Ex-Meta VP Reveals His Top Lessons from 25 Years Leading Product Design

Lax says vision decks can be enjoyable to make but often fail to change what teams build, especially when they imagine technology years away. He recommends matching design work to useful time horizons: stay a few weeks ahead of engineering, then occasionally look about a year out and identify a near-term step toward that goal. His “three-miracle” example is AR glasses: solve the glasses problem before planning for abundant content that might clutter the wearer’s view.

Lax argues that teams should first establish that a product is useful and needed, then invest in making it beautiful. He says pursuing the final 10% of polish too early can delay learning and often adds little to broad user satisfaction. He defines an MVP as something tested with a statistically significant group, built around one hypothesis, with agreed measures that help the team decide what to build next.

Lax says high-performing product, design, and engineering teams share an objective and keep communicating as they work. Teams struggle when each discipline has a different finish line, such as a designer expecting polish, a PM targeting a release date, and an engineer requiring a performance bar. He recommends agreeing on what “done” means for the milestone before work proceeds.

Lax reduces career growth to how independently someone can make progress on an ambiguous problem. Senior contributors may identify overlooked problems themselves, while managers can help others grow by assigning harder work and giving them room to solve it. He cautions teams to focus on worthwhile problems rather than spending time on issues that no longer matter.

Lax expects design hiring growth to slow as technology teams mature and tools make some work more efficient or accessible to non-designers. He says AI may contribute to leaner teams and a contraction in design jobs, while new work may emerge over time. He advises designers to use improving tools while engaging thoughtfully with questions about how they are built.