korrents

product management

What a product manager is for, who decides what gets built, and what happens to that job once delivery is cheap.

What people on korrents have said about product management, running in 3 currents — 11 claims from 4 people.

Our reading of the recordours, not theirs

Four people on record about what a product manager is actually for. They agree the job has moved: cheap delivery means building was never the hard part, so the bottleneck is deciding what is worth building at all. They split over whose call that is -- one person's, or a trio's -- and over what happens to the role once an AI can build the thing a product manager used to spec.

What is a current?

Our reading of what a group of claims have in common. Nobody holds a belief about product management as such; people hold beliefs about the handful of live questions the name stands for, and each current is one of them. The claims are printed under it, so the sentence can be checked against them.

Claims are filed here — never people. Somebody is named on a card because a dated claim of theirs sits under it, and somebody whose claims sit under two currents is named on both. There are no counts of who believes what: the people under a current are the names printed there.

The bottleneck moved: building got cheap, so deciding what is worth building is the hard part now Delivery stopped being the constraint; discovering a solution worth shipping is what is left. Marty Cagan, Teresa Torres · newest 16 Apr 2026

Cheap delivery turned the roadmap-of-features model into a feature factory that produces bad products faster.

  1. Marty Cagan Much of the product world now recognizes the project model as a turbo-charged feature factory, capable of producing more bad products, faster, than ever before. svpg.com

    Founding partner of Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG)

    Their wordsMuch of the product world now recognizes the project model as a turbo-charged feature factory, capable of producing more bad products, faster, than ever before.

    Where this was said

    ↗Build to Learn vs Build to Earnsvpg.com

Interesting

An opportunity solution tree exists to resolve the tension between what the business needs and what the customer needs.

  1. Teresa Torres Opportunity solution trees help product trios: Resolve the tension between business needs and customer needs producttalk.org

    Product discovery coach

    Their wordsOpportunity solution trees help product trios: Resolve the tension between business needs and customer needs

    Where this was said

    ↗Opportunity Solution Trees: Visualize Your Discovery to Stay Aligned and Drive Outcomesproducttalk.org

Interesting

Product discovery is a decision-making process, and good discovery keeps the customer inside that process.

  1. Teresa Torres Product discovery is a decision-making process. Good product discovery includes the customer throughout that process. producttalk.org

    Product discovery coach

    Their wordsProduct discovery is a decision-making process. Good product discovery includes the customer throughout that process.

    Where this was said

    ↗Product Discovery Basics: Everything You Need to Knowproducttalk.org

Interesting

A real product decision is a no, and it costs something to give one Saying no to a good idea, not just a bad one, is what the job is. Melissa Perri, Des Traynor · newest 7 Jul 2023

Product management is not going away, but hiring product owners who just feed developers tasks should stop.

  1. Melissa Perri I don’t think Product Management is going anywhere, but I do hope the days of hiring Product Owners who just feed developers tasks are done. melissaperri.com

    CEO of Produx Labs; author of Escaping the Build Trap and…

    Their wordsI don’t think Product Management is going anywhere, but I do hope the days of hiring Product Owners who just feed developers tasks are done.

    Where this was said

    ↗Are We Getting Rid of Product Managers?melissaperri.com

Interesting

Building a great product means being great at saying no -- not maybe, not later, no.

  1. Des Traynor If you’re building a product, you have to be great at saying no. Not “maybe” or “later”. The only word is no. Building a great product isn’t about creating tons of tactically useful features which are tangentially related. intercom.com

    Co-founder of Intercom

    Their wordsIf you’re building a product, you have to be great at saying no. Not “maybe” or “later”. The only word is no. Building a great product isn’t about creating tons of tactically useful features which are tangentially related.

    Where this was said

    ↗Product strategy means saying nointercom.com

Interesting

A real product decision says a proposal is a great idea and still turns it down for something else.

  1. Des Traynor Real product decisions aren’t easy. They require you to look at a proposal and say “This is a really great idea, I can see why our customers would like it. Well done. But we’re not going to build it. Instead, here’s what we’re doing.”. intercom.com

    Co-founder of Intercom

    Their wordsReal product decisions aren’t easy. They require you to look at a proposal and say “This is a really great idea, I can see why our customers would like it. Well done. But we’re not going to build it. Instead, here’s what we’re doing.”.

    Where this was said

    ↗Product strategy means saying nointercom.com

Interesting

Discovery is not one person's call, and neither is the role's future The decision belongs to a trio, and the job itself is merging into something bigger rather than disappearing. Marty Cagan, Melissa Perri, Teresa Torres · newest 10 Aug 2026

The product role remains essential in the AI era, whatever the tools become.

  1. Marty Cagan Ben’s article serves as a great reminder of why the product role is so essential, and is likely to remain essential. svpg.com

    Founding partner of Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG)

    Their wordsBen’s article serves as a great reminder of why the product role is so essential, and is likely to remain essential.

    Where this was said

    ↗A Fresh Definition of The Product Rolesvpg.com

Interesting

Product management is merging with the GM role as more companies become software companies, not disappearing.

  1. Melissa Perri As more and more companies become predominately software companies, I believe the Product Management role and GM roles are going to merge. melissaperri.com

    CEO of Produx Labs; author of Escaping the Build Trap and…

    Their wordsAs more and more companies become predominately software companies, I believe the Product Management role and GM roles are going to merge.

    Where this was said

    ↗Are We Getting Rid of Product Managers?melissaperri.com

Interesting

Product discovery belongs to the whole trio -- a product manager, a designer and an engineer -- not the product manager alone.

  1. Teresa Torres The product trio—comprised of a product manager, design lead, and tech lead—is responsible for product discovery. producttalk.org

    Product discovery coach

    Their wordsThe product trio—comprised of a product manager, design lead, and tech lead—is responsible for product discovery.

    Where this was said

    ↗Product Discovery Basics: Everything You Need to Knowproducttalk.org

Interesting

On this subject, not yet placed

Matched by wording, not yet read into a current. The archive grows on its own — the watcher adds claims every two hours — so this is where new ones wait for somebody to read them.

The stream

The same 34 positions as the timeline, threaded — each on the rail of the current it is filed under, and 28 on no rail yet. Tap a current to follow it.

August 2026

David Heinemeier Hansson ·

Software is product management, and those are the skills the agentic era rewards — skills that are not evenly distributed among programmers.

Peter Steinberger ·

Product-market fit shows up as anger when you tell people they cannot have it yet, not as polite interest.

Tom Verrilli ·

The only real case for product management as a specialist function is that it is a trade, not a qualification — something you get good at by doing.

Tom Verrilli ·

Hiring product managers by ratio infantilizes engineers and designers who were perfectly capable of deciding for themselves.

Tom Verrilli ·

A company should hire a product manager only against a specific need, never by default.

Tom Verrilli ·

Product managers should be assigned to problems, not attached to engineering teams.

Tom Verrilli ·

AI gives an individual contributor so much leverage that one very senior product manager beats three entry-level ones.

Tom Verrilli ·

A whole class of product managers built a career on politics rather than on technical or customer skill, and that skill is now worth nothing.

Tom Verrilli ·

People who manage product managers should still spend almost all of their own time doing individual contributor work.

Tom Verrilli ·

AI data tooling has cut the product manager's need for data scientists while multiplying the time they spend in the data themselves.

July 2026

Blake Scholl ·

You cannot find product-market fit for a supersonic jet by building one and seeing whether anybody likes it; it has to be worked out before anything is built.

June 2026

Mark Pincus ·

Being too ambitious and visionary at the outset is how founders miss product-market fit, because it stops them starting somewhere small and humble enough.

Mark Pincus ·

A first-time founder has an advantage over a repeat winner, because past success makes it too easy to raise money and hire against a big vision before there is product-market fit.

May 2026

Dax Raad ·

Before product-market fit, coding faster does not help: it is better to think a lot than to swing a lot, and AI does not speed up the thinking.

Dan Shipper ·

Product managers are the AI era’s big winners: coding models are now good enough to pair a lightly technical PM’s product sense with actually shipping.

April 2026

Evan Spiegel ·

Distribution, not product-market fit, is the hard part of consumer technology, and almost nobody spends enough time on it.

Evan Spiegel ·

Designers, not product managers, should own product direction, and a company can go a long way with designers doing the PM work themselves.

Marty Cagan ·

Cheap delivery turned the roadmap-of-features model into a feature factory that produces bad products faster.

Luke Wroblewski ·

Without the handoff, everyone builds: designer, developer and product manager can all work in the codebase at once, and that changes everything.

David Heinemeier Hansson ·

Designers should find what the spec should be and build it in HTML and CSS themselves, not make a product manager's spec look pretty.

October 2025

Frank Chimero ·

AI has become a way for engineers, designers and product managers to wish each other away instead of working together.

Dylan Field ·

AI prototyping ends the era of product managers asking designers to draw an idea, which frees designers for deeper work and lets anyone join the first conversation.

September 2025

Julie Zhuo ·

AI has made individuals capable enough that the boundaries between engineer, designer, researcher and product manager should be dissolved.

Julie Zhuo ·

Putting a product manager on a team invites everyone else to delegate the product thinking away, which is why she does not hire them.

March 2025

Rahul Vohra ·

The best-known brands each stand for one clear thing, so a startup has to occupy a position that is unique, still available, and a reinforcement of its product strategy.

Rahul Vohra ·

Product-market fit can be measured, optimised and numerically increased, and an algorithm can write the roadmap that increases it.

Rahul Vohra ·

Reaching product-market fit requires deliberately not acting on the feedback of many of your early users, at the same time as listening intensely.

Rahul Vohra ·

Ignore both the users who love your product and the ones who are indifferent to it; the only feedback that raises product-market fit comes from the somewhat disappointed.

Jakob Nielsen ·

Deciding what software should do and why is still a human job: vibe coding changes the implementation phase far more than the planning phase.

December 2023

Teresa Torres ·

An opportunity solution tree exists to resolve the tension between what the business needs and what the customer needs.

July 2023

Melissa Perri ·

Product management is merging with the GM role as more companies become software companies, not disappearing.

Melissa Perri ·

Product management is not going away, but hiring product owners who just feed developers tasks should stop.

August 2021

Teresa Torres ·

Product discovery is a decision-making process, and good discovery keeps the customer inside that process.

Teresa Torres ·

Product discovery belongs to the whole trio -- a product manager, a designer and an engineer -- not the product manager alone.