AI-era skills: Why cultivating agency matters more than job titles | Max Schoening (Notion)

It used to be enough to say, "I don't know how to do it; I don't have the right skill." But now that AI puts skills at our fingertips, the real difference is no longer in the resume: it's in the level of agency, that is, the ability to decide and change things instead of waiting for someone to do it for you. Max Schoening, now head of product at Notion, often repeats this: "One day you wake up and realize that the world is made up of people who are no smarter than you." And when that happens, something clicks: you realize that you can really change the rules of the game. Max is not one for easy titles. He has led design and product at GitHub, Heroku, and now Notion, and in every position his obsession has been the same: to push those who work with him not to wait for instructions, but to "drive Notion like it's stolen", that is, to take responsibility for going beyond their formal role. Brian Leven, a designer at Notion, is the perfect example: not only does he design and write code, but he jumps in to recruit people when he sees a problem, even if it wouldn't be "his job." Another, Eric Lou, after being told that as a PM he wouldn't be in the top ten in a startup, changed course: he learned Figma, started prototyping instead of writing long documents, and now he creates directly, redefining his role. The point is that, in the AI era, it's not enough to know how to do something: you need the initiative to get your hands dirty and make proposals, even without permission. And this agency is not distributed equally. Those who cultivate it are at the forefront, while those who wait for the perfect definition of their job title are left behind. Today, the technical barrier to starting something — a startup, a new tool, even just a prototype — has collapsed: "The first 10% of every project is free," says Max. In other words: you can get a working demo in a few hours. But the real leap is not in doing more, it's in seeing your work as something that can be shaped. This is why Max encourages designers and PMs to write code, not to make them real engineers, but because "thinking with the material" changes the depth of the ideas you can generate. It doesn't matter if your code then ends up in production: what matters is that you have truly understood what you can ask for and what can be changed. The risk, however, is confusing speed with quality. Max also sees this in his own team: the number of features grows, but "software that's really well done, that's obviously good as soon as you see it, remains rare." For him, all successful products have a micro-superpower: a tiny feature, done very well, that changes everything. Like the pull request on GitHub, the block on Notion, the perfect sync of Dropbox. Those who fall into the trap of "let's just add one more feature and then it will be perfect" are on the wrong track. And then there's the issue of specialization: if everyone does everything, you risk losing the true craftsman, the one who raises the bar for quality. For Max, the future of software is "malleable": tools that the user can modify, as if you could move the walls of your house. He doesn't want software designed only by "architects in their ivory tower" — he wants everyone to be able to adapt their own tools, without having to start from scratch. But be careful: agency doesn't mean rebelling against the boss, but doing, building, and seeing what happens. This is how true agency is trained: “Start doing things. Tinker, cook, build a chair. The more you create, the more you discover that the world can be changed." The less talked about side? Agency is not necessarily total inclusiveness. Max is convinced that the best products are created in small, very close-knit groups, even at the cost of being less "democratic." And then there's the paradox: "We already have a kind of universal basic income — it's called knowledge work." We are paid to type words on computers, in air-conditioned rooms. It's not a given, and perhaps we should see it as a privilege, not just as a threat to the future. The phrase that sticks with you is this: “One day you discover that the world was built by people who were no smarter than you. From there, you can really change it." If this perspective has changed the way you look at work, you can press I'm In on Lara Notes — it's not a like, it's a way of saying: from today, this idea belongs to you. And if you happen to talk to someone about it, to tell them that agency beats skill, you can mark the conversation with Shared Offline: that way the other person will also know that the conversation mattered. This comes from Lenny's Podcast and saves you 83 minutes of listening.