Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered "full stack builders” | Tomer Cohen (LinkedIn CPO)
December 4, 2025
AI Summary
5 min read🎙️ The Voices & The Context
- The Format: This episode features a dynamic interview between Lenny Rachitsky and Tomer Cohen, the Chief Product Officer at LinkedIn. The tone is insightful yet conversational, aimed at unpacking the intricacies of product development in the AI era.
- The Key Players:
- Tomer Cohen: As the Chief Product Officer at LinkedIn, Cohen is at the forefront of implementing innovative product strategies, particularly focusing on the Full Stack Builder Program. His insights are rooted in extensive experience and a forward-looking mindset about technology's role in business.
🗝️ Key Themes & Topics
- Reimagining Product Development: The discussion centers around the Full Stack Builder Program at LinkedIn, which aims to streamline the product development process by integrating AI effectively and empowering builders across various roles.
- The Impact of AI on Jobs: Cohen highlights that by 2030, 70% of job skills will change, necessitating an urgent adaptation to new technologies and methodologies in product building.
- Complexity in Processes: The conversation dives into how traditional product development has become overly complex, necessitating a shift back to simplicity and craftsmanship in building products.
- Cultural Change Management: The importance of building a supportive culture around
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **🎙️ Introduction: Tomer Cohen**
- 2 (04:42) **Why Rethink Product Building?**
- 3 (09:47) **The Full Stack Builder Model**
- 4 (14:33) **Team Structure and Pods**
- 5 (16:35) **Three Pillars: Platform, Tools, Culture**
- 6 (23:17) **Building and Customizing Agents**
- 7 (28:12) **Timeline and Data Prep Learnings**
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Tomer Cohen is the longtime chief product officer at LinkedIn, where he’s pioneering the Full Stack Builder program, a radical new approach to product development that fully embraces what AI makes possible. Under his leadership, LinkedIn has scrapped its traditional Associate Product Manager program and replaced it with an Associate Product Builder program that teaches coding, design, and PM skills together. He’s also introduced a formal “Full Stack Builder” title and career ladder, enabling anyone from any function to take products from idea to launch. In this conversation, Tomer explains why product development has become too complex at most companies and how LinkedIn is building an AI-powered product team that can move faster, adapt more quickly, and do more with less.
We discuss:
1. How 70% of the skills needed for jobs will change by 2030
2. The broken traditional model: organizational bloat slows features to a six-month cycle
3. The Full Stack Builder model
4. Three pillars of making FSB work: platform, agents, and culture (culture matters most)
5. Building specialized agents that critique ideas and find vulnerabilities
6. Why off-the-shelf AI tools never work on enterprise code without customization
7. Top performers adopt AI tools fastest, contrary to expectations about leveling effects
8. Change management tactics: celebrating wins, making tools exclusive, updating performance reviews
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Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny
Figma Make—A prompt-to-code tool for making ideas real: https://www.figma.com/lenny/
Miro—The AI Innovation Workspace where teams discover, plan, and ship breakthrough products: https://miro.com/lenny
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Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-linkedin-is-replacing-pms
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My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/180042347/my-takeaways-from-this-conversation
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Where to find Tomer Cohen:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomercohen
• Podcast: More from this podcast