1. PMs in software have been around much longer than the last couple years, in orgs of all sizes. Ben Horowitz was a PM at Netscape in '95. The author toots his own horn a lot about his achievements in the startup world - this is such a weird point to make.
But to your point:
2. I have been a developer and product manager myself. I still do both things, and hire developers. I don't think I'd even trust 1 out of 10 devs I meet with business analysis or product management responsibilities. Yes, both skills can be learned by a single person, but it takes much more than just a couple days of coaching to teach someone not only how to build something but what to build.
I have 7 years of experience in each and I still find it ridiculously difficult to juggle both skills. The context switching and the amount of skills needed (user research / talking to customers, UX, project management, full-stack development, thinking abstractly and tackling open-ended problems, vs acting concretely and solving more close-ended problems, etc.) make it very challenging.
Yes, in the 80s and 90s there were many more analyst/programmers. Perhaps the stacks were simpler, perhaps there was less competitive pressure for software companies, I can only think of hypotheses. The fact is that today, doing both is very hard even for the smartest of cookies, which is why the roles have been largely separated. This was "invisible hand" economics at play, not the whims of Google and Microsoft in the last two years (again, what a weird point to make!)
But to your point:
2. I have been a developer and product manager myself. I still do both things, and hire developers. I don't think I'd even trust 1 out of 10 devs I meet with business analysis or product management responsibilities. Yes, both skills can be learned by a single person, but it takes much more than just a couple days of coaching to teach someone not only how to build something but what to build.
I have 7 years of experience in each and I still find it ridiculously difficult to juggle both skills. The context switching and the amount of skills needed (user research / talking to customers, UX, project management, full-stack development, thinking abstractly and tackling open-ended problems, vs acting concretely and solving more close-ended problems, etc.) make it very challenging.
Yes, in the 80s and 90s there were many more analyst/programmers. Perhaps the stacks were simpler, perhaps there was less competitive pressure for software companies, I can only think of hypotheses. The fact is that today, doing both is very hard even for the smartest of cookies, which is why the roles have been largely separated. This was "invisible hand" economics at play, not the whims of Google and Microsoft in the last two years (again, what a weird point to make!)