Phenomenon and Business Essence

Keith Rabois, managing partner at Khosla Ventures and early PayPal executive, recently stated bl untly: the product manager (PM) role is dying. The reason isn't layoffs, but AI taking over PM's core functions—requirements analysis, prototype validation, cross-team coordination. Simultaneously, he points to a counter intuitive trend: CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) are becoming the roles consuming the most AI tokens (compute) in enterprises, surpassing engineers. What does this mean? AI's cost center is shifting from technical departments to business units.

Historical Analogy

This mirrors the logic of spreadsheet software eliminating accounting clerks in the 1990s. After Excel's launch, enterprises didn't reduce financial decision-making; they had fewer people conducting more financial analysis—work requiring 10 accountants could be completed by one CFO and a computer. The anal ogy holds because: tools replace not judgment, but information-transfer work at the execution layer. A PM's essence is "translating between technology and business," and AI is precisely the cheap est translation machine. Today's PM predicament mirrors that of a 1993 ledger clerk.

Industry Reshuffling and Endgame Scenarios

Using Grove's "strategic inflection point" framework, this resh uffling will determine winners within 18-36 months:

  • Early casualties: Mid-sized internet companies driven by PM-centric models—they employ large teams of "requirements document writers" that AI can directly replace 80% of daily output.
  • Unexpected benef iciaries: Marketing-driven enterprises (brands, retail chains)—CMOs empowered by AI achieve near-zero person alized content production costs, with order-of-magnitude ROI improvements.
  • Long-term winners: What Rabois calls "barrel" talent—execution leaders capable of independently owning end-to-end responsibility . These individuals produce 10x+ output compared to ordinary employees with AI assistance; enterprises will reorgan ize around few "barrels."

Endgame projection: massive cont raction of middle-office PM teams, blurred budget boundaries between marketing and technology , with business leaders commanding AI tools becoming the new scarce resource.

Two Paths for Leaders

Path One (Proactive Reorganization): Audit existing PM teams this year , converting those with business judgment into "AI product owners" bearing end-to-end delivery responsibility; eliminate pure execution-focused PMs, redirecting savings into AI tool subscriptions and training. Step one: complete capability assessment this quarter with controlled costs.

Path Two (Waiting for Extinction): Maintain current organization unchanged, waiting for competitors to ship equivalent products with smaller teams and faster speed before forced adaptation —by then, top talent is locked by competitors, and reorganization costs multiply exponentially.