At Spotify, the overall direction gets set from firm or product leaders from the top down.
However, individual PMs have significant freedom and authority to decide how to drive forward
that direction. This framework was meant to protect the fast-moving, Agile approach as Spotify
scaled. The PM sits within a squad of 6-12 individuals that work on a specific feature area, and
when squads coordinate on the same feature area, they form a tribe.
Airbnb is led by founder-CEO Brian Chesky, who has a background in design, and spearheads
the overall vision for the company. The product management and product marketing roles were
combined in 2023. Chesky reasoned that the process of building the product and telling the
story of the product would be best represented in a single role for end-to-end ownership. The
executive team ultimately decides what gets built, and the PMs sit on teams for execution.
Zappos is a unique case that abolished traditional management in favor of a system of
self-management organized around “circles,” mini-startups defined by roles instead of titles. This
let employees bypass bureaucracy, but caused turnover and required more self-drive. PM is a
specific role within a circle that can evolve, with the PM directly responsible and empowered to
make decisions in the bounds of the role.
I would want to work in the Spotify model, as it provides a bit more of a learning structure than
Zappos, but has more ownership than the Airbnb model, where decision-making power is more
top-down. Pulling from what we’ve learned in class, PM roles at different firms can mean vastly
different experiences.
