The Product Pivot: Real conversations with product people.

Vibe Coding Won't Get You Hired as a PM with Aaron Kesler

Aaron Kesler [https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-kesler/], co-founder and Head of Product at Rozie Synopsis, has sat across from a lot of candidates in 2026.  His take: most of them skip the one thing he's actually trying to evaluate.  In this episode, we break down what a weak interview answer sounds like versus a strong one, why "I vibe coded a solution" isn't a story, and the test Aaron uses to check if a candidate can really think like a product manager.  We also dig into what makes a case study land with a hiring manager who isn't technical and where he draws a hard line on PMs shipping code to production. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2410339/support] Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiana-brace/] Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/meagan-glenn/] Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

Building Your Way Into Product with David Nduka, Founder of Navim AI

David Nduka [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dnduka/] had one week left in Canada when a single mistake on his work permit caught up with him. What he did in the four days that followed became a company. David is the founder of Navim AI [https://www.navim.ca/], an immigration tech startup, that has helped several people navigate the difficult path of gaining residency.  He is also a product manager at Kweeve [https://www.kweeve.com/en], and a two-time founder who's built most of his products alongside a full-time job.  In this conversation with Meagan and Santi, he traces the path most people never notice they're on: the user interviews you run without knowing they're user interviews, the prototype you ship in two weeks that used to take six months, the moment traction quietly rewrites your confidence. What does building your way into product actually look like when you never called it product? Listen to his story here.  Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2410339/support] Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiana-brace/] Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/meagan-glenn/] Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

How Product Managers Actually Get Hired with Andres Tenias, Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist at Lantern

Everyone has advice about getting hired in product. Andres Tenias [https://www.linkedin.com/in/andresteniasgil/] has insights from a technical recruiter perspective.  As a recruiter for close to a decade and now Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist at Lantern, Andres got tired of nodding along to engineers and went and earned a software engineering diploma, so when he screens product and technical candidates, he can tell who actually did the work. He joins us to walk through how PM hiring really works, and where the standard playbook quietly fails people. Some of it stings a little. Andres makes the case that the most beautiful portfolio in the stack is often the weakest, because the candidate can no longer talk through their own decisions. He explains how he tries to surface candidates on LinkedIn, and the one habit that makes you invisible. And he shares a move for the job you didn't get that he describes, as "a little bit stalky." What does a recruiter actually look for in the first ten seconds of your profile? And why does so much of the job hunt start to feel like a personal attack, when almost none of it is? Plus: carrying product skills into healthcare and the public sector, the rise of fractional product work, and the interview cues most candidates miss entirely. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2410339/support] Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiana-brace/] Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/meagan-glenn/] Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

The PM Skill AI Can't Replace, with Steve Johnson, CEO of Product Growth Leaders

⁠Steve Johnson⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjohnson717/] asked a training room full of product managers how many had spoken to a customer in the past year. Most hands stayed down. One person admitted they'd been at the company three years without ever meeting one. Steve is CEO and co-founder of Product Growth Leaders, a former VP at Pragmatic Marketing, and one of the original architects of the ⁠QUARTZ Open Framework⁠ [https://www.productgrowthleaders.com/quartz]. He's written books on customer conversations and on turning ideas into products, and he came back to make an uncomfortable case: most people with "product manager" in their title aren't doing product management at all. They're writing tickets, polishing prototypes, and dabbling in code, while the actual job goes undone. So what happens to that job when AI can write the tickets and vibe-code the prototype faster than you can? Steve's answer points at the one thing he says AI cannot replace, and it's the thing most PMs are too busy to do. He also explains why he tells product managers to get to know their customers "even if it requires civil disobedience," when he thinks the AI cost bubble finally bursts, and why private equity firms have quietly flipped to saying "hire a product manager first." What does product management actually mean in 2026, once the busywork belongs to the machines? Check out the ⁠QUARTZ framework⁠ [https://www.productgrowthleaders.com/quartz] Read ⁠Customer Conversations⁠ [https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Conversations-Product-Managers-Superpower-ebook/dp/B0GNWN9NC8] Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2410339/support] Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiana-brace/] Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/meagan-glenn/] Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/

From IC to Executive: What Actually Changes with Aaron Kesler, VP of Product at RozieAI

What if AI could handle the hard part of being a boss for you like telling someone they're not getting the promotion, weighing empathy against the P&L, or being the bad guy? ⁠Aaron Kesler⁠ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-kesler/], VP of Product at RozieAI and author of an upcoming book on breaking into product management, has been sitting in that exact seat for a year. He's also sitting on a $4.5M AI story that nobody knew was due to AI at all. There's a moment where he names what nobody told him about going from IC to executive - it's lonely at the top. It's something most new leaders learn the hard way. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2410339/support] Connect with Santiana: Santiana's LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiana-brace/] Connect with Meagan: Meagan's LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/meagan-glenn/] Checkout Prodfolio: https://prodfolio.io/