There Are Surprisingly Few Product Engineers

Product engineers solve user problems, but why are there so few of them?

As recently as 1999, The Inmates are Running the Asylum told the tech industry that engineers were the reason websites and products were bad. Engineers were not trusted with knowing about users and their problems and yet, they are blamed for poor solutions to solving them.

The way we organize engineering doesn’t help. As companies grow, engineers specialize and are closely managed by project managers and product managers. It’s difficult to build anything significant that requires action across teams and departments.

Altogether that means we lack the trust in engineers to understand users and the experience pool to cultivate a strong product engineering discipline. Status quo preserving behavior will continue to keep engineering as they are, which doesn’t bode well for users.

See also:

• Most companies treat engineering as delivery.
• Startups have a much better shot at building capable product engineers because startups value generalists early
• Automating cooperation might help larger companies resist these tendencies

Links to this note

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