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Ask HN: Is Product Management a safer bet in 2017?

5 points by cofounderYC17 ↗ HN
AI is moving fast and coding will soon be handled by machines. We, the developers, will lose our jobs. Most of us are pushing features, fixing bugs, etc. Things that don't involve creativity, decision making or business knowledge.

I have a feeling that Product Management will be the next big thing moving forward. Call me crazy - but it seems like a perfect candidate for software "development". All you need is to come up with a set of features and an MVP in mind, then the machines will build it for you.

What do you think? Should we make the switch now?

14 comments

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arms
> Should we make the switch now?

You can, but until I see evidence that "We, the developers, will lose our jobs" any time soon, I'm going to continue doing what makes me happy, and that's coding.

wayn3
sounds like you are working an assembly line. you should certainly switch jobs, but for different reasons.
cofounderYC17
Sounds like you've never heard about Agile/Scrum and the software lifecycle. Developers are resources, they get allocated on a set of tasks. Have you ever heard of velocity? It's the number of tasks a group of developers can complete in one single iteration. It's called productivity. Welcome to the modern world my friend, it is indeed a factory out there and I don't know where you work but it might be outdated. You should google about the Software lifecycle. It's good to know if you're in the software business.
mrits
Oh to be young and dumb again
imauld
> Welcome to the modern world my friend, it is indeed a factory out there and I don't know where you work but it might be outdated.

The Manifesto for Agile Software Development turned 10 years old... in 2011.

cofounderYC17
Sure, the first car was invented in 1807. Ford was created in 1903. The upcoming Ford GT (limited production) became one of the most wanted car in history last year.

You need to understand the difference between creation, industrialization and adoption.

wayn3
I'm not writing thin crud Apps
cofounderYC17
Here is an example of well known agile teams: windows team, iOS team, android team, etc. I'd be curious to know where you work and what you do. If it's not related to software development. Are you an Ops guy? Sys admin?
wayn3
I'm a "software engineer". My "bosses" trust me with solving non-trivial tasks that are interesting and not yet well understood. Maybe that makes me more of a scientist. I prefer to think of me that way.

Why anyone would work a job where they have to disengage their brain is beyond me. Maybe its out of necessity.

That being said, I'm not an employee and don't aspire to ever be one. Nobody has the authority to tell me how or what to do. I believe that murican law specifically bans companies from telling their contractors how to do their job, but you'd have to ask a lawyer about that.

So no scrummy agility for me, soz.

My academical background is physics/math (specifically, a bunch of computational stuff and topology/string theory if that helps). not things you can pick up over the weekend though. Contrary to popular belief, I apply that knowledge at work regularly.

I somewhat agree with your sentiment. If that's really what your job is like, you should get out of that.

unrelated: whats the deal with your name though? if you are in YC, you can't really be complaining about low level software engineering tasks?

ajeet_dhaliwal
Everyone's a 'resource' in that sense including product managers.
rfc
I don't mean for this comment to come off as condescending but if you think that all a PM does is "come up with features and an MVP" and have people build it, then I think you ought to really go talk to multiple PMs to get their perspective on what their job entails.

Coming up with features is just one of the 100s of different items a PM will do on a daily basis.

cofounderYC17
Of course... listing all the PM tasks is not the point here. I'm referring to tasks that are in direct relationship with coding. If we get rid of the coding step then the closest thing is the PM. Which is the point I'm trying to make here.

I sure know about the vision, strategy, blablabla... that's why I think it's the best bet, because those skills will be harder to replace compared to programming languages.

shahbaby
The fact is that no one knows how close or how far we are from true general intelligence.

A human will be needed until that happens.

After that point, how our society will change is anyone's guess.