Remember when people declared product management was dead? That was cute.
The moment that crystallized it: Figma’s Config 2023. Brian Chesky told a crowd of designers Airbnb had “gotten rid of the classic product management function.” The audience cheered. One tweet on the topic got six million views. Designers celebrated. PMs panicked.
Chesky later clarified he’d merged product management with product marketing. But the sentiment had spread. The broader critique wasn’t entirely wrong. A lot of PMs had spent years becoming backlog administrators and Jira ticket managers. That’s project management, not product management, and people could see it.
Then AI piled on. If everyone can build, why does a specialized role exist to manage the process?
The “PM is dead” crowd must feel pretty vindicated right now.
Except they’ve gotten it almost completely backwards. AI isn’t killing the need for product management. It’s making product management a skill everyone needs.
