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I still remember hearing how the Product Manager role will be dead because of AI. I think those who said this didn’t realize that its not just about writing PRDs or creating specs. A PM’s job is to deeply think about the user, the industry and build something valuable for them. The empathy side of PMs can’t be automated using AI. Sure, AI can write a questionnaire for your next user interview, it can also analyze the interview and give you a summary but there is still a human element of what to build.

Lenny’s article shows an intersting trend where the PM roles have risen ( Article link ). While some of this can be attributed to overhiring during COVID and not necessarily AI, PM’s still bring business acumen combined with technical know-how and stakeholder management which when combined is very powerful. I see new roles like Forward Deployed Product Managers where AI companies send PMs for product discovery and prototyping.

Speaking of prototyping, PMs are now building the first version of the prototype on figma or vibe coding it, to present them to stakeholders or conduct user research. The velocity has changed and I hear in some companies, PMs are becoming the bottleneck as engineers rapidly write code and deploy. There are extreme cases where the leadership believe designers are not needed and PMs can do it themselves. I personally feel this is wrong. Designers come with a philosophy and understand usability. How a user should interact with this product, is their expertise. They also think about accessibiltiy which is not natural to a PM. A PM is mostly spending time looking at the data, making hypotheses and testing them out. Usability should remain with the designer.

The lines are no more blurred of course. The holy trinity of a PM, designer and engineer is more closer than ever but the roles still require their independent functions. At least for the time being. I can’t really predict what will happen 10 years from now. The world has only 3-4 years worth of experience and knowledge to look back.

Photo by Juan Molina on Unsplash