Spotify’s organization model split the engineering team into small, inter-related squads grouped into tribes. Squads have no typical manager. A product owner set priorities, and a chapter lead managed each person’s work. This means the PM owns the backlog, tribes became isolated, and work that crossed squads stalled. Consequently, Spotify has moved away from this model.
The PM role changed in 2023, when Brian Chesky shaped Airbnb into a functional org and centralized the roadmap with the CEO. He put design on equal footing with product and folded the PM role into necessarily a product-marketing role. PMs gained clarity and had power or oversight reduced. Their job is to understand the product, know it deeply and tell its story.
At Zappos, Holacracy replaced managers with self-governing “circles” and authority tied to roles. There’s no PM title; whoever holds the role decides. At its peak, Zappos had more than 460 circles and 4,700 roles. This means a lot of people can decide on the product, which may have good or bad effects either way.In light of what that could mean for product ownership, trough constant renegotiations, managers were eventually brought back.
Early in my career, I would choose Airbnb, where I would have a leader with clear product sense who teaches you quickly what “good” product sense looks like. Later, I’d want to move on to a Spotify-style squad that has a strong tribe lead: real ownership of the product, with someone still managing teams. However, in all these, there has been changes made, so I would also want a mix of both ownership and being under someone more experienced. This would lead me to choose a company that has more freedom on the approach, that ensures a good interaction with several people working on the product while still focused on the final outcome.
