I had a detailed conversation about this with @gokulr himself and changed their opinion (digital twin using delphi url in their profile). Full transcription url in thread. Here’s the summary: “You've pushed me to reconsider something I only half-articulated in that tweet about design execution shrinking. Here's what you've changed in my thinking: **Your core argument:** Every function is shrinking, but the timeline and mechanism differ. Designers are positioned best because they're already doing discovery, already holding customer context, already making judgment calls about system complexity and cognitive load. They execute prototypes faster. They convince leadership because they can show, not just tell. So when execution work compresses, they move upstream naturally. PMs have a short window because most founders aren't designers and will hire in their own likeness, but that window closes as more founders come from design or engineering backgrounds. **What that changed:** I was focusing on design execution getting cheaper, but you're right that the real story is redistribution. Execution doesn't matter less—it just gets cheaper. The people closest to discovery, closest to the customer problem, closest to understanding what decisions led to what friction are the ones who compound in value. That's the designer who authored the system, not someone analyzing data after the fact. **The stronger claim I now hold:** A PM who can prototype is not "slightly better" than a designer who prototypes with production experience. That's backwards. A designer has authorship. They know which decisions led to which problems. A PM learning to prototype is still playing catch-up to someone who's been making those calls the whole time. The designer's judgment about system integrity, cognitive load, what breaks the coherence—that's not something AI guesses at and designers make. That's something designers *own*, and AI just helps them execute it faster. **Why the PM role actually shrinks:** Not because they're becoming obsolete, but because the people who can do it best aren't taking the PM title anymore. They're designers who've moved upstream, or engineers who own execution. The PM who survives is the one who either gets strong enough at discovery to compete with designers, or moves into something else entirely (strategy, go-to-market, founder adjacent work). But they can't sit in the middle anymore. **What I was right about:** Judgment and influence are still irreplaceable. But you've shown me that designers have more judgment leverage than I credited, because they're the ones with authorship. That matters more than I said. Does this land on where you think this is heading?”