There's a dangerous narrative emerging in tech: that the AI era demands Product Managers to be Developers. I'm here to argue the opposite. AI hasn't made technical skills more critical for Product. AI democratizes technical execution, which makes the strategic, customer-focused aspects of Product work more valuable, not less.
The Gatekeeping Myth
The logic seems straightforward: AI is technical, products are increasingly AI-powered, therefore, Product needs deeper technical chops. But this is gatekeeping dressed up as evolution.
Consider what's actually happening. I've built two functional applications without writing code from scratch. I can buy a domain, learn why it’s always DNS, navigate databases, comment out problematic code and database tables, modify front-ends, and troubleshoot AI-generated cruft. I can research best practices and leverage a decade of product knowledge to build real tools that solve real problems.
So why would I also need to be a Developer in my Product role?
AI as a Leveling Force
Here's what AI has actually done for “non-technical” Product Managers: it's made us dangerous. Not in a reckless way, but in our ability to close the gap between product vision and technical execution.
When I load technical documentation into a GPT and ask it to create implementation guides for my apps, something interesting happens. If the docs are incomplete or unclear, I get back garbage. That's not a failure, that's insight. It's a window into why users struggle. It's the canary in the coal mine for documentation gaps and onboarding friction.
I'm no longer just the first customer who figured out the workarounds. I'm the next customer, the new customer who can identify barriers before they become churn.
The Real Value of Product Thinking
Here's what happens when I take off my Product hat and just build what I need: I build for myself.
My garden app tracked containers, prevented antagonistic plant pairings, and managed crop rotation history. That's what I needed because I've been gardening since childhood. But when I asked actual users? They wanted growing zone-appropriate plant recommendations, sun exposure guidance, and shopping lists. They needed the foundational knowledge I took for granted.
My home maintenance app assumed everyone grew up pulling electrical wire and cutting egress windows. Turns out, most people need climate-based reminders, checklists, and how-to guides for common home maintenance projects. Who knew?
Developers face this exact challenge constantly. It's why product management exists in the first place.
What Product Actually Does
Our job isn't to write the code. Our job is to:
- Gather customer feedback and trace problems two steps back to find root causes
- Pattern match across data and lived experience
- Negotiate with leadership when they're working from different assumptions
- Partner with engineering to understand true capacity, accounting for technical debt, firefighting, sales interruptions, and SLA commitments
Navigate team dynamics, burnout, and sustainable pacing
This is more art than science. It's a trust exercise built on understanding context, politics, and human limits.
We also track competitive movement, align product strategy with company goals, build features that ensure sales hit their numbers, and give marketing enough lead time to build market momentum.
None of this requires me to be a developer. All of it requires me to be a great Product Manager.
The AI Advantage
Yes, AI has expanded my technical comfort zone. I navigate GitHub and VSCode with confidence. I delete unnecessary code. I read log files, live by console outputs, and troubleshoot problems well enough to prompt my IDE toward solutions.
But here's the thing: I'm doing this with a decade of DevOps experience and zero development background. AI hasn't made me a developer. It's made me a more empowered Product Manager.
The Magic Remains
What I love most about this work hasn't changed: building something meaningful with a team and solving real problems for real people. The magic of hearing from a user years later that your feature made them the hero that day, that's still the heart of it.
AI isn't changing what makes great product management. It's amplifying it.
The Path Forward
The AI era doesn't need Product Managers who code. It needs Product Managers who understand customers, navigate complexity, and translate between business strategy and technical execution. These skills matter more now, not less.
The question isn't whether Product Managers should learn to code. It's whether we're ready to fully leverage AI as the powerful enabler it is…one that lets us focus on the irreplaceable human work of understanding what to build and why.
That's the future of product management. And it looks nothing like gatekeeping.
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