[Weekly Retro] PM as bottleneck
#261 - Aug.2025
Hi there!
Here's a quick idea before you head-off for the weekend:
Andrew Ng has a point here: are PMs becoming the bottleneck for rapid engineering?
And by rapid engineering, I'm referring to how fast we can iterate on new ideas, create quick prototypes and validate if we are building the right thing.
Design-to-code cycles are getting shorter.
I'm seeing this from the front-seat through my team and working with partner tech teams:
- Product Roles (Product, Design and Engineering) are getting closer to each other. Engineers are drafting requirements, PMs are putting their hands on code and Designers are driving product strategy.
- Tools are empowering people to build things by themselves at incredible speed. Sure, vibe-coding is scrappy, but bringing ideas to reality hasn't been so easy as today.
- We can now react to customer feedback by building quick demos, instead of relying only on sketches and ideas. The entry bar for makers is getting lower very fast.
PMs are likely to become a bottleneck if they don't become builders.
I differ from Ng's perspective on inverting the PM:Engineering ratio (1:0.5) to solve this problem, but rather empowering PMs to contribute closely to building the product.
As role boundaries become blurry, ownership, bias for making and creative-critical thinking are the best skills to develop.
👨🏻💻 Interesting links
Scott Werner
🖋️ Quote of the week
“The real challenge is not making AI smarter, but ensuring it is controllable and predictable.” – Dario Amodei
