What's the Future of PMs?

When we forget the skills necessary to use tools

No matter what we do, bullshit management keeps knocking our doors.

The newest one: we’re teaching PMs to master vibe-coding while they’re forgetting how to think. That’s not progress. That’s regression with better tools.

Now, it seems that mastering tools for its sake is what PMs should be doing.

How do often do you find variations of this sentence?

Every PM should learn how to [whatever someone wants to sell].

When I open LinkedIn, it reminded me of a public market I visited in Vietnam earlier this year. Everyone wanted to sell me things I neither wanted nor needed.

LinkedIn is becoming a market, where everyone shouts how roles are changing, and what you should learn to remain relevant.

Is it so?

If you step back, what do we complain the most in product?

We hate when people give us solutions to implement instead of problems to solve. Now, when you open LinkedIn, everyone is giving you new solutions. Vibe-coding, RAG, MCP, Evals, Agents, and many more.

The new fancy thing is to be an AI PM so you can double your salary by using AI tools. What’s happening? And what should you care about?

It does make sense for you to learn about AI, as it makes sense for you to learn many other things. AI now gets the attention because of the hype. And that’s dangerous.

Many people are shifting critical responsibilities to AI, and that’s a wrong direction to me. I’m afraid that in a few years time, we may have become worst version of product professionals ever.

Look at what’s happening:

• Vibe-coding without problem understanding

• Delivery without discovery

• Discovery without strategy

• Strategy = throwing spaghetti on the wall, and hoping something to stick

Is that really the future?

I do believe AI is going to shape how we work, but that should not make us dumber. Critical product skills remain essential, and now more ignored than ever.

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PS: This content is beyond the AI hype with fundamentals many people struggle with.

What’s Happening Right Now?

Investors are pouring money into AI-Coding, e.g., Lovable, Bolt.New, and others. But is that the most important problem to solve?

Software engineers are “expensive” and making their work cheaper makes sense, doesn’t it? In my eyes, it makes sense only if we’re missing the whole picture.

Most people think that software engineers are coders. I think that’s wrong.

Yes, you will work with coders, and they will make your life harder because:

• They want better acceptance criteria

• They only code what’s in the ticket

• They don’t think knowing the problem is their responsibility

• They limit theirselves to outputs, not outcomes

Software engineers in the other hand will:

• Challenge you until they understand the problem they solve

• Craft what’s necessary instead of limiting to a ticket definition

• They want to ensure their solutions solve real problems

• They want to drive value, not only code

Applications like Lovable probably can replace coders, but it cannot replace software engineers. And that’s what makes me scared.

When product folks believe they can create an application fully by vibe-coding, 80% of the work is missing. And if you’re a serious PM reading this, you know what I’m talking about.

What Are the Critical Skills to Build Products that Matter?

I wish shipping fast was our main problem. That would be solvable easier.

The hard truth is that others challenges keep PMs up time, not delivery.

• How do you align teams when everyone has a different opinion?

• How do you prioritize what to work on when served with a roadmap full of promises?

• How do you uncover insights when data is contradictory?

• How do you differentiate your product in a crowded market?

AI won’t solve such problems for you. And yet everyone is telling you to learn everything about AI right now.

I’m afraid that in a few years from now:

• PMs won’t know how to align business in a unified direction

• Evaluate opportunities and make hard decisions

• Understand what to prioritise and what to drop

• Read between the lines of data and customer feedback

• Clarify what makes you unique and double down on that

If PMs forget about the essence of product management, the LinkedIn doom posts will be right. But when PMs step back and evaluate which skills they need to solve the tough challenges and do the hard work to develop them, we will have a bright future.

Those skills are more of an art than science, Marty Cagan calls it Product Sense.

“Winning products come from the deep understanding of the user’s needs combined with an equally deep understanding of what’s just now possible.”
— Marty Cagan

While everyone shout AI at your face, you will ultimately stand out, when you:

• Become a fearless decision-maker

• Learn how to de-risk ideas faster than everybody else

• Align multiple people in a solid direction

• Sharpen your critical thinking skills to separate noise from signs

• Understand your market inside out

• Use real results to make decisions

• Do what’s necessary instead of what’s easy

Such skills remain relevant over time, and if you posses them, you will grow. A few years back, I hired a senior PM to the team, AI was already a thing, but not a hype. And we had AI in our roadmap, she invited me for a coffee, and it went like this:

I’ve been here for a month now, and I understand the pressure for innovation. So I did my homework and crafted this Lean Canvas to understand the business model, which I want to share with you.

I cannot see how AI helps our customers achieve their jobs better. We aim to help them find guidance, and we preach empathy. Yet, now we say their first contact is AI, when all they want is a human to listen to them.”

She didn’t need to go any further. I realised we were building a solution business wanted, but customers didn’t need.

Homework for You: Look at your roadmap, can you connect cutomers’ needs to the solutions presented there?

Now, you may have a thought your mind, “Should I ignore AI altogether?”

AI as an Ally, Not the Enemy

If you ask yourself, what’s something you always wanted to do but never got support?

In my mind, one thing stands out: Trying multiple solutions for the same problem.

Up to now, building has been expensive so you’ve probably struggled to get support to test several solutions before committing to one. AI can change that for you.

Instead of investing weeks on building one solution for the problem, you can test several alternatives for the same problem in a few days. And then you can define which one makes the most sense to build.

Yet, one caveat.

You need to understand your context:

• Audience: Who you’re serving and who you’re not

• Problem: What you’re solving and its scenario

• Status quo: How your audience deal with it currently

• Satisfaction: How satisfied your audience is with the current solution

Once you know the above, you can understand how to drive customer and business value. From there, you can talk about solutions, not before.

Final Thoughts

Creating products has no finishing line. Tools you use now will become obsolete in a few years. My stack today has nothing to do with my stack 10 years ago, apart from the immortal and beloved Jira.

Yet, you should remember tools are means, not end.

Mastering Lovable won’t make you a better PM. As writing better queries in MongoDB didn’t make me a better PM a decade ago. Better decisions and prioritisation unlocked my career, not tools.

What worked yesterday may not work today. You need to discover and today is and adapt it.

Now, the journey isn’t always fun. Sometimes we hit the wall, and that hurts. And sometimes we feel anxious about things out of our control. That’s normal. But we can change that by taking actions.

Let’s wrap it up with a humble question:

What are you doing today that your future self you thank you for in a few years?

PS: If you want to grow as a serious product leader, I’m running the 100XPM in January, check it out. Let’s rock together.