Spotting Bullshit in Product Management — Oded Hutzler (Evinced)
Host: Eyal David · Guest: Oded Hutzler · About the host
In this episode
- Digital accessibility serves not only people with disabilities but everyone — and prevents 15-16 percent of the population from being locked out of using websites; it has three justifications: inclusivity, regulation (fines), and money (market share).
- The two most important skills for a product manager are accountability (you're the CEO of the product, responsible even for what you didn't do) and interpersonal communication / emotional intelligence.
- To spot bullshit you shouldn't attack automatically — you take time to process, break down the estimate, understand where it comes from, and involve more people from the domain instead of calling 'bullshit' directly.
- 'Calling the bullshit' immediately doesn't help; what works is breaking down the problem together, creating a meeting in a wider forum, and letting other experts bring a perspective — that's how a false positive that a senior developer claimed was 'unsolvable' got solved.
- The hardest bullshit to spot is your own; working against it is done through an iterative process, sharing early with others, leaning on data, and getting off bullshit fast the moment you catch it.
- With design, where everyone has an opinion, it helps to stick to working patterns and to produce POC variations and sample them on users (including user-testing platforms and GPT) — 'it's simply gold.'
Listen to this episode
Episode Description
Oded Hutzler, a product manager at Evinced (an Israeli-American startup in the digital accessibility space), joins Eyal David on Product Builder. The conversation moves between the world of Evinced — tools that help giant companies like Amazon and Booking make websites and apps accessible — and the core of the episode: how a product manager spots bullshit (inflated estimates, false positives, self-bullshit) and how to communicate it without burning relationships. Oded stresses that the role is mainly about people, accountability, and interpersonal communication.
Full transcript with speakers and timestamps
Selected quotes
“You're basically a kind of manager without authority, and you need people to love you, or it's advisable that they like you, and sometimes it doesn't go well.”
“At first I really was calling the bullshit, and I learned over time that it really doesn't contribute and doesn't help.”
“Many times it's your own bullshit. I think that's actually the place that's hardest to attack.”
Questions & answers
What does Evinced do?
Evinced is an Israeli-American startup in the accessibility space that helps giant companies and large organizations (like Amazon, Booking, and banks) make their websites and apps accessible to people with disabilities. They have a set of tools for every stage of development — for designers, for developers (a browser extension that scans and finds bugs), for QA, monitoring products, and also an SDK for Unit-Testing of components.
What is bullshit in the context of product management?
There are many kinds: an inflated estimate ('this'll take me a month') from a developer, designer, or any party; a false positive; and also self-bullshit — assumptions and preconceptions you tell yourself. The cost of not spotting it is changing your planning based on an under- or over-estimate, breaking features, bringing forward an MVP — and in the end, time and money.
How do you spot bullshit without damaging relationships?
Oded recommends not attacking automatically but taking time to process after the meeting, breaking down the estimate and understanding where it comes from (maybe the task wasn't understood, maybe there's another way). The key is thinking together jointly, involving another person from the domain, and steering toward the middle ground — not 'calling bullshit' directly.
What are the most important skills for a product manager in Oded's view?
Accountability — the product manager is a kind of CEO of the product, responsible for its success, for meeting KPIs, and for fixing bugs even if they didn't create them. And second, people: interpersonal communication and emotional intelligence, because most of the work is done with people.
How do you use GenAI in product work?
Oded uses GPT for copy and microcopy, for fixing up English, and for communicating with customers, and mainly as brainstorming that connects ideas and opens the mind. He notes that GPT's feedback on design tends to be general and sometimes 'too nice,' but the field is improving.
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