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Like Claude Code and Cowork, Claude Design aims to replace traditional tools for conversational AI, this time focusing on visual design.
The post Claude Design Brings AI to Visual Work appeared first on Thurrott.com.
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Sr. Content Developer at Microsoft, working remotely in PA, TechBash conference organizer, former Microsoft MVP, Husband, Dad and Geek.
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Pennsylvania, USA
Feroze Motafram is an operations consultant based in Sammamish, Wash., and founder of Avestan LLC. This piece is adapted from a LinkedIn post.
Someone asked me recently what made me think about writing this. The trigger, I told them, was simpler than you might expect.
I live in Sammamish, in the shadow of Microsoft’s looming presence. Microsoft employees are my neighbors, my social circle, the people I run into at weekend gatherings. Over time I noticed that conversations with them had a distinctive gravitational pull — always inward, toward reorgs, internal politics, who reports to whom now, who’s ascendant, who’s out. Customers were rarely part of the conversation. This usually means navigating the organization has become more consuming than building anything within it.
Microsoft’s stock decline and the softening of real estate in this corridor (both affecting me personally) were the prompts to write it down. The material was already sitting in front of me.
I should be clear about what I am and am not. My formal training is in electrical engineering. The primary instruments of my early career were set squares and slide rules, which will tell you something about both my vintage and my domain. I have spent the intervening decades as a senior executive at Fortune 100 companies and, more recently, as an operations and supply chain consultant. I build and fix things: supply chains, organizations that have lost their way. What I can offer is not insider knowledge. It is 30 years of pattern recognition, applied to what is visible from where I stand.
This is the lens I am bringing. Take it for what it is worth.
The market is asking a question
Microsoft stock declined roughly 25% in Q1 2026, representing its worst quarterly performance since the 2008 financial crisis despite blockbuster results. The market may overreact, but it is not stupid. When the stock of a company of this scale underperforms that of its peer group by double digits, the question worth asking is not “is this a buying opportunity.” The question is: what does the market understand about this organization that the headlines don’t capture?
Part of the answer is visible in the financials. A striking portion of Microsoft’s forward revenue backlog is tied to a single counterparty, OpenAI, an unprofitable startup that has since signed a landmark cloud agreement with Amazon, directly challenging the Azure exclusivity Microsoft had treated as a cornerstone of its AI strategy. Meanwhile, Microsoft is building its own internal AI model as a hedge, an expensive bet layered on top of an already expensive bet.
But the part that does not show up in an earnings report may be the more consequential story. That is what I want to offer here.
The monopoly dividend, and its hidden cost
For the better part of three decades, Microsoft enjoyed something very few companies in history have had: a captive market. Enterprise customers did not use Office because they loved it. They used it because leaving was more painful than staying. That distinction between loyalty and lock-in matters enormously, and it is one that organizations rarely make honestly about themselves.
When your customers cannot leave, the feedback loops that drive genuine innovation go silent. The tendency is to stop asking “what does the customer need?” and start asking “what can we get away with?” Processes multiply. Committees proliferate. Bureaucracy thrives. The organization optimizes for defending territory rather than creating it.
This is not a character failing. It occurs insidiously and unconsciously. It is an entirely rational organizational response to a monopolistic competitive environment. But it leaves a mark. And that mark does not disappear simply because the competitive environment changes.
Satya Nadella earned his laurels, but the work isn’t finished
The Azure pivot was a genuine strategic achievement, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s cultural reset from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all,” as he framed it, was real and necessary. The stack-ranking era that preceded him did generational damage to Microsoft’s ability to collaborate, retain talent, and take meaningful risks. He arrested that decline and deserves full credit for it.
But here one must tread carefully. Stack ranking was formally abolished in the final months of Steve Ballmer’s tenure. The announcement was celebrated, the headlines were laudatory. What is rather more interesting is what one hears in conversations since. Ask Microsoft employees about the performance review system that replaced it, and the response is rarely enthusiastic. Whether the underlying mechanics genuinely changed, or whether the organization simply learned to dress the same instincts in more palatable language, is a question I cannot answer from the outside. What I can observe is that the people doing the work don’t appear to believe the answer is reassuring.
Cultural transformation in a 220,000-person organization moves at a glacial pace. You can change the language in a decade. Changing the instincts takes considerably longer. One has to wonder how many of the engineers and managers who learned to survive the Ballmer years by navigating politics rather than building products have since moved on, and how many remain, in leadership positions, still oriented by instinct toward self-protection over bold action.
What I can observe is the output. Copilot (inarguably Microsoft’s most strategically critical product) has converted just 15 million paid subscribers from a captive base of 450 million Microsoft 365 users. That is 3.3%. When your own customers will not buy what you are selling at scale, it is worth asking whether the product is genuinely solving a problem or simply a feature in search of a use case.
Microsoft’s internal preoccupations do not stay inside the building. I have observed versions of this dynamic before, most vividly when I lived in Brookfield, Wis., in the orbit of GE Healthcare’s then-headquarters. But what I observe in this corridor is of a different magnitude. It is not just politics that dominates the conversation. It is the organization itself — its structure, its hierarchies, its shifting priorities — that has become the primary subject of intellectual energy.
The campus, in a very real sense, has become the product. When navigating the organization becomes more consuming than building anything within it, that is not a criticism of the individuals. It is a diagnosis of the system they are operating inside.
The human capital story no one is writing
There is a dimension to this that the financial press has largely missed, and I raise it because I see it in my community every day… including, in ways I did not anticipate, in my own backyard.
A significant proportion of Microsoft’s engineering talent (and the engineering talent of the broader Seattle tech corridor) consists of H-1B visa holders. These are exceptional professionals: highly educated, deeply skilled, often carrying decade-long career investments in the United States. They have built lives here. Many have children born here. They have been, in many cases, the intellectual engine of the products Microsoft is depending on to compete in the AI era.
That population is operating under a level of personal anxiety that is, in my observation, without modern precedent. Travel advisories from their own employers. A $100,000 petition fee for new visa applications. Proposed rule changes touching birthright citizenship. A policy environment that sends a clear and unambiguous message: your presence here is conditional, negotiable, and subject to revision without notice.
The behavioral consequence of that anxiety is not visible in a quarterly earnings report. But it is real and consequential. People operating under existential personal uncertainty do not take professional risks. They do not champion the bold new initiative. They do not volunteer for the high-visibility project that could fail. They execute reliably on what already exists and protect their position. In an organization that already has a cultural predisposition toward risk aversion, this compounds the pathology in ways that will show up — perhaps not this quarter, but in the product decisions made over the next eighteen months.
The effects are visible beyond the campus walls. Conversations with real estate professionals in this corridor tell a consistent story: demand from this community, which has historically been among the most financially capable buyers in the region, has softened measurably. Not because the finances have changed, but because the horizon has. When you are uncertain whether your visa will be renewed, or whether your children’s citizenship status may be revisited, you do not buy a house.
The softening of demand is not merely an abstraction for those of us who live here. But the more significant consequence is not measured in property values. It is measured in the quality of risk-taking inside those campuses. And risk-taking is precisely what Microsoft needs most right now.
The case for optimism, and why it requires more than patience
None of this is to suggest Microsoft is broken beyond repair. Betting against Microsoft has historically been an enterprise for the foolhardy. The balance sheet remains stellar. The enterprise relationships are genuinely extraordinary. Ripping out Azure, Teams, and the M365 stack is not a decision any CIO makes lightly. The installed-base moat is real, and should not be underestimated by anyone, least of all an operations consultant from the suburbs.
What I would offer, more modestly, is this: the bull case requires more than a great balance sheet and sticky products. It requires an organization capable of genuine innovation at speed. Which in turn requires a culture that rewards risk, retains its most creative talent, and executes with urgency. Whether Microsoft can summon those qualities at this particular moment is a question I cannot answer with conviction.
What I can say is that the market, which is considerably more qualified than I am, appears to be asking the same question. The valuation has compressed to levels not seen in a decade, briefly falling below the S&P 500 for the first time in a generation. That is not the posture of a market betting with conviction that the answer is yes.
Perhaps it should be. I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that the signals visible from outside the building — from the neighborhood, from weekend gatherings, from the casual conversations — are worth paying attention to. They usually are.
Pennsylvania, USA
Last May Duolingo's stock peaked at $529.05. But while the learning app passed $1 billion in revenue in 2025 and 50 million daily active users, today its stock price has dropped more than 81%, to $100.51.
And there's been other changes, reports Entrepreneur:
In April 2025, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn made headlines after writing a memo calling the company "AI-first." In the memo, von Ahn announced that the language-learning platform would track employees' AI use in performance reviews. Now, a year later, von Ahn is backtracking and rethinking how he measures employee performance. He told the Silicon Valley Girl podcast earlier this month that Duolingo no longer considers AI use in performance reviews.
The change arose after employees started to ask, "Do you just want us to use AI for AI's sake?" von Ahn explained. "We said no, look — the most important thing in your performance is that you are doing whatever your job is as well as possible. A lot of times, AI can help you with that, but if it can't, I'm not going to force you to do that," von Ahn said on the podcast. He felt as though the company was "trying to push something that in some cases did not fit" instead of "being held accountable for the actual outcome." The CEO is, however, still sticking to other "constructive constraints" he introduced in the April 2025 memo, including stopping contractor hiring in cases where AI can assume their workload...
Von Ahn also mentioned that a few months ago, Duolingo had a day dedicated to vibe coding, or prompting AI to create an app without manually writing a single line of code. Every single person at the company, from engineers to human resources professionals, had to vibe code an app. Vibe coding has made an impact at the company. One of Duolingo's latest offerings, a course teaching users how to play chess, arose when two people vibe-coded the first prototype of it, the CEO said. Neither of them knew how to play chess or program, but they managed to use AI to create the whole chess curriculum and a prototype of the app in about six months last year. Now chess is Duolingo's fastest-growing course, according to von Ahn. "At this point, we have seven million daily active users that are learning chess," the CEO said on the podcast.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Pennsylvania, USA
Let's get rid of some dragon fruit, and then add some more instructions to IronBefunge.
Pennsylvania, USA
Nikhyl Singhal is the founder of The Skip, a community for senior product leaders; a former product exec at Meta, Google, and Credit Karma; and a many-time founder. He’s also one of the most honest, unfiltered voices on what’s actually happening in product management right now.
In our in-depth conversation, we discuss:
1. Why the next two years will be the most chaotic period in product management history
2. Why half of current product managers are at risk, and what separates those who’ll do well
3. Why you need to find your “moments of joy” with AI
4. The “smiling exhaustion” he’s seeing across the product community
5. The psychological barriers that prevent people from reinventing themselves
6. Why your resume’s fancy logos matter less than ever, and what matters now
7. His prediction that companies will shed 30,000 people and rehire 8,000—all AI-first
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Brought to you by:
WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs
Vanta—Automate compliance, manage risk, and accelerate trust with AI
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Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-half-of-product-managers-are-in-trouble
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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 Nikhyl Singhal:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhyl
• X: https://x.com/nikhyl
• Podcast & Newsletter: https://skip.show
• Skip Community: https://skip.community
• Skip Coach: https://skip.coach
• Skip.help: https://skip.help
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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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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Nikhyl Singhal
(02:25) The big picture: what’s changing for product managers
(10:00) Are product leaders doing better than 2-3 years ago?
(11:44) What will change in the next couple of years
(14:23) How companies are changing the way they build products
(15:51) What “judgment” really means for PMs
(17:46) Why there won’t be any more bad software
(20:25) The skills you need to be effective today
(23:31) Why there are more PM roles than ever
(24:27) The builder versus information-mover divide
(30:14) The non-builder problem
(30:53) Should PMs code?
(34:15) Why experienced leaders still matter
(35:44) The diversity setback nobody’s talking about
(37:21) Why your brand doesn’t matter as much anymore
(39:54) How valued skills are flipping upside down
(40:49) Why change is so hard for humans
(43:53) The “equal disappointment” algorithm
(46:39) You must cross the threshold
(48:37) This chaos will settle
(53:19) Finding your moment of joy
(58:50) Nikhyl’s AI stack and what he’s building
(1:00:53) The obsolescence mindset
(1:05:24) Specific advice for PMs right now
(1:08:58) The four jobs that will exist in the future
(1:11:59) Why alignment is changing (but not disappearing)
(1:15:40) How engineering is changing even more than PM
(1:17:04) The surprising design plateau
(1:18:49) Finding optimism in the chaos
(1:21:12) Lightning round
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Referenced:
• Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-a-long-and-meaningful-career
• COBOL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL
• United Airlines: https://www.united.com
• State of the product job market in early 2026: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/state-of-the-product-job-market-in-ee9
• Head of Growth (Anthropic): “Claude is growing itself at this point” | Amol Avasare: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run
• Demis Hassabis on X: https://x.com/demishassabis
• Sam Altman on X: https://x.com/sama
• Dario Amodei on X: https://x.com/DarioAmodei
• Cross on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Cross-Season-1/dp/B0D6X7ZZHC
• Jack Ryan on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Clancys-Jack-Ryan/dp/B0CNDCMN8R
• 24 on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/24-Season-1/dp/B000HPF85A
• Claude Code: https://code.claude.com
• Codex: https://chatgpt.com/codex
• Lovable: https://lovable.dev
• Sonos: https://www.sonos.com
• “There are only four jobs” on X: https://x.com/yrechtman/status/2039012253341495462
• Paradise on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/paradise-2b4b8988-50c9-4097-bf93-bc34a99a5b4f
• Lioness on Paramount+: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/lioness
• Tesla: https://www.tesla.com
• Albert Einstein’s quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/115696-genius-is-1-talent-and-99-percent-hard-work
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Recommended books:
• James: https://www.amazon.com/James-Novel-Percival-Everett/dp/0385550367
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Huckleberry-Finn-Unabridged-Uncensored/dp/195483943X
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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com
Download audio: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/193130101/e11511157ea8e64bcb5e6c8ac84cb95f.mp3
Pennsylvania, USA
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Pennsylvania, USA
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