Do you care?

Airbnb’s CEO just said there would be some changes in their product management roles, and many product managers went wild, airing their opinions left and right.

The product managers in Airbnb will be taking the work of outbound product marketing. This move is nothing new, either from Airbnb or in the history of product management, maybe in tech.

Yet, everyone seems so astonished; the sky is falling, and they will burn out; who will own the roadmap? It goes on and on. Many other people think this is a good move, as it would move their role as a product manager closer to how to communicate the value proposition their product builds. Others are against it because “product should only be responsible with execution” and another pile of gibberish.

Interestingly, all these posts, articles, and comments come from actual product managers. These days, there was a new gossip when we were kids, and everyone had an opinion about it at scale.

I have learned that if I do not know something, the people around me will benefit better from my silence. What I see happening are just opinions, not wise and sound points of view.

Here are a couple of thoughts.

The beginning of product management as a role in organizations could be traced back to a memo written by Neil H. McElroy at Procter & Gamble. It described “Brand Men” and their absolute responsibility for a brand, from tracking sales to managing the product, advertising and promotions.

At that time, PMs were part of Marketing. Their key metrics were sales and profit, but the slow-moving nature of development and production made them focus more on place, price and promotion. At that time, product development was the responsibility of someone else.

Moving into tech, this separation from the development and production of the product was not a good idea. There needed to be more than packaging and marketing to solve the problem. So, the PM moved to be closer to product development.

After that, the PM role kept evolving; there was the division of function of PMM and PM, so each could specialize in each area, but that meant that PM was solely focused on product development and PMMs were in charge of the original function of PMs.

Here are a couple of questions for you

• What leveraged Airbnb to make this move?
• What emotional investment do you have in that decision?
• Are you worried this can start underlying the pillars of product management?
• Have you had a deep understanding of what the role of PMs in Airbnb looked like before?

How PMs returning to take over more of a marketing role in Airbnb will turn out?

🤷 We do not know. It is OK not to know.

I also do not care, besides the learnings it can bring.

I hope someday they share how it went.

Good luck, folks!