My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs

Role of PMs, Engineers, and “Vibe Coding”

• Many see technical PMs / product-minded engineers as increasingly valuable, especially as AI handles more coding.
• Some argue PMs coding prototypes is useful for communication, internal selling, and exploring long‑tail ideas that wouldn’t get engineering time.
• Others say letting PMs ship production code is low leverage, creates cleanup work, and confuses accountability: if you ship code, you’re effectively an engineer.

Quality, Risk, and “Prod Diffs”

• Strong concern about PM‑written or AI‑generated code landing in production: edge cases, performance problems, and lack of understanding of complex systems.
• Anecdotes of PM vibecoding causing serious production incidents (e.g., hammering databases, leaving “happy‑path only” data debris).
• Several suggest limiting PM coding to low‑blast‑radius areas (internal tools, dashboards, CSS, personal automation).

Future of the PM Role

• One camp predicts the standalone PM role will shrink or be absorbed into engineering/design as AI reduces coding friction and flattens orgs.
• Others say code is now cheap, so deciding what to build, prioritizing, and having “taste” becomes more important, not less.
• Some PMs expect to specialize (engineering, design, data) and move closer to “product engineer” roles.

Engineers vs PMs as “Product Owners”

• Several engineers claim they could more easily become passable PMs than PMs could become competent builders; others counter that the skill sets and motivations differ.
• Common view: in practice, PMs often shield engineers from politics and conflicting stakeholder demands; removing PMs can overload devs with meetings and context switching.

AI Capabilities and Limits

• Mixed views on how far current models (e.g., Claude Opus) go: some jokingly claim engineers are obsolete; most insist complex systems still require deep engineering judgment.
• “Text-to-code” is seen as flashy but risky; “code-to-text” (AI explaining codebases for PMs) is praised as underused and safer.

Culture, Gatekeeping, and Process

• Some see resistance to PM coding as necessary quality control, not gatekeeping; others think engineers are resisting business folks meeting them halfway.
• Agile/Scrum is framed by some as process that turns both dysfunctional and highly motivated teams into “average”; small, tight teams often function well without heavy process.