Role Of Engineers In Product Development

Your engineers should annoy your PMs (I say this now as a product leader). As a senior product manager, I launched a new onboarding flow that boosted trial conversions by 25%. I was riding high on success…and then an engineer on my team suggested removing an extra step. Sure, it would further reduce cognitive load and drive even more conversions, but I was so in love with the design of the onboarding flow that I got annoyed. I pushed back—despite clear data! In the end, that engineer (rightfully) sidestepped me, ran the experiment, and proved me wrong. My self-indulgence almost cost our team another win. Now, as a product leader, I can see that customer- and data-centric engineers who help define product are a product manager’s gold mine. They enable PMs to scale out of the day-to-day and drive more impact across the organization. Leading tech companies and high-growth startups already encourage engineers to act like PMs. With AI making customer, competitor, and market insights more accessible, product-centric engineering will soon be standard everywhere. Product leaders, here’s how to embrace and empower these cross-functional teams: 1️⃣ Foster a culture where engineers, designers, and customer success teams don’t just share ideas, but actively shape product definitions. This allows PMs to act like air traffic controllers rather than pilots, guiding multiple “flights” simultaneously so more initiatives can land successfully. 2️⃣ Provide the right tools broadly—including direct access to customer feedback and data—so every role can make informed recommendations. 3️⃣ Encourage PMs to delegate and scale beyond their core responsibilities, taking on broader, more cross-functional work while peers step up with product insights. Your PMs and your organization as a whole will benefit. How have you encouraged your PMs to scale themselves? #productmanagement #productleadership

One of the most important relationships at any tech company: engineering and design. When this partnership falters, brilliant ideas die on the vine. When it thrives, just about anything is possible. Since I joined in 2015, we've tested many ways to partner across disciplines. The traditional "designers create, then throw specs over the wall to engineers" approach? That’s long gone. Here's what works for us: 1. Erase the handoff mentality entirely Our strongest teams have designers and engineers working in parallel from day one. Engineers join design discussions early, providing technical guidance while concepts are still fluid. This prevents the scenario of a beautiful design proves technically impossible after weeks of work. 2. Create rapid feedback loops Julie Wang is an engineer on our team who has partnered really well with design. A tip she shared recently: "I send screen recordings at all milestones so designers can critique early." The earlier this partnership starts, the more time engineers have to fix bugs, too. 3. Value hybrid skills Our most successful products come from teams where engineers understand visual principles and designers grasp technical constraints. When team members can translate between these worlds, implementation remains true to the vision. 4. Communicate constantly – not just at milestones We've use dedicated Slack channels where work-in-progress is shared continuously. Questions are answered in minutes, not days. 5. V1s, not MVPs We've officially banned the term "MVP" at Duolingo – a policy that received spontaneous applause when I mentioned it at #Config2025 recently. Instead, we focus on shipping "V1s" that genuinely meet our quality standards. Your first version should be something you're proud of, not something you're apologizing for. Big picture: if the relationship between engineering and design is strong and fluid – and everyone has a sense of ownership – there is no ceiling to what you can build. 

After years of managing rocky relationships between product and engineering leaders, these are the top 5 things I've learned you can do to make these partnerships great: 1. Foster Strategic Action: Maintain a well-thought-out backlog of problems that acknowledges potential risks and strategies for overcoming them. This approach keeps engineers engaged, solving real customer issues, and builds trust across teams. 2. Simplify Processes: Introduce only necessary processes and keep them straightforward. Maintain a regular schedule of essential meetings and minimize ad-hoc interruptions to give engineers more time to focus. 3. Collaborate on Solutions: Instead of dictating solutions, work closely with engineers to understand problems and explore solutions together. This partnership leverages their technical expertise and aligns efforts with customer needs, enhancing innovation and ownership. 4. Respect Technical Debt: Recognize and prioritize technical debt within the product roadmap. Trust engineers to identify critical technical issues that need addressing to keep the product competitive and maintain high-quality standards. 5. Build Relationships: Spend time with your engineering team outside of regular work tasks through meals, activities, or shared hobbies. Building personal connections fosters trust and improves collaboration, making it easier to tackle challenges together effectively. I’ve seen amazing product and engineering partnerships and some not-so-great ones. Teams that take the time to improve their relationship really see the benefits. While natural tensions exist, the best teams put in the effort to work well together, resulting in more successful products. #techleads #product #engineering

Engineering Leadership: The Key to a Resilient Product Culture The difference between a product-led organization and one driven by short-term sales often comes down to engineering leadership. If technical leaders lack influence, sales teams can overshadow strategic product decisions, fueling quick wins that rarely scale. How can this imbalance be prevented and corrected? 1. Product vs. Services Mindsets Product Mindset: Prioritizes innovation, user-centric design, and scalable development. Engineering leadership influences product strategy, ensuring features align with a cohesive vision. Services/Sales Mindset: This mindset focuses on immediate revenue. Roadmaps cater to custom client requests and quick-turn deals, often causing technical debt and fragmented offerings. 2. Why Short-Term Sales Wins Hurt Long-Term Fragmented Strategy: Sales-driven features address narrow client demands, diminishing a unified product roadmap. Technical Debt: Speedy, ad hoc solutions can overwhelm future improvements. Limited Differentiation: A reactive culture inhibits true innovation, allowing competitors to outpace your offerings. 3. Empowering Engineering Leadership Clear Product Vision: Establish long-term goals that guide prioritization. Each new feature should advance the overall product strategy. Cross-functional collaboration: Align Engineering, Sales, and Marketing with shared KPIs (e.g., product adoption, user satisfaction) to unify efforts. Technical Voices at the Table: Give engineering leaders executive-level authority. Their expertise on feasibility and risk is invaluable for balanced decision-making. 4. Correcting a Sales-First Culture Leadership Reassessment: Ensure engineering has an influential seat in strategy discussions. Roadmap Audit: Identify which projects truly serve long-term objectives and curb those that don’t. Strategic Communication: Explain to all stakeholders why shifting to a product-led focus will yield lasting competitive gains. Realign Incentives: Reward collaboration and product milestones, not just top-line revenue. 5. Long-Term Benefits of a Product Culture Ongoing Innovation: Motivated engineering teams explore emerging tech and user needs more deeply. Scalability: Thoughtful architecture and minimized technical debt ease future growth. Differentiation: A well-crafted product vision garners loyal customers, driving sustainable market success. Achieving sustainable growth hinges on influential engineering leadership to shape the product’s trajectory. While a sales-first approach can boost short-term revenues, it often weakens the company’s foundation. By prioritizing strategic engineering leadership, aligning teams around shared objectives, and pruning reactive development, organizations can pivot from a purely sales-driven mode to a truly resilient, product-centric future. Zinnov Karthik Amita Mohammed Faraz Namita Dipanwita Hani Mukhey@ ieswariya Sagar Komal Amaresh

"Just write the code." If that's what you're telling your engineers, you're creating the wrong kind of development team. After building three successful software companies, here's what I know works to develop product thinking in engineering teams: Start with meetings. Not more meetings - better ones. Get your engineers in product planning sessions. Even if they just listen, they'll absorb crucial context about user needs and business goals. Break down the walls. Stop treating your engineering team like a code factory separated from the rest of the business. At Full Scale, we make sure our engineers understand the client's business, not just their technical requirements. Change your questions. Instead of asking "When will it be done?" Ask "What problem are we solving?" Ask "Why does this matter to users?" Ask "Is there a simpler way?" Create ownership. Give engineers responsibility for outcomes, not just output. Let them own the solution, not just the implementation. Most importantly: Kill the feature factory mindset. Your engineers shouldn't be waiting for tickets. They should be participating in problem-solving. I see this work every day at Full Scale. When engineers understand the business context, they make better technical decisions and build better solutions. This isn't just about building better products. It's about building better engineers. Because in today's market, engineers who can think about product are worth their weight in gold. What's one step you've taken to help your engineers think beyond code?

I'm seeing startups value a different kind of engineer now. The "10x engineer" is less important than a new flavor we're now helping clients hire for. Meet the Product Engineer. They're a scrappy, get-stuff-done type that combines high technical acumen with high business sense. They don't need a pixel-perfect PRD written out for them in order to start building. A rough idea of the business objective is enough. They check in with stakeholders and even customers along the way to validate why they're building what they're building. They treat the engineering process as an iterative and collaborative journey. They act as their own product manager. Missing details and shifting hypotheses aren't blockers -- they're exciting puzzles to figure out. Above all, they understand the "why" behind what they're doing. The impact they're making is clear to them, and their energy is channeled towards creating momentum. In an early-stage organization, pure technical acumen isn't enough when companies are trying to move fast but also stay lean. A team that's business-minded and in sync about what they're building and why they're building is what outperforms in today's startup environment. We've found that very few engineers hit this early stage product engineer bar -- but they're out there, and enough of them in an organization can be game-changing for your product development velocity.

A lot of products fail to meet customer expectations because there are too many layers of translation and hand-offs between the people talking to customers and the people building the product. This tends to happen gradually as organizations grow. People are added to the team bit by bit, and a division of labor occurs. Someone starts taking responsibility for talking to customers, someone else strategy, someone else development, someone else testing, and so on. We think this division of labor is "efficient" because we all grew up with visions of factories and assembly lines in our heads as our primary metaphor for "work". Very few of us grew up with innately creative and collaborative activities, like product development, as our main idea of what work is like. We just sort of accept the assembly line mindset as "normal". However, it usually leads to some kind of Frankenstein product that fails to satisfy any customers particularly well. The solution is to work together as a team to navigate the product design and delivery continuum. Working together to discover customer problems, and working together to test different solution ideas, and then working together to validate that your solution works and scales. Here are some key insights: 1. The customer is not always right about the solution they need, but they are usually right about the problems they have. Approach customer feedback gathering from the perspective of a problem search, not validating a particular solution. Solutions can be validated later. 2. Everyone on the team should be exposed to customer interviews, and especially the engineers. Software engineering is a design process, and design must crystalize empathy with the user or customer. Engineers need to build that empathy first hand. Transferring customer needs second hand through a product manager, customer service rep, or sales person to an engineer loses too much valuable context. 3. The more rigid the roles and responsibilities on a team ("I own this, and you own that"), the less likely the team will be good at collaboration. True collaboration requires a sense of shared ownership within the team, even if specific responsibilities appear attached to people from outside the team. What all this really amounts to is that the product is developed as a team, not as a disparate group of individuals that happen to work together on a project. Teamwork is hard, and it requires real commitment, not just from the team, but from its leaders. We offer training for product development teams of all kinds (spanning discovery and delivery challenges). If your team is struggling to make progress, give me a shout and we'll see if we can get you unstuck.

Your engineers can’t build for users they never meet. Get them closer, and your hardware business will see the difference. Too often, embedded engineers design for an abstract spec sheet instead of real people. They get requirements, test cases, and lab data but never see user stories. That’s a problem. As an embedded engineer, I have been on teams without access to users, and something was clearly missing. Some of the features we built were never used, because they weren’t the right ones. Worse, the feedback loop was so slow that we never got to feel the ratification of knowing out work was making a difference. This was a big hit to motivation! When engineers sit in on user calls or watch devices used in real-world settings, their approach shifts. They stop optimizing for what checks the box in the lab and start building for what works in real life. Give your engineers direct access to users, and you’ll be amazed at the results. Try this: • Rotate engineers through the support queue so they hear user pain points firsthand. • Have them join user studies to see how people actually interact with the product. • Encourage them to watch sales and customer success calls to understand real-world needs. The best hardware isn’t just built right— it’s the right thing to build. Memfault can help you take it a step even further. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/e3iPXRwD

🧠 Generation Effect 🧠 We tend to remember information better if it's generated from one's own mind rather than simply read. Actively participating in learning, such as by teaching a concept or creating a summary, can enhance memory and understanding. --- A while back, I worked on a pretty complex business problem. It was a massive system with lots of technical information and moving parts. As the team grew, my UX team started getting pushback on things we thought were straightforward, and we would get weird questions about things that seemed perfectly logical to us. We eventually realized that our dev team had no idea about the process they were building for. They made these connections in their heads using their own mental models, but these were different from what our users were thinking. There were a lot of underlying issues, but one of the big problems was that our engineers had no idea who they were building for and why it was important. So, I started a series of monthly sessions where I went through the high-level processes and reviewed everything with the engineers. They had an opportunity to ask questions and better understand what the tool was being used for. We started bringing an engineer on research trips as a note-taker to get a first-hand view of how the software was used on the shop floor. When new engineers joined the team, the engineers used this opportunity to explain the process to the new hires, boosting their own understanding and learning. After a year of this, we saw a huge change in the engineers' attitudes. The pushback stopped. The types of questions we got changed. The engineers were able to think about the problem more deeply and provide some honestly unique ideas for the product. Plus, in doing all of this, I definitely gained a deeper understanding of everything I was doing. Check the comments for links to learn more about the Generation Effect! --- 🎯 Here are some key takeaways: 1️⃣ Make onboarding hands-on: Create programs where new hires actively learn about their roles and the company. This could include writing job summaries or sharing what they've learned. 2️⃣ Use real-life training: Design training that involves problem-solving or role-playing situations. This helps the team devise their own solutions and use their new knowledge. 3️⃣ Let learners explain things their way: When teaching complex ideas, ask the team to create their own examples or diagrams. This can help them understand and remember better. 4️⃣ Use methods that help remember: Include activities like writing about your learning or teaching others. These activities allow us to think about and explain what we know, which helps us remember it better. 5️⃣ Encourage teaching among coworkers: Set up ways for the team to share what they know through talks or mentoring. This helps both the teacher and the learner understand things better. ♻️ If you found this helpful, share it 🙏! #UXdesign #ProductManagement #CognitiveBias

Most companies (we used to as well) "protect" devs from customers like it’s a favor, that’s a mistake The best products I’ve ever seen were built by engineers who talked to users directly, heard their pain, asked follow-ups, and felt the awkward silences when the product didn’t click You don’t get that through a Jira ticket or a summary from sales Engineers are natural problem-solvers, but we waste that potential when we keep them locked in a “room” waiting for instructions from “the business.” Let your builders talk to your users and see what happens They’ll stop shipping what was asked And start shipping what’s needed