For decades I thought that I loved programming. But now that I’m having so much fun vibe coding apps I realize that I don’t really care about the actual code. What I like is using technology to build something that can be used and, most importantly, seen. So is product management actually my calling?
I have worked with many product managers in my career and I have not been often impressed. The better ones looked at data, ran experiments and worked closely with developers and designers. The worse ones managed a bunch of Jira tickets and mostly ignored the team. Very few had a strong opinion about what they wanted. Because of this, I never considered product management as a career option.
Partly, I think, it depends on the type of products I have worked on. The only mobile apps I have worked closely with were the Meego apps, for example email. There were some strong PM leads there who would look at the daily builds and demand changes from designers and/or engineers. The turnaround was very slow though, and it took days and sometimes more to see the changes. But other than that it’s been mainly backend or low-level systems with nothing visible but a list of functional and performance requirements.
One big difference is that I am building things for myself, so I’m both the PM and the user. Great PMs are good at uncovering user needs and problems to solve that are not necessarily (and in fact shouldn’t be) their own. As I’ve heard somewhere, a great PM is in love with the process, not the product.
But what I think is liberating about product managing an AI agent is that the human element is removed. I can be much more assertive than with real human beings (I am, unfortunately, a nice guy) and I can request back-and-forth changes without fearing protests from team members feeling unmotivated, stressed or underutilized.
Maybe there will be a new role called “Vibe coding PM” in the near future that I can apply for.