For years, the tech industry told the same story.
Engineering velocity wins.
Execution speed is everything.
Ship faster than everyone else.
AI quietly broke that story.
Today, going from a clearly written software spec to working code is increasingly cheap and increasingly fast. That single shift has changed where leverage lives in software teams.
Building is no longer the hard part.
Deciding what to build is.
AI Changed the Bottleneck
AI did not just accelerate coding.
It removed it as a competitive moat.
When anyone can ship features quickly, speed stops being an advantage. Teams that win are not the ones who build more. They are the ones who build the right things.
This shifts the bottleneck upstream.
From engineering to product thinking.
From execution to clarity.
From output to judgment.
The cost of building dropped.
The cost of building the wrong thing increased.
Why Product Management Is Making a Comeback
Product Management never disappeared.
Its leverage did.
In a world where shipping took months, PMs were often forced into coordination roles. Roadmaps. Meetings. Status updates. Delivery alignment.
AI flipped that equation.
When code is cheap, specs matter more.
When iteration is fast, feedback loops decide winners.
When experiments are easy, bad decisions surface instantly.
This is where strong PMs thrive.
They decide what not to build.
They turn vague ideas into clear intent.
They compress learning cycles.
That is not process work.
That is strategic work.
The New PM Loop
Modern product work now looks like this.
Write a clear spec.
Ship fast using AI-assisted development.
Put it in front of users.
Watch where they struggle.
Listen to what they ignore.
Revise your understanding.
Repeat.
AI did not remove this loop.
It accelerated it.
The faster the loop runs, the more valuable product judgment becomes.
Clarity Is the New Power
When everyone can build, clarity becomes scarce.
Clear thinking.
Clear problem definitions.
Clear prioritization.
This is why Product Managers are becoming central again. Not as gatekeepers. Not as coordinators. As decision-makers.
Someone still has to decide the mission.
Someone still has to say no.
Someone still has to turn chaos into direction.
That role did not disappear.
It just became more important.
The Comeback Era Has Already Started
You can see it happening.
PMs driving strategy instead of managing backlogs.
Specs replacing decks as the most valuable artifact.
Teams rewarding judgment over output.
AI made engineering faster.
It made product thinking decisive.
Product Management is back.
And this time, it is not about shipping more.
It is about choosing better.