Timeless skills. Automated skills. New essentials.

Working closely with so many product builders, I’m seeing a clear shift: the strongest aren’t doubling down on process, specs and documentation—they’re rewriting the role with judgment, taste, and influence.

Some skills remain timeless. 

Some are being automated. 

And some new ones are already non-negotiable.

Still timeless

• Product taste → knowing what is right for users and business

• Ownership → driving outcomes end-to-end

• Stakeholder management → aligning engineers, designers, and leaders toward one vision

Disrupted by AI

• Research → surveys, and synthesis now automated

• Documentation → PRDs drafted instantly by AI

• Analysis → data crunching handled by algorithms

New essentials

• AI workflows → weaving AI into the product —deciding where to automate, where to augment, and where humans must stay in control.

• AI evals → building the discipline to measure accuracy, bias, and reliability of AI systems, and knowing when “good enough” is safe to ship.

• Context engineering → shaping prompts, framing data, and setting guardrails so AI delivers useful and relevant outputs.

The playbook has changed for all of us - whether in design, engineering, or product. 

Every builder will need to know which timeless instincts to protect, which skills to let AI take over, and which new ones to embrace.