When I started on my journey to learn more about AI, I didn’t expect it to help me find the joy in my job again. I’ve been a product manager for about 20 years. I like the chaos, the people, finding that thing that makes users' lives better, and I enjoy the project management piece. I love trying to understand the community we are building for, the culture of the team, each team member's calculator, creating transparency so the team can 100% miss their delivery window and still have customers happy, and taking risks with the features. I love the chaos, but lately things have been off in the industry.
I’ve been hearing all this hype around how AI is going to make my job obsolete. I’m not unique in that, but I can only talk about my experience. Now when presented with the notion of losing my job, I like to get curious. Why is AI better than a human?
My analysis so far it’s not. It’s a tool. It’s not a human replacement. I’ve seen influencers state that the only way Product is going to find work is if they are effective vibe coders. People who say this do not understand what Product is, nor do they understand what vibe coding is.
First, what makes a good product manager? It is not a technical person who can create specs for the development team to code to. That’s actually a different job. It isn’t taking the directive from management and delivering exactly what they asked for.
My first role as a product manager, my VP said, “Your job as a Product Manager isn’t to be everyone’s best friend, it’s to deliver the right features to the customers and drive revenue.” As a people pleaser, this was a hard role to step into. You take a lot of hits, you will not make people happy, and you will have engineering managers take you aside to threaten or blame you for missed dates. That’s the job.
I think of Product as the orchestrator. We need to have a technical understanding of the problem space and product, be able to do data analysis, gather customer feedback and requirements, prioritize, consider long-term vs short-term impacts, evaluate tradeoffs, communicate the impact across the organization, and be collaborative.
For me personally, it’s being humble, building trust with my team, and building trust across the organization. One person can’t fix the company culture. It's my job to help the team deliver value to our customers and grow revenue. If you are good at Product and the culture is bad, doing your job correctly can feel like a challenge. My job isn’t to be your buddy; it’s to ensure the right features are being delivered on time and those features drive revenue. You can do all of that without being a giant jerk face.
I’ll follow up with specific ways to leverage AI for the core functions of Product:
- Technical knowledge/expertise: Controversial take, I’m a terrible PM if I’m an expert in the product. AI can help me with my knowledge gaps.
- Data analysis: Data is always the best but sometimes I need a non-deterministic system to find trends that aren’t obvious to me.
- Analysis of customer feedback: Listening to customer feedback means I might bias what I hear to the features I think need work.
- Requirements: I hate writing PRDs not because they aren’t useful but because some companies have turned it into a flair competition. AI helps me create faster using my information. Usual caveats apply.
- Transparency: I can get the idea out of my head and use the non-determinism of AI to create a first look. This means I can use words, data, and images to help communicate the features to Engineering, UI/UX, CS, PS, Sales, and Marketing.
The last few years, there has been this trend that requires Product to be an Architect, customer 1. It frankly is a sentiment that has taken all the joy out of my job. I can be technical and not an expert in a niche tool. Really good Product Managers have roots in many other areas. Data analysts (me), Technical Writers, Developers, QA, Customer Success, Professional Services, Librarians, Researchers, and many more. Some of the most obscure backgrounds make some of the best Product Managers. AI helped me remember why the human side of Product is the most critical and that my experience, which is not “technical,” which really means I’m not a developer, is valuable. Now I have another tool to help me deliver the right features and drive revenue.
Top comments (12)
This really hit home for me. As a software engineer also with 20+ years of experience, your journey of reframing AI from a threat to a tool is exactly what I'm going through as I learn 3D graphics (Blender/Three.js) for the first time.
You've perfectly captured it: it's not about the tools themselves, but about using them to rediscover the human, creative side of what we do.
Thanks for sharing this perspective. It's very inspiring.
I'm glad this resonated with you! The journey of sifting through the hype and finding what works is hard. I'm so excited for your journey!
I think that you distilled the essence of being good at any skill in the 'AI era.' I would summarize it like this: find out what you’re good at, what you truly love about your craft, and then use AI to amplify it ⚡️🤘
Great summary!
This was a great read. What you’ve described about rediscovering joy in product management via AI tools really mirrors something I’ve come to believe deeply after building out my work with Claude and orchestrating large feature flows in my own orchestration when I built my app, ScrumBuddy. AI isn’t here to replace the gut-instinct or the messy judgement calls; it’s here to restore bandwidth to the parts of product work people actually love; vision, customer insight, trade-off thinking, by automating the grind.
Too often folks lean on AI for surface tasks and then complain it feels impersonal or shallow. The magic comes when you lean in with intention, you use AI to help you prototype roadmaps faster, triage feedback more intelligently, and test hypotheses without burning weeks. In doing that, you can burn off the dull stuff and stay close to what makes product meaningful.
What stands out in your journey is how you let AI amplify your PM role rather than hijack it. That balance, using tools for insight, not outsourcing judgement, is what I think will define the next era of product work. If more PMs treated AI as collaborator rather than substitute, I believe we’ll see better products and more fulfilled makers. Thanks for sharing this. If nothing else, it reminds me why I do what I do.
thank you so much! It's easy to get caught up in the hype. Instead, we should approach any new tool or concept, from DevOps and Shift Left to AI, with curiosity.
I couldn’t agree more!
As a project manager, sometimes it feels like I’m not working on products but just transporting PowerPoint presentations and meeting notes.
Then I started using ChatGOT’s AI Slides feature. I can simply input the requirements document, and it automatically generates a PowerPoint outline for me. It’s such a time saver!
100% having things that automate the tedium is amazing!
It's amazing how briefly and swiftly you've managed to summarize the whole point of AI and its main purpose.
It's become almost a trend to be terrified about AI taking everyone's jobs, but only a few fully realize that it's just a tool you can use for your benefit.
I'm a technical person - a software engineer, and even engineering can't be replaced by AI, you still need to be the main pilot when creating a product.
The same goes for product managers. AI is multiple levels below what PMs actually do, they orchestrate. Some might argue that AI can describe the steps and guidelines required for a project.
Sure, but:
Can AI make other people work together and feel happy about it?
Can AI convince human beings that they're creating something that matters?
Can AI collaborate effectively between stakeholders?
. . .
HARD NO!
We need humans in the loop! For software engineers, there are so many misconceptions around what your job is versus what it isn't. Writing code isn't taking into consideration best practices, security, scalability, what tech debt you are taking on intentionally, architecting, and so much more. Thank you!
Great take on how AI enhances our work and wont replace it. The point about Product being the orchestrator and not the vibe coder couldn’t be more accurate.
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