# Nir Yechiel's Blog > Personal blog of Nir Yechiel, a Senior Principal Product Manager at Red Hat focused on AI and enterprise software. Covers AI-augmented workflows, product management, networking, OpenStack, Kubernetes, and career reflections. Active since 2014, with 34 posts. Nir started in computer networking (Cisco, Red Hat), moved to product management for OpenStack and OpenShift, spent time at Facebook/Meta on connectivity infrastructure, then returned to Red Hat in engineering management leading OpenShift networking teams (Submariner, Service Mesh, Gateway API, Service Interconnect). In 2026 he transitioned back to product management, focused on AI. The blog reflects this journey: early posts are deep technical content on networking and OpenStack, middle posts cover career transitions and leadership, and recent posts focus on AI-augmented product management workflows. The site also includes a Notes section with shorter, less polished working notes on product thinking, frameworks, and ideas. ## AI and Product Management - [All Things Excellent Are as Difficult as They Are Rare](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2026/07/05/all-things-excellent-are-as-difficult-as-they-are-rare/): Spinoza ends his Ethics book - one of the most demanding works in the history of philosophy - with a single sentence: “Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt.”... - [The Bottleneck Moved](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2026/07/02/the-bottleneck-moved/): A few weeks into my current role, I had a spec ready for a UI change - twelve string replacements across seven files, with a clear naming principle and an... - [The Harness Is the Product](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2026/06/21/the-harness-is-the-product/): If you’re building on top of an LLM, there’s a natural instinct to chase the best model. Bigger parameter counts, higher benchmark scores, the latest release from OpenAI or Anthropic... - [Why Your AI Agent Keeps Making the Same Mistakes](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2026/06/15/why-your-ai-agent-keeps-making-the-same-mistakes/): My AI agent used to guess people’s names from their email addresses. It saw an email handle and confidently produced a full name in a meeting brief - wrong person... - [Build Your Own AI-Augmented Workflow](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2026/06/14/build-your-own-ai-augmented-workflow/): A few weeks ago, I published a post about NirOps - my AI-augmented workflow for product management. The response was more than I expected. People reached out asking how to... - [AI Brain Fry Is Real](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2026/06/05/ai-brain-fry-is-real/): A few weeks ago I wrote about building an AI operating system for product management - a local system called NirOps that takes an AI-first approach to my PM workflows.... - [What I Learned in My First 30 Days Back in Product Management](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2026/05/31/what-i-learned-in-my-first-30-days-back-in-product-management/): In May 2026, I started a new role as Senior Principal Product Manager at Red Hat, focused on AI and the company’s Digital Workforce initiative. On paper, it’s a PM... - [I Built a Personal AI Operating System for Product Management](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2026/05/13/ai-operating-system-for-product-management/): Update: Since this post was published, I open-sourced the system as a template repo you can fork and adapt. See Build Your Own AI-Augmented Workflow for the walkthrough. ## Career and Leadership - [Second Anniversary at Red Hat](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2022/03/20/second-anniversary-at-red-hat/): Last month marked my second service anniversary since rejoining Red Hat. I feel like this is a good opportunity to reflect on the last two years and what I have... - [Thoughts on mental health, project Aristotle, and Maslow's hierarchy of needs](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2020/05/24/thoughts-on-mental-health-project-aristotle-and-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs/): At least up until today, I used this blog to document technical stuff. But with May being Mental Health Awareness month, and with many of us spending most of our... - [Hello (again), Red Hat!](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2020/04/12/hello-again-red-hat/): tl;dr - as of February 2020, I am back at Red Hat, focusing on OpenShift multi-cluster networking. - [A New Beginning](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2019/04/23/a-new-beginning/): 2019 brings a new beginning for me. After a little over five years at Red Hat, I have decided to move on to my next challenge. This is a big... ## Networking and OpenStack - [Migrating my blog from WordPress to GitHub Pages](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2020/07/01/migrating-my-blog-from-wordpress-to-github-pages/): Goodbye The Network Way, welcome nyechiel.com! - [Red Hat Summit 2020: Networking Sessions You Don’t Want to Miss](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2020/04/13/red-hat-summit-2020-networking-sessions-you-dont-want-to-miss/): Red Hat Summit is one of my favorite events of the year. It brings together customers, partners, community members and Red Hatters to talk about the open source innovations that... - [Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13: five things you need to know about networking](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2018/07/15/red-hat-openstack-platform-13-five-things-you-need-to-know-about-networking/): A post I wrote for the Red Hat Stack blog, on key networking features included in Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13. Read more here: Red Hat OpenStack Platform 13: five... - [SDN with Red Hat OpenStack Platform: OpenDaylight Integration](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2017/02/28/sdn-with-red-hat-openstack-platform-opendaylight-integration/): A short post I wrote for the Red Hat Stack blog, on what Red Hat is doing with OpenStack and OpenDaylight. Read more here: SDN with Red Hat OpenStack Platform: OpenDaylight... - [Networking sessions in Red Hat Summit 2016](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2016/07/07/networking-sessions-in-red-hat-summit-2016/): I recently attended the Red Hat Summit 2016 event that took place at San Francisco, CA, on June 27-30. Red Hat Summit is a great place to interact with customers,... - [Boosting the NFV datapath with RHEL OpenStack Platform](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2016/02/14/boosting-the-nfv-datapath-with-rhel-openstack-platform/): A post I wrote for the Red Hat Stack blog, trying to clarify what we are doing with RHEL OpenStack Platform to accelerate the datapath for NFV applications. - [NFV and Open Networking with RHEL OpenStack Platfrom](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2016/01/04/nfv-and-open-networking-with-rhel-openstack-platfrom/): (This is a summary version of a talk I gave at Intel Israel Telecom and NFV event on December 2nd, 2015. Slides are available on GitHub). - [LLDP traffic and Linux bridges](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2016/01/04/lldp-traffic-and-linux-bridges/): In my previous post I described my Cumulus VX lab environment which is based on Fedora and KVM. One of the first things I noticed after bringing up the setup... - [Hands on with Fedora, KVM and Cumulus VX](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2015/12/31/hands-on-with-fedora-kvm-and-cumulus-vx/): Cumulus Linux is a network operating system based on Debian that runs on top of industry standard networking hardware. By providing a software-only solution, Cumulus is enabling disaggregation of data... - [Reflections on the networking industry, part 2: On CLI, APIs and SNMP](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2015/12/29/reflections-on-the-networking-industry-part-2-on-cli-apis-and-snmp/): In the previous post I briefly described the fact that many networks today are closed and vertically designed. While standard protocols are being adopted by vendors, true interoperability is still... - [Reflections on the networking industry, part 1: Welcome to vendor land](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2015/12/28/reflections-on-the-networking-industry-part-1/): I have been involved with networking for quite some time now; I have had the opportunity to design, implement and operate different networks across different environments such as enterprise, data-center,... - [Neutron networking with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2015/06/28/neutron-networking-with-red-hat-enterprise-linux-openstack-platform/): (This is a summary version of a talk I gave at Red Hat Summit on June 25th, 2015. Slides are available on GitHub). - [IPv6 Prefix Delegation - what is it and how does it going to help OpenStack?](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2015/06/23/ipv6-prefix-delegation-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-going-to-help-openstack/): IPv6 offers several ways to assign IP addresses to end hosts. Some of them (SLAAC, stateful DHCPv6, stateless DHCPv6) were already covered in this post. The IPv6 Prefix Delegation mechanism... - [OpenStack Networking with Neutron: What Plugin Should I Deploy?](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2015/06/17/openstack-networking-with-neutron-what-plugin-should-i-deploy/): (This is a summary version of a talk I gave at OpenStack Israel event on June 15th, 2015. Slides are available on GitHub). - [What’s Coming in OpenStack Networking for the Kilo Release](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2015/05/11/whats-coming-in-openstack-networking-for-the-kilo-release/): A post I wrote for the Red Hat Stack blog on what’s coming in OpenStack Networking for the Kilo release. - [An Overview of Link Aggregation and LACP](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2015/05/01/an-overview-of-link-aggregation-and-lacp/): The concept of Link Aggregation (LAG) is well known in the networking industry by now, and people usually consider it as a basic functionality that just works out of the... - [Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 6: SR-IOV Networking - Part II: Walking Through the Implementation](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2015/04/29/red-hat-enterprise-linux-openstack-platform-6-sr-iov-networking-part-ii-walking-through-the-implementation/): Second part of the SR-IOV networking post I wrote for the Red Hat Stack blog. - [Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 6: SR-IOV Networking - Part I: Understanding the Basics](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2015/03/05/red-hat-enterprise-linux-openstack-platform-6-sr-iov-networking-part-i-understanding-the-basics/): Check out this blog post I wrote for Red Hat Stack on SR-IOV networking support introduced in RHEL OpenStack Platfrom 6. This is based on the Nova and Neutron work... - [The need for Network Overlays – part II](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2014/11/30/the-need-for-network-overlays-part-ii/): In the previous post, I covered some of the basic concepts behind network overlays, primarily highlighting the need to move into a more robust, L3 based, network environments. In this... - [What’s Coming in OpenStack Networking for Juno Release](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2014/09/16/whats-coming-in-openstack-networking-for-juno-release/): A blog post I wrote for Red Hat Stack on what’s coming in OpenStack Neutron for the Juno release. - [IPv6 address assignment – stateless, stateful, DHCP... oh my!](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2014/07/02/ipv6-address-assignment-stateless-stateful-dhcp-oh-my/): People don’t like changes. IPv6 could have help to solve a lot of the burden in networks deployed today, which are still mostly based on the original version of the... - [The need for Network Overlays – part I](https://nyechiel.com/blog/2014/07/01/the-need-for-network-overlays-part-i/): The IT industry has gained significant efficiency and flexibility as a direct result of virtualization. Organizations are moving toward a virtual datacenter model, and flexibility, speed, scale and automation are... ## Notes - [Jobs to Be Done](https://nyechiel.com/notes/jobs-to-be-done/): Organizing product work around user jobs instead of feature requests. - [Four Layers of AI Engineering](https://nyechiel.com/notes/four-layers-of-ai-engineering/): Prompt, context, harness, loop - each layer wraps the one before it, and the real engineering is further out than most people think. - [The Waterline Model](https://nyechiel.com/notes/the-waterline-model/): Molly Graham's framework for diagnosing team problems - start structural, not personal. ## Pages - [About](https://nyechiel.com/about/): Author bio, career background, and site information. - [Blog Archive](https://nyechiel.com/blog/): Full list of all blog posts. - [Notes](https://nyechiel.com/notes/): Working notes on product thinking, frameworks, and ideas. - [Tags](https://nyechiel.com/tags/): Browse posts and notes by topic tag. - [Podcasts](https://nyechiel.com/podcasts/): Podcast episodes featuring Nir Yechiel.