Two-pizza 🍕 teams are dying

Engineers are no more the bottleneck

7 Software Engineers + 1 Product Manager + 1 Product Designer is becoming an outdated tech team configuration.

The future will look much closer to:

1 PM + 1 Software Engineer + 1 Product Designer.

Software Engineers are becoming extremely productive. In many modern companies, they’re no longer the main bottleneck in product development.

The bottleneck is shifting elsewhere:

1. What product should we build?
2. How do we build it the right way for customers?
3. How does it fit within our existing product portfolio?
4. Which existing products should we kill?
5. How should we price it?
6. How do we reach customers in a cost-efficient way?

This doesn’t just mean Designers and Product Managers become the new bottlenecks. It also means the expectations from these roles will increase significantly.

A Product Designer who used to focus mainly on perfecting UI will increasingly need to handle:
- User research
- Product validation
- Competitive analysis
- Strategic product thinking

Ideally, designers already do some of this today. But in reality, it’s mostly the experienced ones who operate at that level.

The same shift is happening for Product Managers.

PMs will spend less time managing backlogs and writing tickets. Instead, they’ll need to do more of what GPMs, Product Directors, or startup founders traditionally did:
- Strategic thinking
- Customer interaction
- Go-to-market planning
- Leading growth initiatives
- Owning business outcomes and P&L

I’m not necessarily saying this will automatically lead to fewer jobs.

But the way we hire, structure, and operate tech teams is changing permanently.

Everyone should be leveling up because the job descriptions are changing underneath us.