Sorry Medium! You must be joking with the product community

Why Medium isn’t helping product professionals and where to consume valuable content.

How do you learn about product management?

The answer to this question is simple. You learn by doing it.

Some theory is helpful, but far from enough to become a great product professional. To grow, you must get hands-on to learn. Yet, you can avoid some pitfalls by learning from others’ experiences.

One of my passions is sharing experiences and learning from others. Over the last three years, I posted 245 stories on Medium and read thousands of posts from other people. I learned a lot and had the chance to help many people with my insights, but something changed, and that disturbs me.

Medium deprioritized product management and agile content. And great writers are leaving the platform. What’s Medium doing to change that? Nothing.

I went from 50 followers in February 2020 to around 65K in January 2023. That’s a growth that I’d never imagined.

Now it comes to what bugs me. Despite the number of followers, I cannot interact with my followers the way other platforms like Substack offer.

Medium Failed Product Management

Guns N’ Roses has a famous song called I used to love her, and part of the lyrics is, “I used to love her but I had to kill her”

I used to love Medium, but actually, Medium is killing itself. And with that, my drive to keep sharing my content here.

One of the critical aspects of Product Management is listening to your audience. Your product is never finished. It evolves to serve your audience and create value.

Medium has readers and writers. I’m part of both audiences:

• As a reader, I consume tons of content, but I can only benefit from it if the writers I admire remain here.
• As a writer, I share my thoughts and do my best to help product professionals grow and sharpen their skillset. Medium owns content distribution. I cannot do anything about it.

The sad aspect is that your number of followers doesn’t matter. I cannot reach my followers directly and share my newest insights and ideas. I rely on Medium (poor) distribution for content consumption and reach.

What’s the result of Medium’s approach? An exodus of great people. Let me give you some examples:

• Maarten Dalmijn: He moved to Substack.
• Alex Ewerlöf: Also moved to Substack.

The reason is simple. Medium isn’t helping people spread their ideas as it used to. In my eyes, the platform will have a sad fate.

More and more writers are leaving Medium every day. What would be the reason for readers to stay?

Where to Find Product Management Content

Substack has several great newsletters as of now. I’d recommend readers consume content from there. If you want to benefit from top product management and agile insights, that’s the place to be.

I started a newsletter at Substack, Untrapping Product Teams, two months ago. The goal is to supercharge your product knowledge to transform the world. Subscribe here and get weekly insights.

Here are some of my recommendations:

• Untrapping Product Teams
• The Beautiful Mess
• The Product Compass with Paweł
• Leah’s ProducTea Newsletter
• Behind Product Lines
• Product Growth

Medium used to be a great platform, but it’s failing product professionals. Shame on you, Medium. It’s time to move on.

I wish Medium could improve, but I fear it has missed the opportunity. Now writers are leaving, and it’s just natural that readers follow suit.