English translation of the original Portuguese. The audio and the source text are in Portuguese.
In the /root episode Cultura de Produtos e Marcas, host Adriano Meirinho recalls the early internet companies and asks guest Marcell Almeida whether today’s specialization of product roles is an evolution, and what its positive and negative points would be.
Looking back, I pretty much get the feeling that everyone worked on product, right? So the startups — they didn’t even have that name — were companies that believed in the internet, right? They brought together a group of teenagers; I was a teenager, Thiago was a teenager, and we believed in the future of the internet. And at that time everyone worked on product: we built, we did the design, we tested and we put it live. Not today. Today there’s someone dedicated to product management, or another marketing area much more focused on research, competition. We have the scrum master role, we have the PO role. Do you believe this is a step forward, or does this evolution also have some negative points — and what would those negative and positive points be?
Credits
- Show: /root — O Podstech da Celcoin
- Hosts: Adriano Meirinho & Thiago Zaninotti
- Guest: Marcell Almeida
- Episode: Cultura de Produtos e Marcas
- Original episode: Cultura de Produtos e Marcas — RSS.com
- Podcast page: /root — Celcoin
- Published 2023
- Excerpt: 06:21–07:07 of the original episode
Marcell’s initial answer — editorial summary
Marcell describes the division of roles as a natural development in fields that mature. Discussing UX and product, he shows how specialist roles emerge within the same field.
At the same time, he questions the idea that every small part of a product needs its own product manager. This qualification accompanies his view of specialization as an evolution: recognizing new specialties does not automatically justify a dedicated role for every subdivision.
This summary covers only the first part of his answer, before the analogy and further interventions by the hosts. It does not claim to summarize the entire conversation.
Marcell Almeida is a co-founder of PM3, a product management school, with experience as a Product Manager at companies including Nubank, Easy Taxi, VivaReal and Intuit. He is the guest on the /root episode “Cultura de Produtos e Marcas,” published in 2023.
Looking at that conversation today
In the conversation published in 2023, I asked about the specialization of roles on product teams. Today, with AI, I come back to the question from another angle: can smaller teams bring together functions that used to stay separate? That does not mean specialization loses its value, but it opens a discussion about how to combine knowledge, execution, and responsibility.