2023-06-30
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#career development#product strategy
Joel Polanco
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Jun 30, 2023 â‹… 5 min read

Is product management going away? Why Airbnb got rid of its PMs

Joel Polanco Senior product leader with experience in B2B, enterprise IoT, edge computing, and analytics. Joel specializes in customer discovery for tech companies. He is currently a segment manager at Intel and is a product management advisor at two startups. He lives in Chandler, AZ with his wife and son.

Recent posts:

Biren Shah Leader Spotlight

Leader Spotlight: Optimizing the user journey for automotive customers, with Biren Shah

Biren Shah shares how he’s led initiatives to optimize user experiences across the customer journey, from initial discovery to post-purchase.

Sibel Bagcilar
May 30, 2025 â‹… 8 min read

How AI prototyping tools are changing PM workflows

One of the biggest changes to prototyping has been the rise of tools that leverage the power of AI to simplify the development process.

Aniket Parihar
May 29, 2025 â‹… 6 min read
Espen Scheuer Leader Spotlight

Leader Spotlight: Structuring teams around two different user groups, with Espen Scheuer

Espen Scheuer, Head of Product, Patient and Developer Experiences at NexHealth, shares how NexHealth structures its product organization.

Jessica Srinivas
May 29, 2025 â‹… 7 min read
Leader Spotlight: Itzik Mitzmacher, Vice President Of Product At Teza

Leader Spotlight: Outcome-driven vs. output-driven product development, with Itzik Mitzmacher

Itzik Mitzmacher talks about how to avoid becoming a feature factory by shifting your product team’s focus from outputs to outcomes.

Sibel Bagcilar
May 28, 2025 â‹… 7 min read
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2 Replies to "Is product management going away? Why Airbnb got rid of its PMs"

  1. If AirBNB is so “design focused”, how come they still don’t allow users to do basic user-centric things like sort by price?

    Theh seem to be “revenue focused” to me. Every time I have to use AirBNB I find myself cursing at how painful the app makes the most simple of tasks.

    1. Hi Bob – Airbnb has been receiving a lot of criticism over the last few years about being overly focused on revenue, you are 100% correct. If you listen to Chesky’s talk at Config (link in the article), he talks about how the company grew from being design-focused into a corporate juggernaut pre-ipo which caused the kinds of problems you are highlighting. Historically, Airbnb had a much smoother interface than its main rival VRBO and as a result, was able to take the lion’s share of the market.

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