AI didn’t take the PM job. It exposed the one we should have been doing all along.
The hard part of product management was never the paperwork. It was understanding what customers actually want, crafting it into something elegant, helping people get value from it, and turning that into value for the company. None of that got easier. You just get there sooner.
What this essay explores
- Recognize how prioritization frameworks reflected an era when engineering time was the binding constraint.
- See why cheaper prototyping and faster shipping make product decisions harder, not easier.
- Shift from ranking backlogs to curating what earns a place in the product and strategy.
- Identify how fragmented systems splinter context and make good product decisions harder.
- Judge feature completion by whether customers get value, not simply whether it shipped.
Key takeaway
Building software has never been cheaper. Doing product management well has never been harder. AI didn’t take the PM job — it exposed the one we should have been doing all along.
