The Product Manager identity has always been shaky, but that is by design. And in the wall of noise created by product influencers turned “Claude-fluencers”, the identity crisis in product management is glaringly apparent. The frantic chase for the next markdown file which will somehow unlock your 10x productivity and make you an all-in-one analyst-designer-developer-CEO-hybrid is happening at warp speed. Just follow the snake oil … I mean the roadmap of podcasts, and you will unlock that 750k p.a. AI PM role in 6 months.

I’m all for hybrid-skill PMs, those with deep understanding of other vectors of business, be it data, analytics, engineering, go-to-market, sales. It’s no accident that especially small start-ups with fuzzy to non-existent roles are the fastest movers. It’s just fun to work like that. But most of us operate inside structures we didn’t design, with org-charts drawn by someone who left six years ago. Also, calling everyone “Member of the Technical Staff” is just cosmetics.

During the late 2010s / early 2020s, I would habitually ask mid- to senior PMs in job interviews a very, very open question:

“How would you, as a PM, help us here?”

Some candidates would list me every single product framework and then recite the SDLC like a bible. If I was lucky, I would hear the word “customer”. It was not the flex they thought it was.

Today’s equivalent is getting shown a Github repo filled with vibe-coded greenfield apps and Skills that Claude has written for itself. Again, it is not the flex you think it is.

I ask this to probe if the candidate understands in what context they will work and what that demands of them.

More than any other role, the business context you enter determines how you can operate as a PM. A senior-level IC can have the exact same job title at two different companies, yet they are most likely two completely different jobs.

Such “role plasticity” isn’t encountered as a financial analyst, or a software engineer or customer success manager. But as a PM, it’s a feature. Tools like AI or frameworks can influence (greatly) how you live the job day by day, but they cannot change the fundamental requirements put onto you.

So how do you determine the business context? It’s a chain of simple questions. Who owns the company – PE, VC, self-funded, public? Are they profitable? What’s the growth thesis? How are they planning to make money in three years that they’re not making today? Each answer narrows the tree of possibilities, and at the end of it, you have a rough playbook by which your target business operates – and with it, a much clearer picture of what your PM role actually looks like.

Let’s walk through two examples. Both are roles at profitable mid-market, PE-backed B2B companies. On paper, they are similar. In practice, they’re barely the same job.

You ask the questions. PE-backed? Yes. Profitable? Has been for years. Market position? Solid mid-market, say €20–40M ARR, strong retention, loyal customer base. Growth path? This is where it gets interesting. The PE firm bought in because they see runway the founders never chased – enterprise customers, international expansion, a proper sales motion. The thesis is: professionalise the go-to-market, move upmarket, grow ARR by the PE-usual 3–5x within the hold period, exit at a multiple. Your roadmap is now driven by what’s blocking that exit. Probably SSO, role-based access control, audit logs, SOC 2, multi-tenancy – boring as hell, none of it asked for by your existing customers. You’re sitting in on enterprise demos (or even giving them, we’ve all been there), hearing procurement objections, building pricing tiers that didn’t exist six months ago. Your success metric is the pipeline in a segment the company has never served before, with salespeople who don’t know what the hell they are doing. And the tension you’ll manage daily: your loyal mid-market base is pissed off, because you are neglecting them. Your customers!

Same opening questions, very different answers. PE-backed? Yes. Profitable? Yes. Market position? That sweet, sweet mid-market. But then: how many acquisitions in the last 24 months? Seven (wtaf!). Are they integrated? The PE-consultant says so, but don’t we all know the truth. What’s the exit thesis? Connect the products via shared APIs and a unified data layer, package it as a platform, sell the combined entity at a multiple none of the individual companies can achieve. Your roadmap was sketched on a whiteboard before you were hired. Your “customers” are largely engineering teams of sister companies, solutions architects. Your boss is a CTO, if you’re lucky, a CTpO with a small p. You’re writing specs for APIs, data migration paths, shared authentication. You’re in architecture reviews and haven’t talked to a customer in 2 years. Your success metric is whether three products can demo a unified workflow at the next board meeting (where that PE-consultant sits, claiming it’s all “almost done”). Product decisions are determined only by technical feasibility and integration timelines. Frankly, there is no product management left to do. If there’s a conflict between what end users want and what the integration plan needs, the integration wins.

Both PE-backed, mid-market B2B companies, both completely different roles – that is the key to understanding role plasticity in this job.

If you as a candidate can explain to me your role, based on the business context I present to you in the interview (or you have researched like the over-achiever that you are), I know we will be a successful team. That was true for all those candidates between 2018-2022, and it is true today. No frameworks, tools or AI agents have changed that.

The complex, fuzzy, rapidly shifting context window you hold as a product manager – the business vision, strategy, goals – is not replaceable by markdown files.

And if you believe it is, you might truly have an identity crisis. Maybe touch some grass, I don’t know.