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Andrew Ng says bottleneck in AI startups isn't coding – it's product management

(www.businessinsider.com)
120 points cl42 | 8 comments | 27 Aug 25 19:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.707s | source | bottom
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shubhamjain ◴[30 Aug 25 14:54 UTC] No.45075187[source]▶
"This tool 10x the productivity of software engineers"

"GREAT! That means we can fire the people who do the actual work, and replace them with MBA robots, who neither understand nor care about making a good product"

Pardon my pessimism, but in my whole career, I have never met a PM who actual did the work of driving the product vision. Most were just middlemen shuttling information between management, marketing, design, and engineering. Thinking that hiring more PMs would increase the output in the age of AI is such a childish fantasy.

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dcreater ◴[30 Aug 25 15:29 UTC] No.45075471[source]▶
The PM discipline has unfortunately maldeveloped as a place for souless MBAs, engineering degree holders who dont want to be engineers or both. Actual Product people are a small minority

Its a tragedy as its undervalued - I firmly believe apples products are significantly worse if their engineers led it. Jobs made those products

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jayd16 ◴[30 Aug 25 15:48 UTC] No.45075626[source]▶
Even the nomenclature is malevolently vague. PM conflates product management with project management and they are not the same.
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1. LtWorf ◴[30 Aug 25 15:55 UTC] No.45075679[source]▶
But what's the difference? Does anyone actually know?
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2. pjmlp ◴[30 Aug 25 16:19 UTC] No.45075837[source]▶
Yes, before MBAs took over, project management was more related to actually what happens in the project, GANT charts, stuff like Microsoft Project, resourcing team, setting the overall plan what goes where, who's available, when are vacations allowed,...

Product management was interfacing with the client, understanding what is actually supposed to be built as vision, understanding UI/UX before that became a field of its own, coordinating usability sessions, and so forth.

Naturally they have common touch points like what is possible from the vision, given the actual budget and available resources, expectation management and what not.

3. dcreater ◴[30 Aug 25 18:18 UTC] No.45076854[source]▶
Product Management = Big picture product vision. Features and Priorities. Market trends/strategy, Voice of customer

Project Management = Day to day to execution, logistics, resources, schedules. Scheduling meetings, sending out meeting minutes etc

Program Management = Team management towards delivering business goals/product launches on schedule

Where its tricky is the differentiation between project and program management. IMO we dont really need both terms or both roles, causes uneccessary/unnatural separation of responsibilities

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4. jzelinskie ◴[30 Aug 25 20:33 UTC] No.45077779[source]▶
I've written a reference because I've had this conversation so many times, haha

https://jzelinskie.com/posts/p-what/

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5. trog ◴[30 Aug 25 22:14 UTC] No.45078463[source]▶
What actually happens in most (small) businesses is one person gets lumped with all these jobs and the business is regularly surprised they're constantly over-worked and under-delivering
6. potamic ◴[31 Aug 25 11:36 UTC] No.45082400[source]▶
Product management is what you want to do, project management is what you actually do, program management is what you say you do.
7. icedchai ◴[31 Aug 25 15:22 UTC] No.45083874[source]▶
I often see product and project management combined. Usually it results in mediocre execution on all fronts. The last PM I worked with didn't even understand the product.
8. jayd16 ◴[02 Sep 25 15:40 UTC] No.45104547[source]▶
There's even more. In games, we also use the term 'Producer' which manages the production, ie they're mostly a project manager. The design team is the product design role. Even here, the producers can and will dabble in design discussions in so far as is needed to meet timelines.

The nice thing is no one gets inflated with a manager title they think makes them the boss of every department. You get engineering lead, production lead etc.