Tech execs ask: Why have product managers when you can just keep using AI?

I’ve known her since she founded her startup while still in college in the late 2000s and built it up to a pretty sizable concern before ultimately winding it down after five years. She made many of the mistakes most first-time entrepreneurs make but also did many things right that most first-time entrepreneurs never do right. She’s not tech. She knows how to create, innovate, and sell, especially in the consumer market, with all its complexities and shifting priorities. In other words, she knows what the people want and how to bring it to them. In the sense of “product” – product science, product development, product management – this is, like, must-have skill number one. At the end of the day, “product” is all about solving a problem at a price that a lot of people are willing to pay. But while she bounced around in various lead sales and marketing positions for several startups in the time since she shuttered her own business, she had never thought of herself as a “product person.” “I’ve been doing fractional work around brand and product strategy for the past two years,” she told me. “I’ve recently become interested in moving more toward product in tech.” Again, she’s not tech. So she wanted some insight into the tech product world. She called me a “product legend.” I said absolutely, but if she used the word “legend” again the meeting was off. She laughed. I didn’t have the heart to tell her tech product is dying. Who am I kidding? Of course, I told her that! Here’s what we talked about. The product role has evolved again and not in a good way Look, I’m not only not a product legend, but in my heart of hearts, I don’t really consider myself a “product person,” even though I’ve been a chief product officer for 15 years across three companies. I just kind of fell into it and now it’s a role of convenience because what I do is hard to explain. I’m an entrepreneur who has sold companies and an innovator who holds a patent. I know how to get shit done, and I have a background in software development and an education in systems and data. But my top skill is that I know what people want and how to bring it to them. So that makes me a “product person.” And since I’ve been doing it longer than it’s been a thing, it makes me an OG product person. Like any OG, I guess, I’m now longing for the good old days. But not like you might think. See, the product role stumbled into existence with the expansion of software from business to consumer, from desktop to Web to mobile, and from corporate-driven to innovation-driven. Not that software was never that, but in the mid/late 2000s it was becoming a lot more of that very quickly. Someone needed to shepherd all that innovation from the company’s collective brain into the users’ collective hands, almost literally. As an entrepreneur who knew what the people wanted and who could code, lead, and speak, I fit this role pretty well. Eff it. I’ll do it. Product is still being confused with project From those early days, most corporations outside of the startup world didn’t have a handle on how to make the product role work for them, so the conflation of product management with project management was born. I’ve been fighting this for almost 20 years. Both roles are valid and often needed. But while product is about creating the thing, from ideation to use case to upsell, project is about delivering the thing, from requirements to launch. I don’t mind when these roles overlap. I don’t mind when product management has to absorb project management or even perform it. What I do mind is that when people who have no sense of innovation, no understanding of customers and markets, and who consistently prioritize timelines above top and bottom lines start thinking they can do the product role. By the mid/late 2010s, there was an understanding of the difference between the two functions and all the roles, and things were good. Then they weren’t. Now, product management is evolving again into its own form of project management. About a month ago, I wrote a column called “The Slow, Painful Death Of Agile and Jira,” in which I asked when Agile stopped being an optional methodology and became a religion. The only negative feedback I got – in an overwhelming landslide of positive feedback – was for calling Agile a methodology, thus proving that I didn’t understand it. I didn’t respond to any of that criticism there, but I will here. Naw, man. It’s a methodology now. That’s my entire point. Sorry I gave you intellectual credit and didn’t hit you over the head with it. Ah, I feel so much better now. Product has its own demons now It’s not just the crushing misinterpretation of the Agile manifesto or the constant stop-start-stop pace of Scrum or the horrible micromanagement UX of Jira turning product management back into project management. Over the lpast couple of years, it’s become a misinterpretation of the product role itself. Experimentation is being deemphasized for the sake of an unbending roadmap. Create it. Set it. Forget it. Innovation is being pushed out in favor of consistent recurring revenue, even if, over time, the overall numbers are smaller, as long as they’re predictable. When innovation is mentioned, it’s become a discussion of how to fit square AI pegs into round business goal holes, and just assuming revenue will go up as more people adopt AI universally. Go-to-market is becoming another methodology unto itself, with flywheels imagined as perpetual motion machines, product-market fit sought for an ever-expanding collection of unnecessary features, and target audiences the size of a broad side of a barn. All of this leads to a lack of mechanics to, you know, narrowly define the target market, properly fit it, and spin the flywheel until you get traction. This kind of thinking ultimately led to an unfortunate but inevitable outcome. Product got kneecapped in the great tech RIF I don’t know this first-hand, but anecdotally, based on who I’m hearing from, if software developers got slapped around hard in the mass layoffs of 2023 and 2024, “product people” got just plain decimated. Here’s why. Executives can make a case that AI can replace human ingenuity for tasks like developing a roadmap and sticking to it, hitting and maintaining consistent recurring revenue targets, and finding increasingly efficient and cost-effective ways to reach deeper into ever-broadening markets. If you were a “product person” sitting in front of Jira and Confluence and spreadsheets all day, you likely felt the ax, or at least the rush of air as it came down. Product is not dead yet As usual, I threw some confusing (clickbaity) histrionics in the title. I’m not saying product management is dead. Yet. I’m just saying this is how it’s going to happen and it would indeed be untimely. Because if we’re going to get out of tech’s current malaise, it’s going to take the risk tolerance for innovation, the spirit of entrepreneurship, and knowing what the people want and how to bring it to them. That’s what I told my friend. This didn’t put her off, in fact, it fired her up. Because on its face, this might not be so much a demise as it is a reset, just like I believe it is in software development. See, when AI produces the same product built on the same code for the same target market – and does that over and over again enough times, well, now you need someone to come in and innovate your way out of that death loop. Real “product people” are going to be just as critical as real “software developers.” So now that we’ve crash-landed back on the bottom floor, it’s probably a pretty good time to get in. Maybe you’d like to ride along with me. EXPERT OPINION BY JOE PROCOPIO, FOUNDER, TEACHINGSTARTUP.COM @JPROCO