David Jesse

I once assisted a liposuction procedure in Brazil

TBH this has lowered my stress level at least temporarily. Middle of the work day and watching Arsenal is the most tense I have been all day.

Andrew is opening a board game club in Berkeley and coding software to do personalized player introductions for his son’s little league.

Hope you can join us for this virtual event. Rich's book is excellent and I am excited to hear him discuss this live.

4 March, 4pm Central US time.

I heard this from a CEO yesterday. Their platform + AI enabled them to launch a product in 3 months yesterday -- much faster.

6 months later they realized their persona won't pay for this use case. 9 months wasted.

AI for prototyping and coding is great.

It isn't a substitute for discovery.

I won't judge if you do post on LinkedIn! But happy you are also posting here as I hope this becomes a more positive version of Twitter.

Research is leadership, and code can help (but only in the right places) Code was never the blocker in delivering customer value — and the easier writing code becomes, the more it distracts from the work we must do to unblock productivity.

You often hear "software development is changing, and we must adapt" because of Claude Code.

But for my entire career, code has been the *easiest* part of making shit people care about, and we still haven't adapted.

The easier coding becomes, the less often we ask "do users actually NEED this?"

It's your choice to share what you want, and their choice who they want to support.

While we're at it, I wish more product people were not on Substack. But I digress...

This is not all UXR, but @spavel.bsky.social has a list worth checking out. bsky.app/starter-pack...

I have one on product content in general. bsky.app/starter-pack...

I really should try and engage with the UXR community but I have no idea where to start

"We have no success metrics but we launched on time."

😨

Chart showing decline of US Democracy Index following Citizens United ruling. Score goes from 8.2 in 2010 to below 7.9 in 2024. Below 8 is considered a "flawed" democracy. Source: Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index.

The AI Vampire This was an unusually hard post to write, because it flies in the face of everything else going on.

"With a 10x boost, if you give an engineer Claude Code, then once they’re fluent, their work stream will produce nine additional engineers’ worth of value.

For someone.

But who actually gets to keep that value?"

The AI Vampire

steve-yegge.medium.com/the-ai-vampi...

Sonia and Adam are great. Congratulations to them!

It did not feel great that I needed to edit my website's client list to remove a company that has openly cooperated with ICE.

Why Team Success Trumps Job Descriptions — Crescendo Product Group -- David Jesse transformation and leadership coaching When a goalkeeper scores in the 98th minute to win the match, it's a lesson in teamwork. Product teams face the same challenge: rigid role definitions create silos and missed opportunities. Learn why ...

Benfica's goalkeeper scored yesterday against Real Madrid to advance in Champions League. He'd never touched the ball in opponent's half all tournament.

Product teams need this mindset: everyone's job is helping the team win, not defending role boundaries.

www.buildcrescendo.com/blog/team-su...

Bonus: I arrived at my new connection & confirmed with an agent that my checked bag wasn't on my flight. However I am unable to open a ticket to resolve this until I reach my final destination. The explanation: I might not make my next flight. They are just inviting dissatisfaction. @united.com

These don't come up much, but they are painful when they do happen. Nearly 20,000 flights canceled past two days. Airlines should do E2E customer journey map & fix.

Automate and fix these and you would have my loyalty. They don't even require AI, though that would make solving these easier.

6/6

4. Bags
• Had to gate check a small carry-on due to full flight
• Waited 90m in line to provide new flight information after second cancellation
• Would have been additional 4h wait to retrieve bag to use overnight
• Instead: let me make choice and submit new flight details online

5/6

3. Food voucher
• $15 for a meal at airport -- not even quite enough for breakfast sandwich and coffee
• Must spend less than amount without exceeding total
• Instead: ability to apply partial credit towards larger total

4/6

2. Hotel voucher
• New connecting flight also cancelled and had to stay overnight
• Had to wait to speak to agent to get voucher
• Choice of 1-2* hotels
• Instead: automatically offer default option (fully covered) with ability to apply partial credit towards other hotel

3/6

1. Rerouting
• Google alerted me of cancellation before airline
• Connecting flights not offered online
• Waited on the phone to rebook
• Best routes filled up while waiting
• Two agents offered different solutions
• Instead: automated rebooking; choose route like on Waze

2/6

Tough travel yesterday. Direct flight cancelled after long delay. Rerouted. Connecting flight cancelled after long delay. Sat on floor at crowded airport. Hours spent in line. Had to stay overnight. Didn't reach destination yet.

This happens, especially with bad weather, but can be modernized:

1/6

How about because of America’s international policies?

Or because fans from many participating countries can’t get visas?

Or because tourists might get detained for social media posts? Or shot?

They should make this a two nation hosted cup. Though FIFA is as corrupt as Trump so probably won’t.

a man is sitting in front of a counter and asking for help . Alt: Jerry Maguire saying "help me help you"

It is invaluable when clients send me an agenda & reference documents ahead of time. It's the difference between coming prepared with thoughts or a framework to help vs. reacting on the spot.

The same applies to meetings with your manager or stakeholders. Set them up to be thoughtful partners.

"Product might fail if it doesn't find product market fit despite billions invested."

Normally this wouldn't be news -- product market fit is a thing for a reason. They need to prove that value exceeds cost.

The worry is that we have so much tied up in this. Is a soft landing possible?

That data stack…

Welcome to those leaving X from the UK, Australia and everywhere else. Enough is enough. Hope you find this to be better.

See below to help find product people. If you are in PM, UX, engineering, data science, or other related fields please follow the starter pack -- and I will follow back.