegrationWhen Tomer envisions an ideal in-car conversational companion, Lenny demonstrates his product pulse by explaining Tesla's undocumented steering-wheel Grok integration.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Lenny as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Lenny pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Necessity of Reimaged Product Development | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Lenny prompts Tomer on LinkedIn's radical experiment, and Tomer breaks down proprietary labor data showing massive skill shifts and organizational bloat in traditional product cycles. | |
| The Full Stack Builder Model and Core Human Skills | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Tomer outlines the full stack builder paradigm, clarifying when Lenny asks that builders operate in nimble pods rather than isolated solo silos. | |
| Pillar 1: Re-Architecting Platforms for AI Integration | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Tomer explains why foundational codebases must be overhauled for AI models to reason over them, with Lenny framing the practical implications for design systems and coding engines. | |
| Pillar 2: Building Specialized Internal AI Agents | 5 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Lenny digs into architectural choices behind specialized internal agents versus unified systems while Tomer explains practical workflow integrations like trust analysis. | |
| Idea-to-Design Acceleration and Curating Golden Datasets | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Tomer describes why AI requires curated golden datasets rather than raw enterprise drive access, drawing parallels to manually filtering feed algorithms years prior. | |
| Sponsor Message: Miro | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | After an ad read, Lenny and Tomer discuss metrics for pilot adoption, replacing the APM track with APB, and why top performers disproportionately leverage AI tools. | |
| Pillar 3: Cultural Change and Performance Incentives | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Tomer highlights organizational incentives, comparing the AI shift to mobile transformation and explaining 360-degree reviews across cross-functional PMs and designers. | |
| Navigating Setbacks and Institutionalizing the Career Track | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Lenny expresses surprise at the formalization of the full stack builder job title while Tomer breaks down implementation failures from off-the-shelf software and hallucinatory data dumps. | |
| Strategic Advice for Leaders and Builders Navigating AI | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Tomer shares practical transformation blueprints for CPOs and builders alike, advocating for proactive experimentation before waiting for managerial declarations. | |
| Lightning Round: Books, AI Companions, and Life Mottos | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Lenny and Tomer discuss favorite literature and trade hands-on observations regarding in-car conversational AI experiences with Grok and ChatGPT voice modes. | |
| Reflecting on 14 Years at LinkedIn and Future Horizons | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Tomer reflects on his 14-year journey scaling LinkedIn, sharing parting wisdom on builder craftsmanship and genuine product devotion. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Cohen: 70% of job skill requirements will change by 2030
“When we look at, like, the skills required to do your job, By 2030, which is literally four years from now, sounds a long time, but 40 years, four years from now, it will change by 70%.”
Cohen: Small, cross-trained mission pods will win future organizational races
“And an analogy I have in mind is kind of Navy SEALs. You know, you come to training, you, they're all kind of learning. They're cross trained across multiple areas. What they specialize in is the mission. And they operate in small pods and they're very nimble …”
Cohen: LinkedIn replaced rigid PM trios with quarterly builder pods
“One of the things we've done as an example, we kind of started to do the idea of pods. We're no longer large teams. We assemble a team, ideally a full stack builder is coming together. And, you know, it's less about, can I have an engineer design PM working to…”
LinkedIn is re-architecting core platforms so AI can reason over code
“The platform for us as an example is re-architecting all of our core platforms so AI can reason over it. So we're building kind of this composable UI components with server side that we actually build. We're basically building for AI to be ready to bring it in…”
Cohen: Third-party AI tools never work off the shelf at enterprise scale
“So you can't just go and bring a third party tool. And have it work on the LinkedIn stack. In fact, that's one of our biggest learnings. It never works. Never works.”
Cohen: LinkedIn's internal AI agent found vulnerabilities missed in original launches
“So we run, we walked that spec from a couple of years ago through the trust agent. Not only was it able to find all the stuff we initiated at the beginning, but all the holes that we did not catch until later.”
Cohen: AI Design Tools Will Not Be a Winner-Take-All Market
“What you'll see that ultimately, I don't think there's going to be a winner takes all because the starting point of You know, the customer or the user will dictate a lot how simple they are for that use case.”
Tomer Cohen: AI maintenance agent fixes nearly 50% of LinkedIn's broken builds
“In fact, I think we're close to 50% of all those builds being done by the maintenance agent.”
Tomer Cohen: AI agents fail when given raw enterprise knowledge bases
“It's not great to just give it access to your drive and say, reason all of this knowledge base. It actually does a very poor job understanding importance of the past and putting weights on stuff.”
Cohen: LinkedIn is replacing its APM program with Associate Product Builders
“We used to have our APM program, which this is about it's ending this year. And then starting January, we're going to start having our APB program and they're going to come into LinkedIn. We're going to teach them how to code design and PM at LinkedIn.”
Cohen: Releasing AI tools without change management yields only 5% adoption
“I think I see a lot of companies roll out their agents and just expecting companies to adopt. Doesn't work this way. Some will adapt. That tends to be kind of your cutting edge, five percent of talent that just wants new tools and they have a bias for change. …”
Cohen: LinkedIn now evaluates AI fluency in hiring and performance reviews
“So when we hire right now, we look for those, and then this upcoming cycle, we do a biannual. It's, that's going to be part of the performance evaluation piece, and we announced it to everybody”