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AI-assisted coding and vibe coding make software engineers dramatically more productive, but they do not replace the need for product management. Product managers are responsible for market positioning, pricing, messaging, go-to-market strategy, and business viability.
Somewhere in a boardroom, a founder is doing the math. Engineers are more productive than ever. AI writes the code. Sprints are faster. And product managers, who do not ship code and do not close deals, suddenly look like an expensive layer of overhead.
It is a reasonable thought. It is also wrong. And acting on it could be one of the most costly mistakes a leadership team makes in the next two years.
AI-assisted coding, vibe coding, low-code tools: the speed at which teams ship software today is remarkable. What used to take a sprint now takes an afternoon. So the logic feels sound. If building is no longer the hard part, why keep the person who sits between the idea and the code?
Because that person was never just managing the code. They were managing everything else.
A product is much more than its code
The mistake that smart engineers and founders make: They see the product as the software. Understandable. They built it, they know every line of it, they are proud of it. But customers do not buy software. They buy solutions to problems. And getting from “we built a thing” to “customers are paying for this and coming back” is a completely different discipline.
Start with the moat. What makes a customer choose you over someone else? In a world where anyone can spin up a working app in an afternoon, technical execution is no longer a differentiator. The moat is the insight behind the product. It is the deep understanding of a customer problem that nobody else has solved quite this way. It is brand trust built over years. It is data only you have access to. It is the ecosystem of integrations and partnerships that makes switching painful. Someone has to think about this deliberately and consistently. It does not happen by accident.
Then there is positioning. Where does your product sit in the market, and why should anyone care? Who is it built for, and just as importantly, who is it not for? It is a strategic decision that shapes everything from feature priorities to pricing to the sales conversation.
Pricing is its own thing entirely. It is not just a number on a website. It is a signal of value, of quality, of intent. Price too low, and you attract customers who drain your support team and leave the moment someone cheaper shows up. Price too high without the right story, and you lose deals before a demo is ever booked. Getting this right requires understanding your customer’s willingness to pay, your competitive landscape, and your cost structure, all at once.
Messaging is where many strong products quietly fail. You can have the right product, in the right market, at the right price, and still lose because the person reading your landing page does not understand why they should care. Messaging is the bridge between what you built and the problem your customer is lying awake thinking about at night.
And then there is everything around the product itself. Go-to-market strategy. The sales motion. The support experience. The business case: what does it cost to build, run, and scale this? What return do you need, and by when?
Code is the engine.
But without all of this, you have a car with no wheels, no fuel,
and nowhere to go.
What does a product team actually own?
There is a framework worth knowing. Good product teams are responsible for four things: value, viability, usability, and feasibility (some people add Ethics as a fifth element).
Feasibility is the engineering question. Can we build it? With modern AI tools, the answer is almost always yes. But value, meaning does this solve a real problem worth solving, that is the product manager’s question. Viability, meaning does this make business sense, is also theirs. And usability, meaning can a real human being figure out how to use this, belongs to design and product together.
AI has made feasibility almost trivial. It has not touched the other three. Not even close.
When shipping is easy, what becomes hard?
The bottleneck moves. That is what happens when one part of a system gets dramatically faster. The constraint shifts.
When anyone can ship a feature in an afternoon, the scarce resource is no longer execution. It is judgment. What should we build? For whom? At what price? With what message, through which channel, in which market? These are not engineering questions.
And they become more consequential, not less, precisely because the cost of building is now so low. You can be wrong faster than ever before.
What should you do with this?
If you are a founder, a CTO, or a CPO doing headcount planning right now, stop asking whether you need product managers. Start asking whether your product managers are focused on the right things. Are they deep in customer problems? Are they thinking hard about positioning and pricing? Are they stress-testing the business case?
If the answer is no, if your PMs are mostly writing tickets and sitting in standups, that is the real problem. Not headcount. Focus.
The teams that win in an AI-accelerated world will not be the ones who ship the fastest. They will be the ones who decide the best.
What I read
As usual, I will list some of the best articles I read on the Internet. I will keep a list of the best articles (currently >900) at https://www.digital-product-management.com. These are today’s picks:
How to Be More Assertive: Develop assertive communication skills by understanding the four communication styles and learning to set boundaries and express needs.
Makers Manifesto: Principles for building valuable products and navigating organizational shifts within the era of artificial intelligence.
Sales Is the Favorite Child: Stop Negotiating Like You're Not: Product and sales power dynamics, understanding revenue incentives and reshaping commitments before they become rigid promises.
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