Still Made by Humans
A love letter to product managers, and a gentle nudge beyond fear. 💙
Last week, I joined a product leadership panel with some amazing industry colleagues (thank you Erevena and CPO Track). The room was full of thoughtful, seasoned product leaders. The kind of folks who care deeply about the craft, the customer, and the team.
It was energizing. We laughed, told the truth, and asked some important questions.
But underneath the connection, I could feel something else. A quiet tension. A question that hung in the air:
Are we still needed? Are we being left behind in the age of AI and automation?
It’s something I’ve been hearing and feeling more and more. The product landscape is shifting fast.
For some, it’s thrilling. For many, it’s unsettling. Even seasoned leaders are quietly wondering if they’re falling behind.
What You Don’t See on the Roadmap
Every time I open a roadmap or strategy deck, I admire how clean it all looks. Clear objectives. Neatly prioritized features. Aligned timelines. But behind that structure is something messier, harder to capture, and much more human.
Behind every milestone is a moment of doubt someone kept to themselves. Behind every product decision is a difficult conversation that drained someone’s energy.
Behind every delay is usually not incompetence, but the relentless effort of trying to do right by the team, the business, and the customer at the same time.
The emotional labor that keeps products moving is almost never visible on the roadmap. But it’s there. It lives in the tension we hold, the care we offer, and the resilience we summon. It's the quiet work of staying kind under pressure, of listening when it would be easier to react, of leading with empathy even when the outcomes are unclear.
AI Doesn’t Do That
AI is powerful. It’s getting faster, smarter, and more efficient. It can accelerate research, generate wireframes, and prioritize backlogs in seconds.
But it still doesn’t know how to:
Hold space for a team member’s hard day
Sense when a founder is losing confidence
Say, “This isn’t the right moment”
Ask, “Are we chasing the right thing?”
It doesn’t know how to connect the dots and the people.
It doesn’t know how to lead with care.
It doesn’t know how to choose not to ship something because it might cause harm.
It doesn’t know how to help a teammate find their voice in a meeting.
It doesn’t know how to navigate silence, tension, or burnout.
It doesn’t know how to help a team feel proud again after a hard quarter.
You do.
Humans do.
Yes, the tools are evolving. Yes, the systems are getting faster.
But the heart of the work is still human.
And so are you.
The future of product is not just about faster tools and smarter systems.
It’s about how we show up in rooms, in decisions, and in conversations.
It’s about remembering who we’re building for, and who we are while we build.
You still matter. Your voice still matters.
Even the cleanest systems are still made by humans.
That includes you.
xo,
Leah