But “product” people can’t really build real production software even with claude. Prototypes, sure. Engineers can (and many do already) deal with product topics. It’s easier for engineers to become more produc oriented than for PM to be able to handle tech topics with AI

I think that's the point. Product only people who didn't build significant engineering understanding aren't going to be replacing anybody and are now at serious risk. Engineering people who did the same and don't want to go find out with customers and the like are also at risk. Smaller teams of people with more cross cutting skills in eng, product, design are going to outperform in this world. everyone else is just vibing their way rapidly to problems imo.

Ai makes it a lot more urgent but pm folks who dropped features from on high never worked as well as pms down in the weeds with engineering in the first place, nor did engineers who didn't want to get out there with customers and understand the why deeply.

The real question for executives is: engineer + AI or PM + AI?

I certainly believe that decent engineers do already have a good degree of knowledge about product topics (it’s like a must nowadays). PM/POs don’t really know enough on the tech side, so they would be clueless even with claude.

Is your company making 5x more? Are your customers 5x happier? Are you getting paid 5x more?

What’s the point of doing 5x more?

Features don’t usually come from product teams. They come from above: some Head Of, VP Of, and the like. Those people only ask, they know very little about execution. They want their wishes come true in a timely manner

They have been vibecoding via a harness of human LLMs this whole time.

I think this is the key to some of this debate.

Management/Product/Product Engineer - When you are responsible for getting the work done then you look for any and every option to speed it up.

Owner/Platform/Senior Engineer - When you are responsible for ensuring it works and can be maintained then you have to pay attention to how to build it, aka the trade offs

Would love to see wifi support

You might find this thread interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47105086

In my circle engineers are more anti-proprietary-ai (openai/anthropic). Open weights are fine.

Why don’t we care being at the mercy (again) of 2-3 companies?

Yeah but the sun would set later in the evening. That’s a nice tradeoff

But multi-billion tech companies that feed your FOSS contributions to their models do fit in that “predatory hegemony that punishes humanity even more” narrative

I guess it depends on how your cv/experience looks like?

I don’t have problems getting interviews (so I guess my cv/experience is relevant to the job… at least I do tailor my cv for each application). I do have problems in some stages of the tech interview (but that’s another story)

As a software engineer in western Europe: I still see plenty of (100%) remote roles available. When I say plenty I mean that there’s enough for me to pick up one and try my luck.

But also I usually work for companies that have a branch in the country I live in

I mentioned this in one of my comments. Europe and America have a plenty of remote roles. But not remote everywhere*