I Lost My Job, Then I Saw the Future of Product Leadership

For the first time in over 20 years, I’m unemployed, and I can’t shake this thought: Does the job I spent years building still make sense?

The timing isn’t great. The economy is uncertain. Companies are cutting back. Hiring cycles are painfully slow. That’s nothing new, anyone in tech knows this story.

But during this forced break, I’ve had time to actually think. Not the rushed thinking that happens between meetings, but real contemplative thought about where product management and product leadership is headed.

For my entire career, the path has been straightforward: start as an individual contributor, get promoted to manage a small team, then a larger team, handle bigger budgets, attend more meetings. Each promotion meant more people management and less hands-on work.

I’m not convinced this traditional ladder makes sense anymore. Not with AI changing how we work.

Think about what’s happening. The economy is forcing companies to do more with less. At the same time, AI tools are getting better at tasks that used to require humans: documenting requirements, analyzing competitive landscapes, generating first drafts, summarizing research.

And these economic pressures aren’t going away anytime soon. When companies are forced to adapt, they rarely go back to their old, less efficient ways of working. So, what happens when a company realizes they can maintain productivity with a smaller team because AI is handling the routine work? What happens to all those middle management roles when coordination becomes more automated?

I think we’re going to see product organizations start to flatten. Companies will need fewer managers as AI handles more of the coordination, documentation, and routine decision-making that currently fills those calendars.

This shift may give rise to a new kind of product leader, what some, like Claire Vo, call the Super IC. These high-impact individual contributors aren’t just working differently, they’re redefining what leadership looks like. Instead of sitting in meetings, they may take on broader scopes, make faster decisions, and rely on AI to execute at scale. It’s still early, and we don’t know exactly how this will play out. But one thing is clear: the skills that matter in product leadership are shifting.

This isn’t happening everywhere yet. Most of the current hiring freezes and layoffs are simply reactions to economic uncertainty. But I believe that as companies adapt to these constraints, they’ll discover new organizational structures that they’ll keep even when the economy improves.

At first, I was just looking for my next VP role. But the more I watched these trends unfold, the more I started wondering: Am I chasing a job that won’t exist in five years? AI isn’t simply changing the products we build. It’s reshaping entire career paths. That realization hit me hard. I had two choices: wait for the market to stabilize…or figure out what comes next.

This shift is already beginning, and I plan to explore it fully. Over the next few articles, I’ll dig into how AI is collapsing product teams, why leadership roles are changing, what skills will matter most, and how to navigate your career through this transformation.

I believe we’re witnessing the biggest transformation in product teams since Agile became mainstream. But this isn’t just about AI replacing tasks, it’s about restructuring entire teams, redefining leadership, and changing how work gets done.

This career transition wasn’t what I planned, but it forced me to see the future of product leadership. And if AI is already starting to flatten product organizations, what does that mean for how teams will actually function?

That’s exactly what I’ll explore in my next piece: What comes after Agile? The rise of AI-augmented product teams, smaller squads, and a complete rethink of how we build products.