I’m not a product manager, but watching PMs lean into AI has made me think they are in a particularly interesting position.
Good PMs spend their time understanding problems, setting priorities, and making trade-offs. They decide what belongs in the first version and what can wait. These are skills that take practice, and being able to write code does not automatically give you them.
A conversation between DHH and Lex Fridman helped bring this into focus for me. DHH argues that as AI takes on implementation, the ability to decide what software should do, and who it should serve, becomes central to building it.
That sounds like familiar territory for a PM.
What changes is their ability to act on those decisions. An idea that previously needed engineering capacity can now become a working prototype. Something people can try, react to, and help improve.
That is a meaningful shift.
I like the moment when an idea becomes concrete. It exposes things a document cannot. You discover what is missing, what feels awkward, and what seemed important until you actually used it.
A PM who can build gets closer to that feedback. They can test a thought, adjust the scope, and try again without every iteration requiring a handoff.
There is still a learning curve. Working software needs care, and technical judgment matters increasingly as an experiment becomes something people depend on. Engineers and designers also bring product instincts of their own.
But I think PMs have a strong starting point. They already practice many of the decisions needed to guide the work. Learning to build with AI gives those decisions a more direct path into something real.
For PMs willing to stay curious and learn these tools, that feels like an opportunity worth taking.