PREDICTION: THE CPO ROLE, AS WE KNOW IT, WILL VANISH IN FIVE YEARS At young AI native companies, the traditional PM role is on the wane, replaced with a product builder archetype that’s a combination of Product, Design and Engineering. These companies will never hire a CPO. A separate product leader leads to too much cognitive dissonance when the IC roles doing the actual work are blending, extra overhead and imposes an unnecessary coordination tax on the product development organization. Five years from now, these companies will be the leaders and set the cultural tone for the next generation, so my prediction is that all tech companies will stop hiring for the CPO role in five years. There will be a singular product development leader at each org. Ironically, this new role might still be called the CPO, except they will run the entire product development org. CPTO is far too unwieldy of a title and only exists today to alleviate confusion. Career implication: early / mid career product leaders need to stop aspiring to become CPOs. instead, you need to develop a panoply of product development skills across all three disciplines (+ analytics), be able to fluidly navigate the roles, and become a product builder, period. Farewell, CPO! It was a good 15-20 year run for this role in tech. But like everything else, it’s time to evolve.