Robert Ta argues AI won't replace product managers, it'll free them from backlog grooming and dependency mapping to focus on rapid prototyping and growth hacking. PMs become faster decision-makers, not obsolete. The danger isn't replacement, it's what happens when they move that much quicker.
There has been a narrative in industry that, hey, maybe fire all your product managers, fire your designers, fire your engineers. Like you could do way more with less people. And actually, I think the evidence we're seeing is that product managers no longer have to do mundane tasks like be backlog junkies. That was just an assumed— nobody gives you credit for it. You just had to do it to get the job done of getting good product out the door. Project management, dependency graph, identifying the acceptance criteria, figuring out the right things to build. Like If people aren't doing that stuff, it's like you haven't tied your shoes to play basketball. That's like what Coach Wooden from UCLA would say. You haven't done the basics, but now AI helps you do the fundamentals easier. So guess what? Your percentage of thinking capacity frees up enormously to do these things that Boris talks about, to be a prototyper, to be a builder, to be a sweeper, to be a grower, to be a maintainer. And you can go to Claude Code and just ask it how to do these things. And that is the empowerment. Now, this is what the best entrepreneurs and builders say is accelerating your learning and taking that to drive Faster, better decisions. That is the input of making great products work at every stage. And ultimately the PM function traditionally has been the de facto decision maker. If there are many stakeholders, they're the ones that has to decide, we're gonna go this way. The thinking is that person can now decide at a much faster rate because they could experiment and test hypotheses at a rate that could not be matched before.
