AI is challenging most jobs, not just devs
AI is challenging most jobs, not just devs. And, to me, PM should seriously worrry.
Code spitters are cooked, let's be honest here and accept the fate so everyone can move on.
Architects aren't, because whatever the accuracy of any model, making it serves you need within the constraints of security + compliance + technical capabilities + budget + ... requires private data, interpersonal meetings and skills that make it hard or impossible to automate today.
genAI, to me, feels like the same threat as Instagram for professional photographs: 90% of photographs lost their moat against 16 yo taking pictures with their phones. The remaining 10% unlocked even more value because of their talent, that could not be copied.
Now, genAI is threatening devs in the same way: mediocre like me won't survive against 10x developers supercharged with AI (until they also get replaced by supercharged AI agents. But wait? Until they also get replaced by supercharged AI swarms with... bref!)
But it's not just devs, mind you! PMs are also severely endangered for the same reasons: when any PM can just prompt a feature, what happens when a dev prompt a feature too? It's up to you to think that PM are better equipped when it comes to understanding why a feature make sense than a developer. What's happening, though, and if you are doing things right, is that the same person coding a feature can also build PM intuition as to why this feature needs to be built at all. The latter comes from LLM. Because since code is cheap, there's more time to invest in understanding the customer pain point and the company solution (not just the soft: the design trade-offs, what were the assumptions 10 years ago versus today, etc...)
I grew up with the distinction of "tech guy" needs a "product guy". I am not dismissing it, I am just saying that the world is entering into a phase where both roles are eventually melting into a single function.
And that the product guy, whatever his seniority, should be seriously worried*unless he can demonstrate architecture skills, which is one of the last bastion of human intelligence.
For the sake of transparency, I am a programmer, I've developed data marketing products for the last four years before moving to Cloudflare to work on their, recently acquired, YC company Zaraz.
To close on a more personal note, that doesn't mean I am here to judge: the world is *definitely not* running the way I'd like regarding genAI usage and I am just afraid that "part" and then "our whole" profession disappear. I guess that PMs should be a little more self-aware and start consolidating skills that will work. Like analysing a text file, with a language that lets you do it in just 14 lines of codes