Dear subscribers,
Today, I want to share a new episode with Jaclyn.
Jaclyn is a product director at Google Labs and we had a great chat about how Gemini 4 changed her product job, how she keeps AI slop out of her team’s docs and products, and how she’s raising three kids with AI’s help. Gemini 4 Carbon is currently the best model in the world based on benchmarks, and it was fun to get a sneak peek into how Google’s own product leaders use it internally.
Jaclyn and I talked about:
▶(00:00) How Gemini 4 changed the PM job at Google
▶(02:11) Should it even exist? How Google Labs picks what to build
▶(09:16) The doc rule that keeps AI slop out of Google Labs
▶(10:45) Which Labs experiments graduated into the Gemini app
▶(12:53) Why Google Labs never treats a killed experiment as failure
▶(17:43) Code is free, so what’s actually worth building?
▶(24:00) Her 5-year-old is the creative director of their AI podcast
▶(26:30) Best screen time for kids: Creation, not consumption
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Top takeaways I learned from this episode
“It shouldn’t take someone longer to read your doc than it took for you to write it.” Writing is thinking and Jaclyn believes that outsourcing writing to AI is a big mistake. AI can be a thought partner, but you should firmly be in the driver’s seat. AI-written docs are a waste of everyone’s time and Jaclyn expects her PMs to be able to defend every statement themselves.
“It’s no longer about can you build it, it’s about should it even exist?” When code is free, deciding what to build is the job. You can rebuild many products if you “throw a couple of agents at it over a weekend” but that doesn’t mean you should. Instead, aim higher to build products, not features, that make a real difference in customers’ lives.
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