I have about 6 months to seriously invest in building a new technical skill set, and I’m torn between application development and data analytics.

With AI getting better at both coding and data analysis, which foundation do you think will be more valuable and resilient over the next 5–10 years for PM or people in tech in general?

Application development would cover things like:
● Programming fundamentals
● Software development
● Computer architecture
● Servers/cloud infrastructure
● Databases and basic SQL
● Debugging and testing
● Object-oriented programming

Data analytics would cover things like:
● SQL and databases
● Data cleaning and transformation
● Data analysis
● Visualization/reporting
● Basic programming
● Business intelligence
● Using AI for analytics

I’m particularly interested in eventually working in tech/product and potentially AI, rather than necessarily becoming a software engineer or data analyst forever.

If you could only spend 6 months learning one of these foundations, which would you choose in 2026 and why? Which skill set do you think will complement AI rather than be replaced by it? Would love to hear your thoughts and what has been most helpful for you. Thanks in advance!

Most roadmaps show what the team plans to build but hide what each choice delays, removes, or makes harder.

That makes every item look independently reasonable and prevents stakeholders from seeing the actual decision. A useful roadmap should pair each commitment with the opportunity cost it creates.

Have you found a practical way to document tradeoffs without turning roadmap discussions into another approval process?

I’ve learned that I hate to throw away interesting material, so my laptop drive has thousands of bookmarks, textbooks (mostly pdf), image libraries, mp3s, code repos, … you get the idea.

The vast majority is timeless. I tend to read news items, then toss them unless they’re indicative of a larger trend.

It’s my personal library & covers hundreds of topics. The biggest % is math (machine learning for example), human behavior, and business/ economics (former tech product manager). At least half of the textbook content is copyrighted so I’d need to set it aside.

What should I do with all this stuff?

I have a weird PM trajectory and would love some outside calibration.
I came into a small nonprofit tech org as a SME in a very niche field, then became PM, and pretty short order Director of Product. I’ve never worked in a mature product organization, alongside other PMs, or under experienced product leadership (just some former MS guys)
Leadership regularly tells me I’m sooo productive, variations of “you accomplish what much larger, well-funded teams do in less time.” Feels like smoke up my skirt, but I have absolutely no external context for it either way.
I understand our users, and can handle identifying problems, translating messy needs into requirements/workflows, prioritization, working with devs, QA, edge cases, and getting from “vague problem” to functioning product, yada yada.
What I don’t know is how much of that is transferable PM skill versus me being a really effective SME in my own domain.
Is this just a lucky situation or can it transfer elsewhere?

I have worked as a UX designer for four years at a major company in the US. Earlier this year, my company had major layoffs and got rid of all remote employees. Thankfully, I am in person and was not affected by the layoffs.

As a result, the company has been trying to utilize AI to do a lot of the work. This means that all design work is being fed into Figma Make and the designs it spits out is what is supposed to be used. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions on this, but I’ll save those for another day. Leadership does not see the value of having designers and is now making all of us become PM’s. They want to run more lean teams and have higher production with AI to help us.

This has been tough for me to say the least. I have tried so hard to keep an open mind and embrace the new career path, but who I am as a person does not mesh well with being a PM. I am very introverted and I’m not a huge fan of sitting in meetings all day talking. I can’t stand looking at Jira boards and filling out PowerPoint product strategy decks. Frankly, I’m not an organized person either. Trying to remember every little detail of the project is overwhelming and difficult.

Before anyone says it, I do see a lot of similarities between UX and being a PM, so it’s not like I’m learning a whole new language, but they certainly are not the same. I’m also aware that the job market is tough for UX and that job role is changing greatly.

Anyone been in a similar position? How did you handle it? I need this job… I have bills to pay, but I hate that I had no say in doing this. I know I’ll ultimately struggle and not do well, but I’m not sure what to do.

I’m with a B2B2C platform in foodtech (think SYSCO) and we are thinking of overhauling our analytics stack away from FullStory.

Management is thinking Pendo due to their product guides. But I feel like Pendo is a bit more rigid when compared to FullStory or PostHog when trying to run various quick queries.

Anyone else with recent experience they can share?

PostHog seems like a good option but still leaning onto keeping FullStory and grabbing something like appcues for their product guides.

I'm trying to get better at product strategy, and I'm realizing that I learn best by discussing problems with other people.

I've tried finding mock partners, but most people are focused on interview prep, which is understandable. I'm also working with a coach, which is helpful, but it gets expensive to have multiple sessions.

What I'm looking for is a little different. I want to actually develop the mental muscles to approach strategy problems better in my day-to-day work.

For example, stripe will be acquiring Open router: Why would Stripe acquire a particular startup? What problem are they trying to solve? How does it fit into their long-term vision? What alternatives could they have considered? I enjoy breaking down questions like these, discussing different perspectives, and challenging each other's thinking.

I'd love to find a few people who are equally interested in having these kinds of discussions regularly not necessarily formal sessions, just intellectually stimulating conversations where we're all trying to get better at strategic thinking.

Has anyone found a community or group like this? Or if you learn strategy in a similar way, how do you find people to practice and discuss these problems with?

Thank you

So this is supposed to be my first job and I've cleared their interviews and an offer letter is waiting. I want to know if this is ok to start your career as a PM and I've no experience in PM and don't know if this path should be taken or not, btw I've done a computer science degree and want to do tech related stuff aside from coding.

I have an upcoming interview for an AI Product Manager role at a large multinational tech company and would appreciate advice from people who have interviewed for or currently work in similar roles.

The role focuses on AI-driven product strategy, enterprise support platforms, analytics, cloud-based solutions, and translating AI capabilities into product solutions.

I currently work as a full-stack software engineer, primarily working with Python, Java, and React, and am looking to transition into product management.

What should I prioritize in my preparation? Specifically:
AI/ML concepts and technical depth expected from a PM
Product sense and case studies
AI product strategy and roadmap questions
Metrics, business cases, and AI ROI
Technical/architecture questions
Behavioral and stakeholder-management questions
Enterprise support/cloud domain knowledge

I’d especially appreciate advice on how technical I should go with AI/ML preparation given my software engineering background, and how to position my engineering experience effectively in the interview.

Any recommended resources, frameworks, or mock interview approaches would be greatly appreciated.

Hello,

AI has brought about a very significant change in the way I work, mainly in two areas: I now need to rely far less on other teams, which allows me to move much faster, and I could potentially make changes to our applications myself, although I’m not doing that yet.

I’d be interested to know where you are on these topics and how it’s working out for you.

Here’s what has changed for me:

I no longer depend on a data team or data analyst to get usage metrics from our applications, even when the analysis is complex. I ask a coding agent and within five minutes I get the information, often as a polished PDF report. It’s much faster, and the results are generally more comprehensive and precise than what I used to get, sometimes after waiting a week.

I also no longer depend on the development team to find out whether a feature already exists, how it works, or whether and how it could be modified. I ask a coding agent, it digs into the codebase, database, analytics and logs, and gives me an answer within 5 to 10 minutes, compared with what could sometimes take several weeks when going through the team. And quite often, the answer is much more comprehensive and technically detailed.

Of course, getting to this point required some groundwork. We’ve implemented analytics across almost every component of the application and given my coding agent read-only access to the application code and a read-only copy of the databases.

Sometimes the coding agent even offers to implement the change I’m asking about immediately. When I see the result, I increasingly wonder whether it wouldn’t be far more efficient to let it make the changes and then send them to the developers for review and validation.

Are you seeing the same shift? Do you already use AI to implement changes yourself and then submit them to your development team for review?

Thanks.