Option Five

Description: Designers are coding, engineers are writing specs, and product managers are prototyping with tools that didn't exist 3 months ago. Julia Kanter, Senior Director of Product at Zillow, has watched her team's roles become more pixelated as the tectonic plates beneath the product landscape keep shifting. She explains why the need for product sense has become more acute when everyone can do a bit of everything. And why approaching this moment with curiosity, agency, and humility might be the smartest move of all.The new reality of product teamsJulia's perspective comes from leading AI and experience teams at Zillow, where she's witnessed firsthand how rapidly evolving tools are reshaping what it means to build products. The traditional boundaries between roles are blurring in ways that require teams to develop new patterns of collaboration."I think across tech it's clear that our roles are becoming more pixelated," Julia explains. "An engineer can be product minded or spin up their own spec, and a des