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# [Weekly Retro] PM as bottleneck
- URL: https://www.cesarrg.com/weekly-retro-pm-as-bottleneck/
- Published: 2025-08-02T14:14:54.000Z
- Updated: 2025-08-02T14:14:54.000Z
- Author: César Rodríguez
- Tags: Weekly Retro, AI, Technology

#261 - Aug.2025

***Weekly Retro** **is a short e-mail with a wrap-up of ideas from the week, interesting links I found, and food for thought before you head off for the weekend.*

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?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJCfif1dPY&ref=cesarrg.com)

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.

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### 👨🏻‍💻 Interesting links

[Free Text to Speech & AI Voice Generator | ElevenLabsCreate the most realistic speech with our AI audio tools in 1000s of voices and 70+ languages. Easy to use API’s and SDK’s. Scalable, secure, and customizable voice solutions tailored for enterprise needs. Pioneering research in Text to Speech and AI Voice Generation.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/f4/10f4a52f-1b7d-4284-b66d-0fccfd9dc5da/content/images/icon/apple-icon-1.png)ElevenLabs![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/f4/10f4a52f-1b7d-4284-b66d-0fccfd9dc5da/content/images/thumbnail/cover.png)](https://elevenlabs.io/?ref=cesarrg.com)

[MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin SystemOr: The Day My Toaster Started Taking Phone Calls![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/f4/10f4a52f-1b7d-4284-b66d-0fccfd9dc5da/content/images/icon/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F51c8777b-4177-4195-8a0c-63a06dd9dd8a-2Fapple-touch-icon-180x180.png)Works on My MachineScott Werner![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/f4/10f4a52f-1b7d-4284-b66d-0fccfd9dc5da/content/images/thumbnail/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F01350f9f-9ecd-4cb2-a28d-103a9ccc9027_1024x1024.png)](https://worksonmymachine.ai/p/mcp-an-accidentally-universal-plugin?ref=cesarrg.com)

[Claude Desktop Extensions: One-click MCP server installation for Claude DesktopClaude Desktop Extensions: One-click MCP server installation for Claude Desktop![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/f4/10f4a52f-1b7d-4284-b66d-0fccfd9dc5da/content/images/icon/apple-touch-icon-17.png)![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/f4/10f4a52f-1b7d-4284-b66d-0fccfd9dc5da/content/images/thumbnail/c09ad9386b7c3428811f53b3614315127870d23a-2400x1260.png)](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/desktop-extensions?ref=cesarrg.com)

**🖋️ Quote of the week**

> **“The real challenge is not making AI smarter, but ensuring it is controllable and predictable.”** – Dario Amodei

![César Rodríguez](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/f4/10f4a52f-1b7d-4284-b66d-0fccfd9dc5da/content/images/2024/09/image-2.png) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/f4/10f4a52f-1b7d-4284-b66d-0fccfd9dc5da/content/images/2024/02/CR_sign_2024-3.png) 

**César Rodríguez**  
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