Mike Belsito

Head of Product Evangelism @Pendoio; Co-Founded @prodcollective (acquired by Pendo); Curious about this new AI-first world for product people and builders!

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

Very excited to be a part of this launch today! Product people and builders just got their own lifehack…

[Raanan Avidor @ravidor]

Novus: Catch and fix usability issues automatically as you ship by @belsito and @seandotexe https://t.co/uxHdhKgRcg

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@hthieblot Geocities

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@ryancarson Honestly, this could have all happened without AI though, right?

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@petergyang Yeah, tbh this makes me so glad to be in the midwest. Not hating on the Bay Area at all and I know some will look down on me for it. But I’m perfectly ok with the vibes i feel at home.

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

I love tech, I do. And I have a lot of friends who love the Bay Area and I don’t hate on that at all.

But for all the “magic vibes” I hear about it these days…

Idk I’m kind of glad I live in the midwest.

[Deedy @deedydas]

The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen.

Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation).

Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there.

Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI.

As a result,
1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb.
Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more.

2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future).
Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire"

3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed.
Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies.

4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either.
No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money."

I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here.

Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success".

Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

For my NYC people…

[Brianne Kimmel @briannekimmel]

Hosting an event in NYC for creatives and gen AI founders. Who should we invite?

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@briannekimmel At first my mind interpreted Gen AI as a new demographic… like Gen Z, Gen Alpha. (sorry, 16-hour flight brain here).

But…

Maybe it ought to be??

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@destraynor @eoghan I saw this one coming ☺️… in awe of you all!

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@clairevo Im sorry, Claire. Thoughts and prayers. 🫶

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@cavopol @bchesky @danywander I’ll never forget working at a ticketing company and the CEO knew I came from a super early stage startup. And he said…

“Love your startup roots. But here, if we launch a feature and it goes wrong and 20,000 people cant get into the arena… it’s a news story.”

😳

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@rohan1chaudhari @temfr13 @YacineSibous @Seanfrank Speaking from experience, most founders don’t pay themselves anything close to what they could make in a “normal job.”

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@jasonlk Honest question — why a person then? Why not another agent if the agent is superior?

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@clairevo Yeah but what about a poll or framework?!

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@kallasmaa @andrewchen Forget title. It’s the role.

Tbh, you can just call them builders if you want. The people who use judgement to make the decisions on what to build and has the agency to make it happen… that’s the role that’s only becoming more important.

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@johnghutton @andrewchen Not the real ones.

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@gregisenberg @startupideaspod @davekilleen 100% — he created AI Chiefs of Staffs before they were cool:

https://t.co/S2loX2Eba4

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@darrenrovell I mean in fairness, are they going after younger fans? If they are — they prob don’t want to be going with Jeapordy.

Does Gen Z / Alpha even know what Jeapordy is?

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

And we need to drop the expectation that people ought to respond instantly.

When I took over a team, I had team members post when they were afk (away from keyboard) for an hour or two. I asked them to stop (although most didnt) bc I assume you’re working if you’re not answering instantly.

[Mike Belsito @belsito]

This is actually precisely why I feel optimistic for the kids. The one’s coming out of college and younger. They’re not beholden to the way things have always worked.

[Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan]

"The ones who were the best at working in the past, the ones who mastered the old game, will find it the hardest to go through this reinvention stage."

Every PM needs to listen to today's episode with @nikhyl.

This is the most honest, real-talk conversation I've had about what's actually happening to PM careers right now.

We discuss:
🔸 Why the next 2 years will be the most chaotic in PM history
🔸 Why half of today's PMs won't survive the shift
🔸 Why the fancy logos on your resume now matter less than ever
🔸 The 'smiling exhaustion' he's seeing across top PMs
🔸 His prediction: companies shed 30,000, rehire 8,000 — all AI-first

Full episode here on X 👇

Also find it on:
• YouTube: https://t.co/n38pQrXmSE
• Spotify: https://t.co/tE5DWpuXiM
• Apple: https://t.co/Ckvy5MAg64

Thank you to our sponsors for supporting the podcast: 🏆 @WorkOS — Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs: https://t.co/XH3bKmeEkH
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[Mike Belsito @belsito]

@MimoCrypto17 @cmsinvests My point is investments can be boring. If he did exactly what he suggested (dca VOO for 40 years), he’ll be a multi-millionaire.

You can still do “non boring” stuff on the side for fun. But boring, consistent investments make people $$$ in the long run.