The Product role is having an identity crisis too. Engineering has found its AI-native interface - SWE agents dramatically increase individual leverage. Companies are asking PMs to use AI, but they haven't evolved the role. So there are two camps. The old-school PM. AI accelerates the old job: more PRDs, more strategy decks, more docs. Lots of output, not much judgment. The Builder PM. Builder PMs use AI to expand their role across the product lifecycle. They explore a much larger surface area of ideas to arrive at the best. They run agents for market and user research, query logs and analytics directly, generate competing ideas, then curate the best ones. They constantly evolve their workflows to take advantage of the latest in AI. Their outputs are increasingly prototypes rather than docs - engineers react far more constructively to demos than docs. They do this all without compromising on the craft -they still form a strong point of view on what should be built and why. I think the role is moving much closer to Builder PMs.
Product（产品）这个角色也正面临身份认同危机。Engineering 已经找到了它的 AI-native（AI 原生）界面——SWE agents 极大提升了个人杠杆效应。公司在要求 PM 使用 AI，但并没有让这个角色随之进化。所以现在分成了两派。老派 PM：AI 只是把旧工作加速——更多 PRD、更多 strategy deck、更多文档。产出很多，判断却不多。Builder PM：他们用 AI 把自己的职责扩展到整个产品生命周期。他们会探索大得多的想法空间，以找到最优方案；他们会运行 agents 做市场和用户研究，直接查询日志和分析数据，生成彼此竞争的想法，再从中筛选出最好的。他们会不断进化自己的工作流，以利用 AI 的最新能力。他们的产出也越来越偏向 prototype（原型）而不是文档——因为工程师对 demo 的反馈，往往远比对文档更具建设性。他们做到这一切，同时并不牺牲这门工作的 craft（技艺）——他们依然会对“应该做什么、为什么要做”形成清晰而有力的判断。我认为，这个角色正在越来越接近 Builder PM。