Do we even need product managers anymore?
Design can design. Engineering can ship. Market-facing teams can funnel feedback. And now AI can even draft user stories, prioritize features, and spit out roadmaps. So what’s left for PMs to do?
The Myth That Killed Product Link to heading
For years, product management has lived in a haze of mythology.
At its worst, PMs were told they were the “CEO of the product." A claim so laughably untrue it’s become a meme. At its best, they were told to emulate the greats: Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Marissa Mayer. But those leaders were outliers, not playbooks.
When reality fell short, thought leaders like Marty Cagan and Melissa Perry offered a convenient scapegoat: your company just doesn’t understand product. Your org isn’t mature enough for real PM.
That’s self-serving. And it dodges a harder truth: many companies are skeptical of product management because product managers haven’t made themselves indispensable.
Why Companies Are Skeptical Link to heading
From the outside looking in, the skepticism is fair. Companies were promised billion-dollar outcomes. They were told to empower PMs as CEOs. They were told to reorganize themselves around the function.
And what did they get?
- Roadmaps in Aha or ProductBoard.
- RICE scores and Kano models that look rigorous but don’t resolve trade-offs.
- Kanban boards and grooming rituals that keep things moving but rarely change the game.
Useful? Sometimes. Transformational? Rarely.
It’s no wonder leaders feel underwhelmed. They’re asked to make disproportionate bets on product without seeing proportionate returns. And when those returns don’t come, the blame is placed back on them.
The cynics aren’t wrong to ask if product management is dead.
Beyond the Arbiter Link to heading
Traditionally, defenders of the craft describe PMs as the arbiter of competing truths: balancing the priorities of design, engineering, and the market. That framing isn’t wrong but it’s incomplete.
Because arbitration alone doesn’t inspire teams to make the hard bet.
The PM as Personification of the Bet Link to heading
What makes product managers unique isn’t their ability to run prioritization models. It’s their ability to embody belief.
Every product is a bet: that this problem matters, this solution resonates, this approach can win. Someone has to carry that conviction so strongly that it becomes contagious.
That’s the PM’s job.
- To believe in the bet so fully that engineers rally around it.
- To embody it so clearly that designers know where to focus.
- To model it so convincingly that QA, DevOps, and operations see their work as essential.
- To shout it from the rooftops until executives, customers, and prospects believe it too.
This is equal parts evangelism and delusion. But it’s also accountability: PMs must constantly check the story against reality. They listen to the market, test the narrative, and refine it without letting the conviction collapse.
No other role does this.
- Sales evangelizes, but only in the prospect’s voice.
- Account management advocates, but only in the customer’s voice.
- Data science analyzes, but speaks in numbers.
- Product marketing amplifies the message, but doesn’t own the product.
Only product managers integrate all of it into a single story the company can act on.
Why AI Can’t Replace This Link to heading
AI can accelerate the work. It can simulate prioritization, generate requirements, even analyze feedback at scale. But AI cannot believe. It cannot perform conviction. It cannot personify a bet.
And belief is the multiplier. It’s what turns friction between design, engineering, and the market into forward motion instead of noise.
Dead, But Ready to Be Reborn Link to heading
So yes, product management as we’ve practiced it is dead. The myths are exhausted. The tools are insufficient. The excuses are tired. And the cynics are right: the role, as defined, has often underwhelmed.
But that doesn’t mean product is irrelevant. It means the next generation of product practice must look different:
- Less process theater, more conviction.
- Less “arbiter of truths,” more embodiment of the bet.
- Less tool worship, more integration of AI as a force multiplier.
That’s the product practice worth building. And it’s what I’ll explore in my next post.
– Chris