Why cultivating agency matters more than cultivating skills in the AI era | Max Schoening (Head of Product, Notion)
May 3, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readWhy agency matters more than skills in the AI era
Max Schoening, head of product at Notion, has watched designers and product managers at his company start shipping code using AI tools. But the insight that surprised him most wasn't about technical skill acquisition. It was about who actually takes initiative when the barriers fall away. "Before, it was very easy to always say, 'Well, I will never be able to do this because insert skill issue,'" Schoening explains. "We're realizing that even if you have the skills at your fingertips, the thing that matters is agency. I don't think agency is very evenly distributed in the world."
The 10% that became free
Schoening's central observation about how AI changes product building is concrete: "The first 10% of every project are now free." It takes almost no effort to build the first version of a startup or the initial prototype of a feature. At Notion, this has fundamentally shifted how teams operate. Instead of writing PRDs or strategy documents, designers and PMs now build rough but working prototypes in code, then iterate from there. "There's no point in writing a PRD if you can just do the janky version," Schoening says. "Here's the demo of what I think we should build."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **The Agency Thesis in the AI Era** - Max opens with his central argument: as AI erases skill barriers, the scarce trait becomes agency, not technical ability.
- 2 (01:14) **Guest Introduction: Max Schoening** - Host Lenny introduces Max's background: PM at Google, design lead at Heroku, engineer/design leader at GitHub, two-time founder, now Head of Product at Notion.
- 3 (02:52) **Why Designers and PMs at Notion Now Code** - Max traces the origin: building AI chat interfaces in Figma felt like "drawing dead fish," so they created a lightweight code playground.
- 4 (07:01) **The Real Reason to Code: Mastering the Material** - Max argues the value isn't shipping to production but understanding the medium of software itself.
- 5 (10:36) **Agency > Skill in the AI Era** - The core mechanism: when AI provides any skill on demand, the only remaining differentiator is the drive to act and change things.
- 6 (12:06) **Examples of High Agency at Notion** - Concrete case studies of team members demonstrating agency.
- 7 (14:03) **The Risk of Losing Specialists** - Max warns that merging roles could eliminate deep craft and engineering rigor.
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Show Notes
Max Schoening is head of product at Notion, where he’s been especially effective at getting designers and PMs to ship code, prototype in the terminal, and launch extremely successful AI products. He was previously a PM at Google, ran design at Heroku, was VP of Design (and a part-time engineer) at GitHub, and is a two-time founder. He’s one of the most AI-forward product leaders out there and one of the deepest thinkers on how AI changes how we build and use software.
We discuss:
1. What’s most worked in getting designers and PMs to embrace AI
2. Why agency—not skills—is the thing that separates people who thrive from those who fall behind
3. How the first 10% of every project is now “free,” and what that means for product development
4. Max’s “tiny core” theory of great products: iPhone multitouch, the GitHub pull request, Notion blocks, Dropbox’s menu bar icon
5. Why the SaaSpocalypse is overstated
6. Why the amount of software has exploded but the quality hasn’t, and why that gap creates opportunity
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Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-cultivating-agency-matters-more
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Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0
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Where to find Max Schoening:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-schoening
• Website: https://max.dev
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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