The Punk PM #38

Hey there, punk!

This week I talked about my product and tech predictions for 2026 at ProductTank Newcastle.

For this week's newsletter, I thought I'd share a summary of the big themes that I think are going to shape our work as product managers over the next 12 months.

Let's dig into it.

Quote of the Week 🙊

Insight 🦉

Most product advice isn’t wrong. It’s just out of date.

A lot of what we’ve treated as timeless product wisdom was written for a world with very specific constraints.

Interfaces were the main battleground. Teams scaled by hiring. Building software required serious effort and serious headcount.

Those constraints have shifted faster than our mental models have.

One of the biggest changes underneath everything right now is trust.

People are no longer casually handing over data in exchange for convenience. Privacy and security have moved from the legal department into the buying decision. Users aren’t just choosing products based on what they do. They’re choosing based on how they behave.

How transparent they are. How they explain themselves. What happens when something breaks.

And once trust is lost, it’s hard to win back.

At the same time, the interface is no longer always the product.

We’re spending less time inside apps and more time inside chat windows, copilots, voice tools, and agents. The future isn’t always better UI. Sometimes it’s no UI at all. Products that deliver value without being experienced directly.

Which forces a new question.

Does your product still matter when a machine is the one using it?

Because increasingly, the primary user isn’t a person. It’s an AI agent acting on someone’s behalf. And if an agent can’t navigate your service, customers may not complain. They’ll just drift toward something it can use.

Meanwhile, building has become much cheaper.

AI coding tools aren’t toys anymore. With the right direction, small teams can now do work that used to require entire departments.

That changes the economics of software. Volume goes up. Noise goes up. The world fills with half-baked products, but also with strange, brilliant ones.

It feels a bit like punk in the late 70s. Suddenly the tools are accessible enough that anyone can make something. It won’t always be polished, but it might be distinctive. And sometimes that matters more.

As AI matures, it also becomes less mystical. The real impact comes when it becomes boring infrastructure, like databases or web servers, not some kind of a magic trick.

And in this new world, product management doesn’t disappear. It evolves.

The version of the job built around endless process and product theatre is fading. What’s left is closer to what product was always meant to be.

Judgement. Trade-offs. Risk. Responsibility for outcomes.

AI automates some of the surface layer. But it makes the core of the role clearer again.

Most product advice isn’t obsolete because it was bad. It’s obsolete because the ground has moved.

And now we have to build, and lead, from a different place.

Action 🚀

Next week, think about how these trends might be impacting your product.

Are you living in the old world, or the new?

What needs to happen for your product to survive in the Age of AI?

Inspiration 💡

The Enclosure feedback loop – Michael Buddingh warns that coding assistants are creating a self-reinforcing trap: as developers ask questions privately to AI instead of publicly on Stack Overflow, the biggest models gain exclusive access to fresh training data while the open web stagnates. What was once a shared public good is becoming privatised cloud rent. Read more

Signal president warns AI agents are making encryption irrelevant – Meredith Whittaker argues that OS-level AI agents undermine end-to-end encryption not by breaking the maths, but by requiring broad access to decrypted data inside your device. Privacy depends on the whole system, and AI assistants with near-root privileges risk making encryption meaningless in practice. Read more

Vibe prototyping isn't solving any problems. But it's creating many new ones. – Pavel Samsonov calls out how AI-generated prototypes encourage teams to skip the hard work of problem framing and critical thinking. Instead of increasing productivity, "slopotypes" create a toxic culture where experts spend their time cleaning up low-quality output while being told they can't refuse because AI is inevitable. Read more

Signing Off ✍️

If this resonates with you, hit reply and let me know. And if you think a friend or colleague would enjoy The Punk PM, feel free to share it with them!

Play it your way,

Toby