Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

Do we still need PMs?

9 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:40

Lenny Rachitsky says AI tools like Claude Code let five engineers do the work of 15-20. Designers and PMs get some boost too, but now they're managing way more engineers without extra headcount. Companies will need to hire a lot more PMs to keep up.

Chapters

it's clear that while PMs and designers are getting more leverage from AI, engineering is getting the most leverage right now. If you think about a default team, 5 engineers, 1 designer, 1 PM, with Claude Code, that 5 engineers is like 2 to 3x'd, and the PMs and designers have also increased, but now they're managing what is effectively a much larger group of engineers. And so even though like the headcount and the org structure hasn't changed, you're now just dealing with a situation of maybe 15 to 20 engineers 2 PMs, 2 designers, across the board we're feeling PM and design is just squeezed. It's just absolutely squeezed and we're like, we just need to actually hire a ton more PMs.