March 18, 2025

The Product Engineer

Who builds the product?

I’ve been writing this piece for over five years. It bonked into my head when I was talking with an engineer back at Slack who was trying to figure out what parts of product management were important to her job as an engineer.

Me: “Well, to start with, all of them.”

This unhelpful advice bounced around my head for a few weeks, and I ended up with half a piece. Then, I left Slack. Then, I returned to Apple. Then, a pandemic went down.

Thing is, if a piece is strong, it never leaves my head. Months passed before I thought about Product Engineering, but then someone said a thing in a meeting and BAM — I needed to finish that piece.

So I did.