There is a quiet anxiety spreading through product teams. AI tools are shipping features faster than ever, engineering velocity is accelerating beyond what any PM could have predicted, and a growing number of voices are asking whether product managers are about to become obsolete. At the Vibe Coding Workshop, Bjorn Vuylsteker tackled this fear head-on, reframing the conversation around what truly matters when machines can handle the building.
The central argument is deceptively simple: if everyone has access to the same AI-powered execution layer, the differentiator is no longer how fast you ship. It is whether you can identify what is worth shipping in the first place. The talk draws on Paul Graham's concept of 'exacting taste' and applies it directly to the PM discipline, making a case that judgment, curation, and user empathy are becoming the real competitive moat.
The Anxiety Problem: Are PMs Being Left Behind?
Bjorn opened the session by acknowledging what many in the room were feeling but few wanted to say out loud: the fear that AI is making their role irrelevant. Engineers are using copilots to generate code at unprecedented speed. Designers are prototyping with generative tools. If everyone in the room can suddenly build, what exactly is the PM contributing?
