Should Every Employee Become a Builder?
Josh Woodward says people are overhyping the idea that everybody is a builder and that the new job is all the same. Product managers have been the function able to adapt to other functions faster, because the role is more horizontal. In builder pilots across Google, product managers are more accustomed to sitting in a meeting and simulating a lawyer, a business-development person, or sales. The best people can still come from any function. Strategy and ops, business development, and marketing people are showing up as builders in Labs and doing well.
People still have a specialty, like a major or a minor in college. If everybody becomes a builder, teams lose respect, appreciation, and the expertise that comes from those specialties. Even on a builder crew, the teams still ask where the specialties are.
The advice to new product managers, including APMs early in a career, is to keep vibe coding and making prototypes only in service of becoming an exceptional product manager. Do not lose that major.
