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:

A Guide To Product Data Management

A guide to product data management (PDM)

By implementing an effective PDM system, you can foster collaboration, improve decision-making, and accelerate your time-to-market.

Bartosz Jaworski
Feb 13, 2025 â‹… 5 min read
Sara Sell Leader Spotlight

Leader Spotlight: The role of skepticism and curiosity in product, with Sara Sell

Sara Sell, Director of Product Management at Daxko, shares how she developed skepticism and curiosity from her time in teaching and research.

Sibel Bagcilar
Feb 13, 2025 â‹… 7 min read
Managing Customer Discovery Interview Data For Better Insights

Managing customer discovery interview data for better insights

A well-defined customer discovery process serves as the foundation for building products that customers truly want.

Aniket Parihar
Feb 12, 2025 â‹… 6 min read
Jonathan Conta Leader Spotlight

Leader Spotlight: Building technology to advance modern surgery, with Jonathan Conta

Jonathan Conta talks about how he’s led up teams that transform modern surgery by leveraging robotic assistance to improve patient outcomes.

Jessica Srinivas
Feb 12, 2025 â‹… 9 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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