LinkedIn's Mission-Focused Pods

LinkedIn's Chief Product Officer is reimagining product development through a "full stack builder" model that collapses traditional specialization to meet the accelerating pace of change.

Tomer Cohen believes we're entering a phase where change is happening faster than our ability to respond to it. By 2030, the skills required for most jobs will change by 70%, and many of today's fastest-growing jobs didn't exist a year ago. This rapid transformation demands a fundamental rethinking of how products are built.

The traditional product development process has become unnecessarily complex. What began as a simple flow—research a problem, spec it out, design it, code it, launch it, iterate—has expanded into countless sub-steps requiring multiple teams, code bases, and sprints. This complexity led to organizational bloat and micro-specialization across functions.

Cohen's full stack builder model aims to empower builders to take ideas to market regardless of their role in the stack. Rather than sequential handoffs between specialists, it creates a fluid interaction between humans and machines. The model focuses on five key human traits: vision, empathy, communication, creativity, and most importantly, judgment—the ability to make high-quality decisions in complex, ambiguous situations. Everything else is being automated.

This approach has led LinkedIn to reorganize into small, nimble pods of cross-trained builders who tackle specific missions for a quarter before reassembling. It's similar to how Navy SEALs operate—specialized in the mission rather than in narrow functional roles.

For leaders implementing similar models, Cohen emphasizes three critical components:

1. Platform: Re-architecting core platforms so AI can reason over them
2. Tools: Building specialized agents for different aspects of product development
3. Culture: The most challenging but essential element for adoption

The cultural shift requires changing performance expectations, piloting success stories, celebrating wins, and making tools accessible. Cohen warns that simply providing tools isn't enough—you need incentives, motivation, and examples of success to drive adoption.

For individual contributors, this shift presents an opportunity to expand beyond traditional role boundaries. The model creates new career paths (LinkedIn has formally introduced a "full stack builder" title) and enables transitions between disciplines that were previously difficult. Top performers are finding the most success with these tools, as they have an innate desire to continuously improve their craft.

The key insight for both leaders and ICs is that waiting for formal reorganization is waiting too long. The incentives are aligned between individual career growth and organizational needs—both benefit from becoming more agile, adaptive, and resilient in the face of rapid change.