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

"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.

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

Even the nomenclature is malevolently vague. PM conflates product management with project management and they are not the same.

But what's the difference? Does anyone actually know?

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