The future of product building sits at the intersection of customer understanding, AI capability, and shared upside.
The next generation of AI product builders may come from product management, sales—or the space opening up between them.
My prediction rests on three observations:
- Safe development harnesses won’t stop at product managers. The infrastructure being built so PMs can safely contribute code will open that door to other roles. Business Insider’s reporting on LinkedIn’s full-stack builder program shows that broader direction already taking shape.
- Roles will keep converging. As AI handles more specialized work, the boundaries between identifying a need, building a solution, and selling it will continue to shrink. The Wall Street Journal reports on smaller, cross-functional teams combining people and AI agents—an early sign of that convergence.
- Compensation needs to connect contribution with upside. In my view, expecting AI-enabled employees to multiply the value they create only makes economic sense for both sides when compensation grows with results. Commission already provides that structure. Fortune reported Danish research finding that only 3%–7% of AI productivity gains reached workers as higher pay. That supports the incentive question; revenue-linked compensation is my proposed response, not a conclusion of the study.
Together, these point toward a hybrid role that salespeople are well positioned to enter.
The harness doesn’t care about your title
Companies want product managers to build with AI: fewer handoffs, smaller teams, more ownership.
“We’re going to teach them how to code, design, and PM at LinkedIn.”
Tomer Cohen, then LinkedIn’s chief product officer, quoted in Business Insider’s coverage of its associate product builder program.
LinkedIn’s move from a traditional PM training track to end-to-end product building illustrates the shift. Extending that capability to sales is my prediction.
For non-engineers to ship responsibly, they need a development harness: established patterns, automated tests, security controls, reviews, and recovery mechanisms. Engineers build and maintain that foundation so others can contribute safely.
Once it works, why would access stop at PMs?
A salesperson hearing “We’d buy this if it supported our approval workflow” could build a working version, validate it with the prospect, and bring it through review.
Today, that conversation produces a feature request. Increasingly, it could produce a solution.
Same tools. Different upside.
Give a salaried product manager AI tools and ask them to create ten times the value. Their compensation may stay exactly the same.
Give a commissioned salesperson those tools and the ability to build what closes a deal. Their earnings can grow with the revenue they generate.
One is expected to produce more. The other has a direct financial incentive to.
The salaried employee is being asked to acquire more skills, absorb more responsibility, and multiply output while their upside remains capped.
That arrangement benefits the company. Its appeal to the employee is less obvious.
My prediction is that AI product building will push more compensation toward commission and revenue-linked models. Sales already operates within that structure—and already spends time discovering what customers will pay for.
The future is a hybrid
Product people become AI-enabled salespeople. Salespeople become AI-enabled product builders.
Both converge on someone who can discover demand, build a solution, sell it, and share in the value they create.
That requires judgment. A buyer’s request doesn’t automatically belong in the product. Someone still needs to protect usability, maintainability, and the needs of people who never join a sales call.
The incentives must reward lasting customer value, including retention and what happens after the purchase. Otherwise, we risk accelerating promises while leaving everyone else to manage the consequences.
For product managers, the opportunity is to combine building capability with direct customer relationships and commercial ownership. For salespeople, it’s to carry customer understanding further into delivery.
As AI brings those capabilities together, job titles will matter less than the ability to listen, build, sell, and sustain value.
And the people doing all four will reasonably ask:
If I can build the product and bring in the customer, why is my upside capped?
Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash.
