Why half of product managers are in trouble | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google)

What It Covers

Nikhyl Singhal, former Meta and Google exec and founder of the Skip community for 125+ heads of product, breaks down how AI is splitting product managers into two groups — builders who will thrive and information-movers who face obsolescence — and what specific actions PMs must take in the next 24 months to remain relevant and employed.

Key Questions Answered

• •The PM Split: Singhal estimates roughly half of current product managers built their careers around moving information — translating updates, formatting reports, managing stakeholder communication chains. That archetype is becoming obsolete. The other half, those who entered product because they love building things, are seeing record compensation and more job offers than ever. The most open PM roles globally in three-plus years exist right now, but they are almost exclusively targeting builders with hands-on AI fluency.
• •The Rehiring Wave: Large companies will shed tens of thousands of employees while simultaneously hiring thousands back — but the incoming cohort will be entirely AI-first. Singhal's example: a company cuts 30,000 and rehires 8,000, but those 8,000 are builders who can operate with AI tools natively. PMs who cannot demonstrate AI-forward working methods will fall into the shed category regardless of tenure, brand, or past performance metrics.
• •Logo Prestige Is Losing Value: Spending years at a prestigious company no longer signals competence the way it once did. Interviewers now prioritize scenario-based questions about current tools, judgment frameworks, and real-time decision-making over résumé logos. A PM who spent six years optimizing a Meta algorithm may struggle to articulate relevance to a hiring team operating in a fully different product-building paradigm. Demonstrating current, modern practice outweighs brand association.
• •Obsolete Yourself Deliberately: The highest-leverage PM behavior right now is building internal tools that eliminate the least joyful, most mechanical parts of the job — status reports, stand-up coordination, prioritization documentation. Singhal's community members are automating product reviews, matching community members via agents, and building inbox chief-of-staff apps. The engineering principle that guides this: the best engineer is one who systematically removes themselves from every repetitive task they perform.
• •Joy as the Activation Mechanism: The transition from fear to productivity requires a personal "moment of joy" — a specific experience where a PM builds something tangible using AI tools, often outside work hours. Singhal observes this pattern consistently across his community: someone builds a household app, a matching tool, or a business plan prototype, stays up late doing it, and crosses a psychological threshold. After that moment, motivation becomes self-sustaining and burnout decreases measurably.
• •Pace and Ego Management: Thriving in the next two years requires treating the current period like starting a new job — bringing maximum energy and willingness to learn from scratch. Singhal advises PMs to actively consider roles that appear smaller in title if those roles place them inside AI-forward organizations. Long-term positioning matters more than short-term seniority. The PMs most resistant to this are often the highest performers in the old system, because their existing success removes the incentive to change.
• •Product Managers as Cross-Industry Change Agents: As product organizations modernize first, PMs will become the most qualified people to lead AI transformation in adjacent functions — sales, marketing, HR, private equity-owned companies, and educational institutions. Singhal tracks 14 founders emerging from his 125-person community in the past 12 months alone, compared to one founder in the prior three years. One community member interviewed for a Chief HR Officer role specifically because the company wanted product-style judgment applied to the HR function.