AI has made coding a simple part. The hardest part now is product management, said Andrew Ng.
The Stanford professor and former Google brain scientist said on an episode of the “No Priors” podcast that AI-assisted coding compressed the startup loop on Thursday.
“My friend and I, we just build on the weekend,” said the one that had been building six engineers for three months.
“The bottlenecks are deciding what you actually want to build,” he added.
In the past, waiting another week for user feedback was not a big deal, as prototypes can take three weeks to develop. But today, when you can build a prototype in one day, “If you have to wait a week for user feedback, it's really painful,” Ng said.
That discrepancy is when teams force faster product decisions. And Ng said his team is “increasingly dependent on the gut.”
The best product managers bring “deep customer empathy,” he said. It's not enough to calculate data about user behavior. They need to form an ideal customer mental model.
It is “the ability to synthesize a lot of signals and make product decisions very quickly, so that you can really put yourself in other people's shoes,” he added.
Ng did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Great product manager discussion
NG's comments come as the discussion continues in the Startup World over the role of product managers.
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The product manager is called the “minitheo” of the products he overseen. They act as a bridge between engineers, sales teams, customer service and other departments, ensuring that the product matches the needs of the users.
Some tech leaders say product managers are key in the age of AI.
In an episode of the “20 Minutes of VC” podcast in March, Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott said product managers will play a key role in setting up a “feedback loop” to make AI agents even better.
But others argue that product managers add little value.
Surge AI CEO Edwin Chen said in an episode of the “No Priors” podcast released last month that the product manager said there was no point in the early days.
Microsoft wants to increase the number of engineers compared to product or program managers, Business Insider's Ashley Stewart reported in March.
Executives are looking to go to “founder mode” – a concept coined by Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham and promoted by Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has some leaders questioning whether product decisions should be delegated to product managers.
In 2023, Chesky integrated product management and marketing, and Snap told Information that same year that it would help 20 product managers accelerate the company's decision-making.
