I have this feeling most of the people with “product manager” in their job title won’t have this title anymore by 2030.

No, I’m not saying this because Brian Chesky said something similar, or that I’m looking to lose my job 😬

Just think about it for a minute: Interest rates are a thing now. It’s harder to just throw money at people to grow a company. Tech companies were wildly inefficient for a decade, and now they have to be efficient to survive.

As an employee, you need find massive impact or create it. There are only so many people who can come with 100x-level ideas and lead teams to do it. Lots of those 100x ideas are repeating or remixing what other companies have already done. You don’t need to be a visionary in that world, you just need to execute, and ideally that includes building yourself, not just “leading” as an excuse for a salary.

So what can you do instead? Two options in my mind. Both of which involve getting outside your comfort zone. Here they are:

• Learn other parts of the business you work for and look for opportunities to do more than just traditional PM work to fill gaps. Find opportunities to make small code changes. Create marketing plan(s). Master your company’s data and share insights nobody else is. Do customer service. The superpower of a PM is that you can fill in gaps anywhere to help make impact. That work diversifies your skill set which makes you desirable in a sea of PMs who only know and act on frameworks.

• Find a problem that matters to you in the world and figure out how to solve it. And don’t assume you need to raise $$$ and hire people where you have gaps in your skill set. Consider learning those skills. Then build the thing using all your PM know-how.

What am I doing? A bit of both. I love my job and that I have a hand in many things, and I’ve got feelings about problems in the music industry, but I’m not yet sure how I’d solve them yet.