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

The PM job market has split

23 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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Lenny Rachitsky explains why PM hiring is up even as PMs get laid off: the job is splitting. Companies are cutting "information movers" who coordinate and analyze, but hiring "builders" who come from engineering, design, or founder backgrounds and actually create products.

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The question around, hey, why are product managers doing so well? Why are there so many jobs when in reality a lot of product people that all of us know are struggling to find a role or we're hearing about these layoffs? I think it depends on how you define what a product manager is. For the first time, I think that we did have a dramatic shift in what's defined. Product managers, there's lots of archetypes. The information mover is essentially going to become a dinosaur. I think about half of the product people grew into the industry, you know, have that skill and superpower. And then there were a set of people who got into product because they like to build stuff. Folks who were founder, that was sort of the motivation into joining the industry, and then they found themselves into this thing called product management. Those folks are builders, and those people are the ones that are being hired. Everybody wants a builder. I think that interestingly, lots of engineers are builders. Lots of designers are builders. Lots of marketing folks are builders. And I think builders wanted is going to be the big tagline for the next couple of years.