Product Managers will be the first one-person billion dollar company
As we all know, AI is advancing and it is doing it rapidly. As of today, AI can do the job of a junior/mid developer, and can perform simple and repetitive tasks like bug fixing.
AIs of today, given a complex infrastructure or architecture problem, may be able to give an sufficiently reliable answer, but lack of the company-specific context in which that question has been posed. If they have been trained on some specific company's data and architecture, then things may change. But we are not there, yet.
AI will replace junior devs
This is why I believe AI will primarily replace junior developers, and will ultimately democratize and lower the costs of doing an MVP. AI's capability to handle repetitive and time-consuming tasks makes it an ideal tool for replacing junior developers. By automating code generation, bug fixing, and initial testing, AI can drastically reduce development time and costs.
This shift will democratize access to technology, allowing startups and small businesses to bring their ideas to market more efficiently and affordably. It's an exciting era where innovation is more accessible than ever, opening new possibilities for creativity and entrepreneurship. What a great time to be alive!
Think big
Let's think bigger. What is an AI prompt? What happens when I write to ChatGPT (or whichever other AI) "generate a webpage with this and this characteristic"?
What I am doing is giving text-based prompts (in this case in English) which the AI will translate into code. As AIs quality improves, more complex text prompts (or perhaps Product of Feature Requirements Pages) will be properly managed.
As the masters of writing specs down, it will be product managers the ones to create the new apps, the new website, and ultimately the next one-person billion-dollar company!
Importance of writing
Writing is thinking! As the greatest Paul Graham says, writing forces clarity and precision, transforming and often improving the initial thoughts. Writing is a critical tool for intellectual rigor and discovery, essential for anyone wishing to develop fully formed ideas on complex subjects.
PMs' job is to act as the mediator between business and tech and to write documentation and requirements. Who better than them to be the best equipped to write prompts that will translate into an app?
Engineering = executing?
Are we sure that engineering is just executing? This is something that should deserve a whole specific blog post. As a matter of fact, developers can also elevate themselves as product managers, and in fact they are 100% able to do this.
Does this mean that PMs should not learn or know anything on how to code? In my opinion, they should do it because it opens your mind and you can be more creative with your writing, as well as see problems from a different perspective (and write them down in a more precise and better way to become the next one-person billion dollar company)
