Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram since 2018, oversees a 3-billion-user platform and has tripled its user base since taking over from founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. In this conversation with Lenny's Newsletter, he makes a concrete claim about how product teams are being restructured right now: baker's-dozen specialist teams are collapsing into lean pods of 4 to 6 generalists, and a new role called 'product staff' is absorbing PM, design, data science, and research into a single operator.
The most counterintuitive argument Mosseri makes is that AI-generated content is a tailwind for Instagram, not a threat. His logic connects directly to creator identity and what authenticity means when synthetic content is cheap and abundant. He also explains what the Instagram algorithm actually knows about users today, and why it is only now reaching the capability level people assumed it had years ago. These are not abstract positions. He grounds them in specific product decisions and two named failures: Facebook Home and the first version of Reels.
Read the full piece for the reasoning behind Mosseri's bullish stance on designers specifically, even as every other functional boundary dissolves around them. That argument, set against his honest accounting of which roles are most at risk, is where the original earns its length.
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