Are product managers cooked? (April 2025)

You’ve seen the article titles, you’ve read the tweets - devs/designers are cooked, AI will take over, etc, etc. But what about product managers?

This post goes over how AI is fundamentally changing (or sunsetting?) product management (as of April 2025) - the Rorschach test of the tech industry (separate post about that soon). Engineers question if PMs add value beyond slides and meetings. Executives sometimes view them as glorified project managers with inflated titles.

Indeed AI is already here

Same goes for design. We see products like Bolt and v0 creating solid UIs directly out of the box. And we have multiple desgin-specific apps like Galileo UI ramping up.

So let’s get rid of PMs

The list of PM tasks now getting the AI treatment is extensive:

And that's just the standard stuff. Lovable even lets you vibe-code your wireframes and then no-code them afterwards. So now you can have a prototype instead of your weird Miro drawings (mostly talking about me).

OK, cool. No PMs. Then what?

AI seems ready to automate (or at least dramatically enhance) most of a PM's traditional workload. But building products isn't just about engineering though, right? There are multiple non-engineering elements.

Here's the thing—despite all this automation, the most crucial aspects of product management still remain deeply human (as of today). Building relationships with your team, truly understanding user needs aren't just responsibilities—they're human-centered skills that AI can't fully replicate (yet).

Empathy isn't something you can prompt into existence as of April 2025. The ability to read between the lines in a customer interview (my take on user needs), to notice the subtle shift in someone's expression when a feature doesn't work as expected, to build trust with your cracked dev who doesn’t seem to like you at first — these skills remain uniquely human (still). And last but not least - do not underestimate your gut.

Enhanced product management

So rather than sunsetting the product management role, I think AI is extending it. I see a repeating pattern here with an earlier experience of mine - the ROI of my obsession with no-code tools 5-6 years ago has been tremendous (spinning up landing pages, prototyping, embedding stuff, etc.) , and I think the situation with AI is very similar. That's why I'm relentlessly trying out new models, tools, and weird apps - I'm confident the payoff will be just as great.

Product leaders are starting to acknowledge this shift. Yana Welinder’s podcast with Peter Yang and his article on the different areas he use AI for his work such examples.

We're also seeing this shift at companies like Spotify, where AI usage is a requirement and with Figma’s Dylan Field who have been vocal about AI amplifying rather than replacing.

The path forward.

Every hour you save from writing documentation or creating wireframes is an hour you can spend on what really matters: deep user understanding, creative problem-solving, and building the relationships that make great products possible.

I recently had a chat with two developer friends at a fairly-sized fintech. When I showed them Replit, they were blown away. But I was even more surprised that they were seeing these capabilities for the first time through me. It felt like they were falling behind - and that's when you are cooked.

So go ahead, let AI handle your next PRD. Then use the time you saved to talk to an actual human about what they really need - because that human connection remains the most crucial skill in your toolkit.

The key takeaways here are as follows: experiment with AI, use the new tools, try to automate yourself, educate others and trust your gut.

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