The Roadmap to Becoming a Product Builder, with Ankit Shukla

Aakash Gupta (0:00)

LinkedIn eliminated its Associate Product Manager program in favor of an Associate Product Builder program. But is the Product Builder role real, or is it just hype?

Ankit Shukla (0:09)

We analyzed 12,500 PM job portions and found that the Product Builder role is very, very real.

Aakash Gupta (0:15)

Who should become a Product Builder?

Ankit Shukla (0:17)

Engineers, customer success managers, marketers, salespeople, analysts, product owners, they all have the potential to become the Product Builder with the right preparation work that they need to do.

Aakash Gupta (0:28)

What do these roles pay?

Ankit Shukla (0:29)

In the research, we have been able to find that these roles pay 15% to 20% more than their non-AI counterpart in the US and Europe, and they actually pay more than 30% to 50% more in India. This, I believe, is one of the biggest opportunities of the decade. Every PM should pay attention to this trend. If you don't learn these skills, you might get left behind. But if you learn this skill, you can earn more money and even work for better companies that you always wanted.

Aakash Gupta (0:55)

So what's the roadmap to become a Product Builder?

Ankit Shukla (0:58)

Let me give you the step-by-step that just worked for my students to let XROM AI. Step one is.

Aakash Gupta (1:08)

Before we get into today's show, please take a second to check that you're subscribed on YouTube and following on Apple and Spotify podcasts. If you want access to all of my favorite AI tools, I've gotten them to give you an entire year of their paid plans. Check out bundle.akashg.com for an entire year of Bolt.New, Airtable, Speechify, Descript, Magic Patterns, Linear, Dovetail, Arise, and Mobbin. And now, into today's show.

Maybe my most popular podcast guest ever is Ankit Shukla, former Senior Product Manager turned founder of HelloPM. And he messaged me with this new trend. After studying tons of job postings, he's found that there is a new role out there, the Product Builder. I, for one, am a little bit sceptical. It might be hype. It might not be real. So we're going to go through with Ankit today. Is this a real role?

How much does this role pay? Who can become this role? He's going to give you the real case studies that have worked for his students to land this role at companies like Meta, Amazon, Google, even Sarvam AI, one of the leading AI companies in India. And we're not just going to cover how you can land this Product Builder role. We're going to cover the fundamentals of being a Product Builder. We're going to go through the Power Framework to think through how to build things, and we're going to go through a real case study of building a product. So this is an action-packed episode, not a single minute is wasted. And with that, let's get right into it. Ankit, thanks for being back on the podcast.

Ankit Shukla (2:47)

Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me here. I'm always excited to have a conversation with your guys.

Aakash Gupta (2:51)

Ankit, a year ago, we created the Blockbuster video, how to become an AI Product Manager. It feels like the Product Builder is becoming the new thing. Here we're looking at LinkedIn. They got rid of their Associate Product Manager program. They created this Associate Product Builder program.

So what I want to know, Ankit, is this Product Builder role real or is it hype?

Ankit Shukla (3:18)

So Akash, that is actually a billion-dollar question because I get this question from a lot of people. The forums are filled with this kind of question. So I thought that rather than giving my opinion about what I think about this role or whether it is hype or it is value or something else out there, I have actually taken the help of Claude and GPT in order to go through actual job descriptions like more than 10,000 of them, precisely 12,500, in order to understand what is happening with the real jobs, not with what the influencers are saying, what people are mentioning on YouTube, what people are mentioning on LinkedIn, but what do the exact job description of some of the top companies of the world say? I was able to find that yes, for more than 30 percent of all the PM jobs, they are asking for some good AI skills.

Among these AI skills, they are not only asking for just the tools which is you knowing Anitin or you knowing, let's say, some kind of rag or agent I think out there. They also want you to understand the core of what are the problems that should be solved by AI and that should not be solved by AI. So that judgment is what people are paying for. So if you combine that product judgment along with your understanding of AI and the tools that you can use, I think we all the PMs or people who want to become PMs, they are sitting on a very big opportunity.