Are We Getting Rid of Product Managers?

A few weeks ago, Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, said they were “getting rid fo Product Managers”. Which created an insane swirl in the community. He later clarified and said it was not going away, but morphing this into a more business related role, rather than purely tech.

I don't think this is a bad thing.

Product Management has always firmly sat between business, tech, and the user/customer. In SAAS companies, the Product Management role has always been about figuring out how to grow the business by solving customer problems with the right software. In other companies that are not software-native, you saw this same act being done by GMs of the business, but just with the tools available to drive the business at the time - sales, marketing, and human operations. What does a GM look like in a product-led business? Someone overseeing the teams that build the things you sell.

As more and more companies become predominately software companies, I believe the Product Management role and GM roles are going to merge. You won't be a great GM unless you deeply understand software, along with understanding your domain. Product Management was never purely about "tech" and if companies were treating it so, of course, they didn't see the value of the role.

I also find businesses that just "get rid" of the Product Management role are really unhappy when they find out how much Product Managers actually do. I do think we should all strive though to empower our engineers and designers to make critical tactical decisions, so Product Managers do not have to be so in the weeds. This helps scale our organizations effectively.

I don’t think Product Management is going anywhere, but I do hope the days of hiring Product Owners who just feed developers tasks are done.

P.S. Apple does have Product Managers, and I know quite a few of them.

I originally posted this on my LinkedIn - you can follow me here.