Why I'm writing a book for engineers about product thinking

Engineers, we need to talk about the work we ship.

May 14, 2025

I’ve been kicking this idea around for a long time. It started as a quiet frustration, but over my 15-year career it’s gotten louder until it was impossible to ignore.

Many engineers have a blindspot of impact of what they’re building.

There’s a lot of crappy software out there. Confusing interfaces. Presumtive modals. Death by a thousand clicks. Someone built those, and they are hiding behind excuses like “I built what I was told.” and “I did the best I could in my situation.” Sometimes that’s true, but even so, engineers have more power than they realize.

You can push back. You can ask why. Even within constraints you have insight, influence, and leverage. The problem is most of us haven’t been told how to take and wield it responsibly.

That’s what this book is about.

It’s for engineers who want to do better work—not just cleaner code, but better products. The book I wish someone would have gifted me earlier in my career.

I’m not interested in blame, I’m interested in responsiblity. The way to make software better for everyone is for more engineers to internalize that We are responsible for outcomes, not just implementations.

The best engineers I’ve worked with weren’t always the most technically-skilled or the fastest. They were the ones who understood the whole experience. They understood that every decision had a user on the other side.

What we build matters

Every software product changes someone’s life, even if it’s only a little, even just two minutes a day. That still counts. Time and attention are finite.

Are you respecting that?

Yes, we have to balance this with clean code, and scalable systems. But those are just part of the equation. What does using our software feel like? Does it help someone solve a real problem?

We’ve all done it, so we all know it: It sucks to ship garbage. Maybe there was looming end-of-sprint deadline. Maybe we could only justify “good enough.” But it's more fulfilling to ship quality. There are few things more human than helping others by thoughtfully creating something useful.

Doing more of this kind of work is possible, and it starts with a mindset shift.

Product thinking is a learnable skill

Taste is not an innate gift. It’s a muscle you can train. You don’t have to be a product manager or a designer to learn how to recognize good work, empathize with users, and develop a sense for what works and what doesn’t.

And it’s a skill that’s only going to appreciate over time.

In the vibe coding era, taste wins.

If anyone can spin up CRUD app with AI, what makes your work stand out? What you choose to build and how well you build it becomes the differentiator. That’s not a thought experiment. This is happening now.

The engineers who will thrive now and in the future are the ones who can build with care, precision, and a commitment to clarity and usefulness.

What’s in the book

Here’s what I intend to cover:

Building your product sense and intuition
Indentifying customer pain points, and solve them
Designing features that remove roadblocks and create delight
Gaining business fluency and understand how to align your work to business goals
Thinking through and making technical/product/business tradeoffs
Gaining influence at work without playing office politics
Communicating clearly and effectively with non-engineers
Taking ownership without overreaching
Prioritizing what matters, and letting go of what doesn’t
Leveraging product thinking to shape your career