PRODUCT · Product & Design
Product Manager
Clarify the real needs and decide with the team what to build first.
This role across the eras
Product: AI product managers who define "the boundary of model capability plus a fallback experience", using evaluations to replace part of the requirements document.
2023–present · Read about the Large Model Era: its background, pain points, and new technology
Common tasks
The following is a composite example scenario; it does not correspond to any one company or person.
A requirement: why does it need to be discussed over and over? Starting from this question, look at how a role connects needs, execution, and feedback.
Understanding today's problem
From the feedback, tell the symptoms apart from the problem that needs solving. Confirm with the relevant colleagues who the users are, what difficulty they face, and what limits the current solution has.
Moving forward with the team
Organize a discussion of the solution with design, engineering, and operations. Make the priorities, scope, and acceptance criteria clear, so the different roles share a common understanding of this delivery.
Delivery and continuous improvement
Watch the feedback after launch and confirm whether the problem has improved. Record what is still unresolved and decide the next step, rather than treating shipping a feature as the end of the work.
Role names help us see how work is divided; everyday collaboration is what truly connects those divisions.
How the role evolved: related papers
Papers per year in this site's sample for the arXiv categories related to this role (Human-Computer Interaction cs.HC, Information Retrieval cs.IR). It reflects how research topics shift, not the number of people employed.
Data source: this site’s list of arXiv papers, counted by the year each paper was first published. A paper listed in several categories counts once in each line, so the lines do not add up. Not employment data.