August 24, 2026
A team of 12 PMs shipped one product. A team of 12 Product Builders ships 12.
According to Products That Count, traditional PMs fell 70% in SaaS while Product Builders grew 10 times. The cycle sped up; the decision criterion stayed the same.
There is a role that SaaS companies are no longer hiring for. The role is ceasing to exist.
The report came out in May. Products That Count surveyed 1,500 product leaders around the world. The main finding: traditional PMs fell 30% across all industries. In SaaS specifically, 70%. Over the same period, Product Builders grew 10 times.
The logic behind it is straightforward: a team of 12 PMs shipped one product. A team of 12 Product Builders ships 12. What changed was the ability to execute without an intermediary. The PM who existed to translate intent into a backlog disappeared because translation became automatic.
But delivery speed and decision quality are different things.
You can have 12 Product Builders shipping 12 products in parallel and still repeat the same errors of judgment at 10 times the pace. What accelerated was the cycle, but the decision criterion is still what it was.
The PM who disappears by 2030 never really decided. They managed the calendar and aligned stakeholders. The judgment about what to build, and why, always belonged to someone else.
What the market wants now is someone who judges and builds at the same time. The question the report did not ask: does shipping 12 products with the same criterion as before solve anything?
Sources: Products That Count / PR Newswire · Products That Count