# Product Trio Collapse: Strategic Shift to AI-Augmented Product Builders

**Podcast:** All Things Product with Teresa and Petra
**Published:** 2026-03-31

## Transcript

Hi folks, this is All Things Product with Petra Ville and Teresa Cortes.
And we're so happy you're here.
Teresa.
I just came back from a number of events where I was speaking on stages in workshop training mode.
And so many conversations have been revolving around is product management dead as a profession.
So perfect question for our podcast to unpack.
I have opinions.
Of course I do.
But what are yours?
I don't think product management is dead.
I don't think design is dead.
I don't think engineering is dead.
I do think the product trio is collapsing.
And I'll let me explain what I mean by that.
Please.
I think I'm gonna be talking about this at Product at Heart, so this is a little bit of a teaser.
You know, I reserve the right to change my topic between now and product at Heart, but right now this is the working topic.
Let's just be clear.
Yeah.
I do think we are moving into a phase where instead of having product managers, designers, and engineers, everybody will have this product builder foundation that our specialty will sit on top of.
So I think what's the point of the thing that's what you mean by product builders?
Because I'm not sure if everyone already heard the term.
So maybe you can give us a short walkthrough.
Yeah.
So let me explain both of let me explain both of these.
So I think at the at the base is a product builder.
I think every product builder will continue to have a specialty.
Maybe multiple some of people will may have more than one specialty, but at least one specialty.
So what's at that product builder base?
I think with AI now, everybody can do a base level of programming.
Everybody can do a base level of design.
Everybody can do a base level of product management business context.
The challenge is a lot of the products that we build, a lot of the parts of the products that we build only need that base foundation.
They don't need expert skills.
And so I think what we're gonna see is a lot of the work that we could do could be done by one or two product builders collaborating.
Yeah, and with the but a lot of the work and with coding, you mean even web coding with lovable or replic or tools like that.
I mean, I don't even think you need to be using a vibe coding tool because we're at the point where I can literally just tell any model build this thing and it will build that thing.
Yeah.
But I think here's the problem.
There's always every single product on the planet has hard problems.
They have hard problems from a viability standpoint, they have hard problems from a uh design standpoint, they have hard problems from an engineering standpoint.
I think those specialties are absolutely still gonna matter.
But we're not gonna need like if you think about a new feature.
If 80% of the work is existing patterns, it's mundane work, it's just work that is required to get the feature out the door.
Any builder with any discipline could probably build that 80%.
Yeah.
Now there's the 20% that's the tricky part.
And is it tricky because it's tricky from an engineering standpoint?
We probably want a product builder with the engineering expertise.
Is it tricky from a design standpoint?
We probably need a product builder with a design expertise.
Is it tricky from a viability getting the business fundamentals right?
We might need a product manager to take on, take the lead on that part.
I do think like we first of all, if this sounds crazy, it already exists.
There's the company every.
They have several products.
Each one of their products is built by a single person.
Person.
Right.
Now, they they make they make real products used by real people, but they don't make enterprise grade products.
And so I think this will scale.
We're not gonna just have one person product teams, but I do think product teams are gonna get a lot smaller, they're gonna get a lot more cross people are going to get a lot more cross-functional.
Um, but I think we're still gonna collaborate, we're still gonna have expertise, we're still gonna rely on others with expertise.
Yeah, and let me double tap on the communication and collaboration part, because what I think, so I I definitely think whatever you said in the last five minutes is true.
So just a yes and yeah.
Yes and um, not controversial, but um what I think is still something that remains, and product people oftentimes are particularly good in these things.
So there is still room for the product person to be mastering all these things, and that's company internal collaboration and alignment.
None of that will actually go away because let's face it, the organization around the actual digital product will still be a thing, right?
There still might be retail, there still might be shipping, there still maybe whatever it is, even marketing, um, PR departments.
So still somebody has to take care of the rest of the organization, the alignment with the rest of the organization, making sure operation runs smoothly.
So this entire collaboration and communication skill super important.
I think alignment for clarity is still something that will remain important.
Of course, that will be less an alignment internally towards your team because your team is maybe you, so maybe there is not many people to align with in the future, but around you in a bigger organization, there might be more people that you need to align with.
So I think all of that is not going away.
And on top of that, um, human decision-making capabilities might still come in in handy when because somebody has to basically uh make all the hard trade-off decisions that maybe I can suggest or advise you about, but in the end, a human being needs to make them.
Product people could actually be in that position because hopefully, still we allow them to build product sense.
Um, and then it's easier for them to make a decision.
And I think innovation is still something that we not have.
So I'm not yet sure how innovative AI's or any AI um tool program, whatever, um, will be because so far I only saw more of the same.
And now you could say like people maybe don't care because Spotify is flooded with all this AI music and people are listening to it and nobody cares.
I would assume that in one or two years from now, we are rather numb to some of the EI AI created content, unless it's getting more creative and innovative.
And I have not yet seen any signs of that to be happening soon, but we see how fast the tools are evolving.
So I don't know.
But maybe for the time being, innovation will still be on somebody in the organization, and that could be, for example, a product person.
Yeah, okay.
So I'm just getting rid of rules.
I don't, when you say product person, if you mean product manager, I th I would replace that with product builder.
Yeah, yeah.
That's what I mean with product person.
Yeah.
I do think humans are still going to innovate.
I think if we just let AI do all the design, that'd be a pretty boring world.
Yeah.
Um, I think we're still gonna have hard technical challenges that engineers will work on.
Yeah, somebody needs to innovate on behalf of the user, then, yeah.
I think we're still gonna have like messy, complex organizational contexts that constrain what's viable that product managers have to work through and and understand and bring to the table.
So this is why I don't think the functional expertise is going away.
Yes.
But I think what we historically had, like historically, a designer does flows for everything, like literally everything, even if it's something that has been built 400,000 times before.
Times right, login forms.
We don't need a designer to do that.
We can let the AI do that.
Yeah.
We same with like we don't need an engineer to spend time writing boilerplate code.
AI is really good at that.
Yeah, and so I think what's interesting about this is like okay, it is not true today, and it probably won't be true in six months or a year, that you can just be lazy and tell um an AI some half-baked thing and get reasonable design or reasonable engineering or reasonable product management.
So I think at this product builder level, all of us, regardless of our functional expertise, have to skill up around how to be better product builders.
Yeah.
Um, and this is, I think what I'm gonna focus on at Product at heart.
How do we build horizontal skills so that we bring a strong foundation while still investing in our functional expertise?
Um, so that you know, we used to talk about T-shaped people.
I think this is just the modern day version of a T-shaped person.
Is that if you're in a role that builds products, you probably need a T-shaped builder, product builder foundation.
And the long part of the T is still your functional expertise.
Yeah.
Yeah, I would agree.
Then it's only a matter of upskilling.
But still, in my coaching sessions, I see people struggling with the idea.
Or they're not so much struggling with the idea.
I think they understand the idea and they as understand where I'm coming from when I explain that concepts to them.
But because of they are coming from either the product world or the business world or the design world or the engineering world, it's hard for them to step into these other professions more.
And I see, of course, from the product perspective, particularly hard for stepping into design a bit more and stepping into the engineering bits a bit more.
I think you and I have a bit of an unfair advantage here because we started an engineering.
So for us, this new world is not so crazy and new than maybe for other people that currently um facing this.
Oh, I need to upskill on certain things.
And for them, kind of it's just a longer way to go.
So yeah, this is an encouragement to start because all of the people already think like the train is moving, they're already behind uh why why getting on it now?
Because everybody already knows so much more about it.
And I think this is not true.
Most of the people that are currently sharing content about that thing are just one one week ahead of you sometimes.
So I think it's still the perfect time to start learning about these topics to start experimenting with these topics.
It's still kind of Rome wasn't built in a day kind of thing.
Yeah and I think what I'll say and especially on the engineering side I know for people that have never been exposed to code this can be scary but actually you don't you still don't need to be exposed to code.
Like you can build like the world changed in November of 2025 when Opus 4.5 and when GPT 5.2 came out yeah you don't ever have to look at a line of code yeah for that base foundation there's still gonna be problems that require an expert engineer but there's a lot that you can build without looking at a single line of code.
Yeah and so just like you know we used to program websites directly in a text editor writing HTML and CSS.
And then we started we started to get WYSIWYG editors where anybody could create a website.
Yeah.
I think this is happening for a lot of a lot more people.
Standard web app based coding.
Yeah.
Like it's just it's not rocket science.
LLMs are pretty darn good at it.
You probably never need to look at the code.
But you do have to learn, like I think the skill that needs to be learned, and actually, this is a skill product managers are already pretty good at.
You learn how you have to learn how to specify what you want.
You have to learn how to plan with an agent.
And I think it's easier than ever to forget to think about things like data privacy and data safety and all this.
So we see all sorts of things going sideways, bank accounts leaking, API keys gone on the web and stuff like that.
So I think this is again common sense needs to be applied by product builders when they're building stuff as well.
And sometimes that is easily to be forgotten in times where you can basically prompt everything into existence.
Well, also, I think companies have to build infrastructure to make this safe for employees to play with principles as well, I'd say.
So if you're letting people um create production code, then you better have security reviewing agents and code reviewing agents and accessibility reviewer agents and all the other things that we used to rely on expert humans for that we're not gonna be it's not gonna scale in this environment where anybody can contribute to your product.
Yeah, so we have to also build in that infrastructure to make it safe and to create appropriate playgrounds.
Yeah, but none of that is rocket science, it's basically more of the same.
So I would love to see more people, for example, product leaders should think about these exact things right now.
So, how could we have agents in place that do some of our safety and security and quality assurance reviews?
That's an amazing question for every product leader out there to think about right now.
Um, because then you're prepared whenever somebody comes up and says, like, no, we have the infrastructure, we have the tools in place.
We we're doing it like that.
You know what's crazy to me is I am still regularly talking to product teams where their engineers are not using coding agents at all.
Yeah, I know.
And I don't think these teams have realized the world has already changed.
Like, but they are living in the past.
How many conversations I have with product people that besides of high-level chat GPT prompting for selling their private car or something like that, are not using it in a structured way either.
And I'm always like, okay, ah, could you I don't get it.
So I don't think, and that's maybe another episode that we need to recall, Teresa about the FOMO when not uh being able to test all the tools, but um, I still think you should start trying some of them, using some of them, and see what they can do.
So there is no excuse anymore to not do any of that.
The world is a good idea.
I think if we look at the this idea of product builder as the foundation and your functional expertise is where you go deep.
I think if you're not learning how to use AI and both, you will not have expertise anymore.
Yeah.
I think it's that simple, right?
Like if you decide not to be a product builder and you just want to be a functional expert, you're gonna get replaced by somebody who is a product builder and has functional expertise.
And if you don't learn how to use AI in the realm of your functional expertise, you won't be seen as an expert in that function anymore.
Yeah.
Like right now, this is already true for engineering, right?
If you're an engineer and you have zero experience with coding agents, you are no longer an expert in the future of writing code.
Yeah.
Right?
So I think the same is happening for product management.
I think the same is happening for design.
And so we are at a point where it's clear this technology is not going away.
It is going to change the way that we work.
So we have to start building those skills.
And I don't, it's not, you don't have to learn this all tomorrow, but you gotta start putting tools in your toolbox.
Yeah, and people who will not be doing that will be a locked in in their current role, job company.
Because I already see all the job descriptions changing, all the jobs, our job ads are changing, and all the interview processes are changing.
So that's definitely something that you need to prepare for when you want to land your next role.
Yeah.
Teresa.
Yeah, so if people are interested in this topic, I think I'm gonna do a deep dive in June at Product at Heart about how to build your product builder foundation and then how to really understand when you need an expert, when you need to bring in an expert, you're when your foundation's not good enough.
And then also how to use AI for your own expertise to develop your own functional expertise.
Amazing.
I love the cliffhanger.
So people, product at heart.
June.