How the PM Role is Changing in 2024

Sonali says product managers increasingly spend time on internal meetings, reports, and coordination at the expense of customer understanding and product work. At Airbnb, the team emphasized prototypes and a customer-facing marketing narrative to help multiple teams build toward a coherent experience. She cautions that each company should adapt its approach to its own context.

Sonali argues that leaders shape culture through what they reward, and that reviews should focus on customer outcomes rather than peer feedback or access to executives. John cautions that incentive systems are hard to design perfectly, since people value different things; leaders also signal priorities through what they discuss. Nikki describes customer response and product impact as recurring topics in Duolingo reviews.

Nikki supports dual career tracks and describes a role where she manages a team while still shipping product, while warning that doing both can lead to burnout. Sonali says IC paths can reach product director level at some companies, though senior IC roles become harder to define. Panelists also describe alternatives to becoming a VP or CPO, including founding a company, moving into adjacent fields, or building deeper expertise.

Panelists recommend experimenting regularly, including Nikki’s six-hour weekly budget, using AI in daily work, and taking a free Google course to understand the technology and its limits. Suggested use cases include reviewing OKRs, analyzing data, creating training scenarios, and finding internal company information. John recommends giving employees safe sandboxes to experiment, and one panelist suggests asking engineers to explain how systems such as retrieval-augmented generation work.

For user interviews, panelists advise listening more than talking and suggest using The Mom Test or AI to prepare an interview guide. For senior roles, they recommend staying close to users, industries, and competitors while amplifying teammates’ work. When evaluating a job, ask how decisions are made and assess whether leaders can change chronic problems; Nikki also recommends learning a prospective manager’s working and communication style.