Cheap Code Makes Specification the Scarce Skill
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- x.com
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Writing software, especially prototypes, is becoming cheaper. This will lead to increased demand for people who can decide what to build. AI Product Management has a bright future! Software is often written by teams that comprise Product Managers (PMs), who decide what to build (such as what features to implement for what users) and Software Developers, who write the code to build the product. Economics shows that when two goods are complements — such as cars (with internal-combustion engines) and gasoline — falling prices in one leads to higher demand for the other. For example, as cars became cheaper, more people bought them, which led to increased demand for gas. Something similar will happen in software. Given a clear specification for what to build, AI is making the building itself much faster and cheaper. This will significantly increase demand for people who can come up with clear specs for valuable things to build. This is why I’m excited about the future of Product Management, the discipline of developing and managing software products. I’m especially excited about the future of AI Product Management, the discipline of developing and managing AI software products. Many…
Context
Cheaper implementation can make deciding what to build a larger part of software work. Andrew Ng's product-management argument treats a useful specification and the code that implements it as complementary inputs: increasing the capacity to produce code creates more need for clear, valuable requirements.
For AI products, Ng argues that this judgment requires understanding technical feasibility and handling uncertain performance through iteration and feedback. Ng also allows for engineers taking on more of that work. The prediction therefore concerns demand for product-management skills; whether it creates more dedicated product-manager jobs depends on how organizations divide those responsibilities.
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