Head of Product, Notion Design Leader, Engineer, Founder
2025
The Core
Agency Over Skills
"Even if you have the skills at your fingertips because an LLM helps you, the thing that matters is agency. Agency is not evenly distributed in the world."
Skills are now abundant (AI provides them instantly)
Agency is what separates people who ship from those who don't
The shift: from "I can't because [skill issue]" to "I will make it happen"
Making things builds agency—start there, everything else follows
The Shift
Designers Code, PMs Ship, Engineers Think
The playground: LLM-friendly codebase. Designers prototype AI interactions without prod complexity
Agent loops: Understanding how the material works (terminal, TUI, developer tools)
Production: As model capability improves, the same people contribute to real codebase
The key insight: Code is the material. You must work in the material to master it
Static vs. interactiveDesigning a chat in Figma is like drawing a dead fish. You must feel the interaction, the feedback loop, the agent behavior to truly design for AI.
The Playbook
Building Agency: From Tinkerer to Changemaker
Start making things: Tinkering is how agency awakens. A home-cooked meal, tweaking a chair—it's all making
Overcome the terminal fear: Encourage people to use TUI, not GUIs. They'll naturally pull at threads and learn the substrate
Do it like you own it: "Drive Notion like it's stolen"—contribute outside your role description
Build for the material, not the checkbox: Your job is to master what you're building with, not to deliver features
Brian Levin example
Blurs engineering + design. Also recruited team members. Acts like an owner even without the title.
Eric Lou example
Went from writing PRDs to building prototypes in code to asking "why not just think in the medium itself?"
The Warning
Don't Lose the Specialists
As roles merge, engineering excellence could disappear
Remember: prototyping ≠ production software
Hardware teaches us: 3D-printed prototype with layer lines ≠ factory-optimized product for 100M people
On design side: design systems are everywhere, but where's the craft and delight?
The dualityCode is a tool for designers and PMs to think in the material. But specialists are still needed to ship at scale with quality.
Contrarian Takes
Max on AI, Software, and the Future
✗AI is getting better at everythingINSTEAD →✓ AI is only exponentially better at coding. Writing, creative work—not really. Software will eat more domains instead.
✗Different roles transform at different speedsINSTEAD →✓ As coding cost → zero, software engineering principles spread into marketing, HR, sales. Software eats the world faster.
✗We already have universal basic income UBIINSTEAD →✓ It's called knowledge work. If you can code, design, write—you have economic power without gatekeepers.
✗Products that win are feature-richINSTEAD →✓ Products that make you feel like a superhero win. Coding assistants > roasting bots because you own the work.