A world without PMs
Lots of people these days are imaging a world without police, which, if you ask me, is not really that hard to imagine. In college, I saw 0 police officers in four years, and order is adequately maintained by a corp of student Resident Advisers exasperatedly asking “c’mon guys, really?” Being a RA taught me the most valuable lesson of product manager — how to get people to do something without authority. Respect shouldn’t come from power or from a baton, but I digress…
For me, it’s equally interesting to imagine a world without PMs. I tell everyone who would listen (normally, 3 people) that the day when PMs are no longer needed draws nigh. And at every company I’ve been at, I’ve tried to accelerate this process. This world is also not hard to imagine; in fact, it is one I’m living in right now. This week, we are having a company-wide hackathon. Teams are formed without PMs and PMs can join later as “free agents”. If engineers got to choose whether they work with PMs or not, I wonder what they would choose?
Yes, Terence, “low priced”?
It’s wise to remember, every now and then, that no company really needs a PM. Here’s some wise words from Ken Norton in his famous essay:
Product management may be the one job that the organization would get along fine without (at least for a good while). Without engineers, nothing would get built. Without sales people, nothing is sold. Without designers, the product looks like crap. But in a world without PMs, everyone simply fills in the gap and goes on with their lives. It’s important to remember that - as a PM, you’re expendable. Now, in the long run great product management usually makes the difference between winning and losing, but you have to prove it.
So, why don’t hackathon teams need PMs? A team has 4-6 people, similar to an early stage startup. At that size, the core functions of a PM (building consensus, talking to customers, prioritizing a roadmap) are taken on by individuals. There’s no need for someone who can’t code, design, or sell. It’s beautiful to watch such a small team operate. There’s constant communication, shared accountability, and mutual trust that everyone is doing the most valuable thing for customers.
I see 2 broad trends that reduce the need for PMs in the short term and eliminate them in the long term.
The first is technology. The way we work has already changed drastically in the past 5 years, and this trend will only accelerate in the next 5. Providing context to the team and updates to stakeholders is an important part of the job today. When companies start to adopt Asana the way they do Slack, this role will become less relevant. I fully expect Slack (or another startup) to create a product that lets you view what people are working on in real time and view a personal changelog. For engineers, that might be PRs, designers -> Figma files modified, CS -> Zendesk tickets answered, etc. I am in a lot of meetings these days simply because marketing folks don’t like talking to engineers. That’s a ridiculously low value task that I can’t wait for technology to replace.
Secondly, people are becoming more knowledgeable about product development. Engineers know how to talk to customers, designers can do rough technical estimates on their designs, and marketers can run A/B tests on their own. PMs often serve to plug gaps, and, in the future, there will be fewer and fewer gaps to fill. I spend a lot of my time accelerating this process by coaching others to think “like a PM”. It’s just more fun to work on a team where everyone bring original ideas to the table. But to do so, people have to think like an owner and understand the problems deeply. To see if the team is too dependent on you, go on vacation. How well does the team function without a PM for 2 weeks? If things grinds down to a halt, it doesn’t show that you are “valuable”. Instead, it proves that you haven’t built the right systems internally.
This Friday, all the teams will demo their work, an end to a frantic week of creative energy and intense collaboration. The best ideas will inevitably be assigned to a PM to get “customer-ready”, and without fail, some executive will get up on stage to make a joke about how fast things would move if every week was hackathon week. We will all laugh and then go back to our daily routine of sitting in meetings, creating slide decks, and playing office politics. Well, I’m here to tell ya that it doesn’t have to be this way forever. The day that PMs no longer have to exist is a glorious day for everyone.