A Cagan Critique

I would like to write a respectful critique of a recent Marty Cagan article on the SVPG site.

Why? I very much respect Marty’s work. But the article is either directed at me or people I deeply admire (the timing can't be coincidental), so I thought that in the spirit of open dialogue and mutual respect, I’d write some counterpoint.

First, take a moment to read the article. I learned about it through this LinkedIn post. It makes a lot of interesting points, and clearly expresses Marty's POV.

My key critique is that the article follows a classic rhetorical move. It begins with the language of empathy and belief, such as "I want to believe" and "it pains me," but it ends with a moral judgment. What starts as a reflection on the challenges of building empowered teams becomes a statement about individual character, framed as a lack of ambition.

Some quotes followed by thoughts.

What I believe is really going on… is that they do not desire to improve themselves. Some people lack ambition.

Most great PMs I know are intensely curious and a mix of skeptical and optimistic. They actively seek out inspiration and insights from high-performing teams and companies. But they also ask hard questions about how and when those lessons apply, and whether they’re drawn from survivorship bias or selective storytelling. That’s not a lack of ambition. That’s exactly the kind of critical thinking we need in product management.

After all, they argue, they are in a different country, or in a different market… or have different company cultures… or operate under different regulations… This logic is what I struggle to understand.

There's a big difference between resignation and contextual awareness. Good product people know that lifting a model from another company without understanding the underlying conditions is risky. That’s systems thinking / first principles thinking. Not resignation. Borrowing an operating model from another company without understanding the context is like copying a competitor’s feature without knowing why they built it. Maybe it’s solving a real user problem. Maybe it’s a vanity feature. Maybe it only works because of their tech stack, pricing model, or go-to-market strategy.

The pre-requisite for strong product people is high agency, but the pre-requisite for agency is ambition.

People pursue excellence in varied ways. If you look at the backgrounds of top performers in any discipline, you’ll find diverse paths. Yes, there are patterns, but they rarely reduce to a single formula like ambition plus agency. Context, timing, support systems, and even luck play a role. Oversimplifying this risks erasing the very complexity we aim to understand in product work. After all, we’d never treat our users as monolithic beings with a single path to success. Why do it to our peers?

We look to the best in our respective field for inspiration… we have institutions such as the Olympics, the World Cup, and the Nobel Prize to help us identify these people.

Studying a rather narrow view of “the best” can be limiting. The same goes for ignoring counterfactuals, where people achieve similar results by breaking the so-called rules. That would be like only learning from the customers who succeed with your product, while ignoring those who succeed in spite of it, or who succeed after churning. You would miss important edge cases, creative workarounds, and unmet needs (the exact kinds of insights that challenge assumptions and lead to better thinking).

Because of this, they argue that it’s essentially hopeless, and there’s little value in looking at strong product companies, or learning from their lessons.

Critique is not nihilism. Product leaders should embrace critique, not criticize it. People offer critique because they care. They want to understand what is transferable and what is not. Imagine if a product leader shut down every challenge to the status quo. The most innovative ideas often come from exactly these kinds of questions. It is this curiosity, not blind acceptance, that drives product thinking forward.

They gravitate towards anyone that tells them that they are just fine the way they are, and that being better is overrated anyway.

Imagine a product team that ignored the context of its customers and dismissed their feedback as “just excuses.” That would be a failure of listening, empathy, and strategy. Savvy product thinkers take a more nuanced view of constraints. First, they acknowledge that constraints exist. Second, they understand that some are more flexible than others. And third, they recognize that shifting a constraint requires naming it, experimenting, and iterating to see what changes. Labeling every mention of constraints as excuse-making shuts down exactly the kind of thinking that makes products, and teams, better.

Those at the best companies are generally the least satisfied with how they work, and are constantly pushing themselves to do better.

While dissatisfaction can be a fuel for improvement, it isn’t the only fuel. In the West, we often glorify relentless striving and restlessness as signs of ambition. But there are other views. In some cultures, growth is rooted in balance, stewardship, and care. Progress can come from a sense of responsibility, love for the craft, or commitment to the collective. Improvement doesn’t always require dissatisfaction. It can also come from clarity, reflection, and a grounded sense of purpose.

In truth, some [teams] are feature teams. Usually that’s because the leadership does not yet trust that particular team. Sometimes that trust needs to first be earned.

People shape environments, and environments shape people. Efforts to argue that either "the system" or "the individual" is solely to blame are not just oversimplified; they are self-sealing. You can always go one level up in hierarchy and say that someone with more power should fix the problem. Or go one level up in abstraction and say that the broader system is broken. Both moves can become ways to avoid the harder truth: systems and people are intertwined. Product people understand this. We design feedback loops. We create structures that shape behavior. And we are shaped by those structures in return. This is the basis for some of the most important questions we ask in product. Embracing this duality is at the core of building products ("systems") for humans.

The desire to continually improve comes from the ambition to always do better.

I also want to note that the spirit of “continuous improvement” is exactly what’s missing in many tech companies right now. We’re in a time of hasty re-orgs, layoffs, performative pivots, and short-term cost-cutting masquerading as strategy. The kind of steady, grounded, patient improvement Marty advocates for is rare, replaced by cycles of panic, executive churn, and whiplash decision-making. Ironically, it’s not the so-called “low ambition” people who are resisting improvement. They’re often the ones talking in hushed tones, unsure whether it's safe to surface hard truths in rooms dominated by “high agency” high performers.

Having written all this, you might wonder whether I truly respect Marty’s work. That’s understandable. The answer is a very solid yes. I remember how excited I was when I first met him at a product conference in 2014 or 2015, and how sad I was when he later sent me a single-line LinkedIn message asking about my feature factory article (I think the assumption was that I somehow copied the term? I didn't), and that was the end of the conversation.

But I want to end with something a little more personal, and maybe a little nuanced.

I had a brief musical “career” (if you can call driving around in a van on a $15 per diem and below minimum wage salary a career). I played with single-minded geniuses—the epitome of high agency and ambition. Never satisfied. Restless. And often, frankly, assholes. And then there were the stalwarts, the quiet foundations of the band. The ones who held everything together when things got tough. Often frustratingly inclusive, often overlooked. Individualists and communitarians. Verse. Pre Chorus. Chorus. Bridge. The gamut.

And what you learn quickly is this: people take diverse paths to achieve their personal view of excellence, and to achieve collective excellence. I respect and understand Marty’s view. I know Marty’s view, because it is so prevalent in tech. I know the allergy to relativism, the identification with the restless striver, the impatience with those who appear less driven. And honestly, having people who think that way at the table is part of what makes product fun. How boring would it be if everyone were a quiet bassist? (No offense to bassists.)

What concerns me is that diversity is what drives creativity in product, just like it does any creative pursuit. Diverse belief systems, paths, mental models, etc.

We are at a very concerning precipice where the views of a small group of people in tech are having a massively disproportionate impact on our lives (especially here in the US, but worldwide). The definition of “good” and “best” needs serious consideration and critique (like any good PM would, right?) as Cagan points out in the piece.

Now more than ever we need to appreciate that there are multiple valid ways to show up and do a good job. So by all means, embrace Marty’s wonderful work to uplevel your company. His writing has helped countless teams think more clearly about product.

But like any good product manager you should consider different perspectives. Critique. Question. Consider context if you want. Our field is richer when we make room for a broader range of motivations, mindsets, and models of success.

So....

Go out there, stay curious, embrace complexity, and do great things in your own way!

And Marty if you're reading this, let's have coffee sometime?