Stewart Butterfield — founder of Flickr and Slack — argues that the PM disease is additive design. We add features past the point they help, perform elaborate work-like rituals that look productive, and forget that users only ever wanted five things from us in the first place.
His mental models stack up:
- Utility curves. Effort-vs-value is an S-curve. Most teams keep grinding on the flat top — the part where another month of polish moves the user not at all — while the steep part of someone else's curve goes untouched.
- The owner's delusion. When you visit someone else's restaurant website, you want the address, hours, phone, menu, and reservation link. When you build your restaurant's website, you build a slow-loading hero photo and an unclickable phone number. Owners forget what users actually need from them.
- Hyper-realistic work-like activities. 'This is actually a fake bit of work, and it's so subtle that I'll do it. Our board members will do it. Every executive will do it.' Setting up the dashboard for the meeting that won't change a decision. Updating the doc no one reads. Subtle, exhausting, and corrosive.
- Don't make users think. Slack's craft obsession was about removing micro-decisions, not adding them.
- We don't sell saddles here. Stop describing features. Describe the experience the user actually wants.
- Taste as edge. 'Most people don't have good taste and don't invest.' Your margin is your competitor's opportunity — the reverse is also true.
- Limitless opportunities shame. 'If you can't see almost limitless opportunities to improve, then you shouldn't be designing the product.' The product you ship today should embarrass you slightly.
The PM-week version: notice when you're performing work, not doing it. Cut features past the utility curve's flat top. Use your own product as a stranger would, today.