Reps-to-Judgment (Building Product Sense)
Product sense isn't taught — it's earned through thousands of shipped micro-decisions with the shortest possible cycle time.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 91%
A career-development framework arguing that great product judgment ('product sense', 'gut') is a byproduct of volume, not of big strategic ideas. The move that matters is choosing an environment where you ship fast and often, so over two to three years you accumulate thousands of small decisions. Each decision repeated enough times becomes automatic — that automaticity is judgment, and it's what separates good PMs from great ones.
Origin
Sachin Kansal's most-repeated advice to early-career PMs, drawn from 24 years in product. He reframes the popular-but-vague notion of 'product sense' as a reps problem.
Core principles
- 01What makes a great PM is not five strategic ideas but a thousand micro-decisions
- 02Optimize your environment for shipping speed and volume of decisions
- 03Judgment forms when a repeated decision becomes automatic ('the 10th time, you don't even have to think about it')
- 04In an AI world, knowledge matters less and judgment/gut matters more, so compress cycle time even further
How to run it
- 1
Choose a high-velocity environment
Go to a job where you can ship multiple products as fast as possible — aim to go through three to five product cycles over two to three years.
Pro tip Implicit filter: if a company takes a long time to ship, it's a poor place to start your career because you'll accumulate reps too slowly.
- 2
Stop optimizing for looking smart
Don't spend energy being the smartest person in the room. Define the product, work with engineering, design, and data, and ship — then rev and iterate.
Watch out Time spent performing intelligence in meetings is time not spent making shippable decisions that build judgment.
- 3
Accumulate the micro-decisions
Deliberately make the thousand small calls: where the button goes, whether the screen belongs there, what the copy says, whether to launch in Atlanta or New Jersey. These, not the macro decisions, build the skill.
Pro tip Treat each shipped micro-decision as a rep whose outcome you'll later learn from.
- 4
Let repetition convert into gut
As similar decisions recur, they become automatic. Keep shortening cycle time so you reach that automatic-judgment stage faster — even more valuable as AI makes raw knowledge cheap.
Pro tip In an AI world, push cycle time down further, because judgment and product sense become the scarce differentiator.
In the wild
A PM who spends two to three years just defining, shipping, revving, and iterating products — rather than optimizing their presence in rooms — looks back after three years and realizes they've shipped a great deal and developed an innate sense of judgment.
→ An accumulated portfolio of shipped work and a gut that makes similar decisions automatic, distinguishing them as a great rather than merely good PM.
Common mistakes
Chasing five big strategic ideas
Kansal says what makes a great PM is not the five amazing strategic ideas but the thousand micro-decisions; over-indexing on macro strategy skips the reps that actually build judgment.
Optimizing to be the smartest in the room
Spending time on how you show up in meetings trades away decision volume — the very thing that compounds into product sense — for the appearance of competence.
Is it for you?
Best for
Early-career PMs trying to build 'product sense' and choosing where to work
Not ideal for
Roles requiring deep, slow, high-stakes single bets where rapid iteration isn't possible or safe
From the transcript
“One is go to a job where you can ship multiple products as fast as possible.”
“It's the thousand micro decisions that you made. Not the five macro decisions that you made, but the thousand micro decisions that you made.”
“when you make a similar decision the 10th time, you don't even have to think about it. It just happens.”
“the importance of judgment and as you mentioned product sense and the gut feel that is going to become even more important in the world…”
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Sachin Kansal