Why cultivating agency matters more than cultivating skills in the AI era | Max Schoening (Head of Product, Notion)

My guest is Max Schoening, a builder who’s worn almost every hat, from Google PM to GitHub design leader to head of product at Notion. There’s a line from scripture I think about here, made for a moment like this, so let’s talk about how AI is changing how teams build and what you’re already seeing inside Notion.

I did wonder where that Bible line was going. When I joined Notion we stopped sketching static chat UIs and spun up a tiny, LLM‑friendly playground so designers could feel the AI, move fast in code, and lose the fear of the terminal by turning it into a conversation.

So people prototype in a safe sandbox instead of touching the main codebase, then graduate from there?

Exactly, and as models improved those same designers and PMs began contributing small changes to production; the bigger win is thinking in the medium that ships, not tallying commits.

How do you balance PMs and designers writing code versus keeping them focused on direction and cohesion?

I care less about who lands code and more about who deeply understands agent loops; you only really learn that by building in the actual material, which for now is code.

Who thrives in this world and who falls behind?

Agency beats skills; the people who treat the company like a hot‑wired car, reshape their role, recruit, pick up new tools, and just make progress, pull ahead.

As roles blur, what do we risk losing?

We could lose specialists; prototypes are not factories, reliability at scale still takes engineering rigor, and design still needs craft and delight.

For someone trying to grow agency, where do they start?

Make things; tinkering puts you on a builder’s treadmill and you realize the world is malleable and changeable by you.

You’ve pushed the idea of malleable software for years; what does it mean and why now?

Software should serve its users, not lock them into rigid app boxes; we need platforms that let you reshape behavior, keep collaboration and security, and give you real ownership over your computing life.

You pinned that Diter Rams clip critiquing museum chairs; how does that connect?

Design should be useful before beautiful; the best environments adapt over time, and the ability to tweak something is a great test of its usefulness.

Hot take on the so‑called SaaS apocalypse?

As‑a‑service endures because maintenance and expertise matter, even as tools get more general and more malleable; AI acts like a tutor that lowers the on‑ramp rather than replacing the service.

What’s most different about your job now?

The opening slice of a project is basically free now, so skip long PRDs and show a scrappy demo; the last mile still takes most of the work, but we can cheaply explore many paths first.

Where’s the next shift in how we build?

Plain text and code are durable, but whether we chat with agents or return to direct manipulation hinges on speed; once intelligence hits good enough, UX and near‑instant feedback become the bottlenecks.

Will smarter models keep changing team behavior, or is the frontier elsewhere?

Most knowledge work hits a good‑enough ceiling, then we optimize for cheaper, faster, and local; I prefer an exoskeleton that augments us over a distant deity in a data center.

How do you handle token spend and looming ROI questions?

We let people explore now and expect ROI scrutiny soon; token burn is a vanity metric, though leaderboards can nudge adoption at scale, quality still matters more.

What actually moves teams into agentic workflows?

Non‑engineers feel the superpowers fast; for engineers, treat manual edits like bugs in the factory, review thoughtfully, and push verification into the loop.

Any notable tool shifts inside your org?

It is not Figma versus code; more PMs and designers are living in the terminal and developer tools, and I encourage fewer GUIs and more command line confidence.

Which role gets transformed next?

Coding progress is racing ahead, writing less so; as software gets cheaper, every function will encode its own processes, and winning agents will be builders that write code.

How do you see the provider landscape and costs evolving?

If frontier gaps widen, labs call the shots; if not, open weights and self‑hosting spread, costs fall, and we replay the cloud wars where portability and choice win.

How are you shipping fast without sacrificing quality?

We push shots on goal but aim for things that feel obviously good; iterate toward incremental correctness, then do the hard consolidation back to a clean core, because reliability is the missing muscle.

People say taste is the new moat; how do you build it?

Taste is a mental simulator for a chosen audience; you earn it through reps, feedback, side projects, and constant exposure to excellent work that raises your bar.

What actually makes a product win?

Teams matter most and being first is overrated; great products center on a small, overpowering core like Git push to deploy, Dropbox that just syncs, PRs at GitHub, or Notion’s blocks and slash.

How do you use jobs to be done in practice?

It helps you stay honest about what people hire your product to do and forces you to evaluate it as a buyer, not as an employee defending their work.

Give us your universal basic income riff.

Half joke, half sincere: knowledge work already functions like UBI, and we keep inventing reasons to stay in the loop; many of us are very lucky to do this.

If AGI freed you from work, what would you do?

I would still build and tinker with fewer meetings; coding is play, and I want to extend malleability into new domains like robotics.

Contrarian corner?

Inclusivity is not always optimal; small, focused groups often move the world, so build for the top of the class while being fair.

Fail corner?

I once over‑polished an editor and ignored the real core, then spiraled by stacking features; at GitHub I underestimated package needs in Actions; in hiring I learned to favor polymaths even if it slows headcount.

Parting advice for builders right now?

Love computers, not the frenzy; work very hard when you are young, turn down the anxiety, study history, and bet on your agency.

Lightning round: books, shows, products, motto, and a German word?

Read Code by Petzold, Tools for Conviviality, and Seeing Like a State; watch Project Hail Mary and reframe The Handmaid’s Tale as an AI parable; try Ghostty, Moshi, the Corne keyboard, and carry a good pocketknife; my motto is the universe is change and life is what you make it; German favorites are tüfteln for hands‑on tinkering and Verbraucher for user, which reminds me that using also consumes.

Where can people find you, and how can listeners help?

Find me at max.dev and on Twitter; do me a favor and take a walk, notice that everything around you was made by people no smarter than you, and reclaim your agency.

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