Welcome to the Product Maker Era
From Product Manager to Product Maker: The Future of Product Leadership
For years, the Product Manager role has been the bridge between business, design, and technology. However, many startups and tech companies are eliminating this role. Why? Because in certain environments, the Product Manager has stopped being a facilitator and has instead become a bottleneck. Yes, you read that right. Some PMs act more like process managers, trapped in endless meetings and spending more time selling the roadmap to stakeholders than actually building products.
Ironically, I’m writing this article as a Product Manager. But don’t get me wrong—I’m not against the product mindset, but rather against the “Manager” in the title. It’s time to kill the Product Manager and transform them into a Product Maker.
Why Shift from Manager to Maker?
When a Product Manager drifts too far from the building process, the consequences are clear:
Excessive bureaucracy: More meetings, less product.
Loss of user connection: Decisions based on secondary metrics rather than real problems.
Lack of agility: Teams that rely on multiple approval layers before launching changes.
The major issue with many PMs is that they act as translators between business and technology instead of being active participants in creation.
How to Become a Product Maker
If you want to evolve from a manager to a maker, here are three key shifts:
Develop technical skills: You don’t need to be a full-stack engineer, but you should understand programming logic, prototype designs, and data analysis.
Make decisions based on experimentation: Learn how to extract insights yourself and define key metrics that improve the product. Don’t wait for Data Science to hand you a dashboard—dive into the data and find the answers yourself.
Adopt a Maker mindset: Coordination is not enough. You must build. Get involved in product development, talk directly to users, experiment with solutions, and execute. A Product Maker is someone who not only manages priorities but is also in the trenches with their team, creating and adjusting on the fly.
Ultimately, the traditional Product Manager role is facing extinction. The future belongs to those who not only understand the business but also have the skills to build it. If you don’t know how to design, code, or analyze data, now is the time to learn. (By the way, AI and low code have made it easier than ever.)