The Product Engineer

The piece argues that the biggest obstacle to great products is the fragmented ownership among engineering, design, and product management. When each group thinks it alone builds the product, decisions become unilateral, debates are short-circuited, and accountability evaporates. The author illustrates three common failure modes - product managers acting as CEOs, designers becoming uncompromising islands, and engineers disconnected from strategy - each showing how power imbalances stall learning and degrade outcomes.

To break the pattern, the article proposes the "Product Engineer" role. A Product Engineer combines deep technical knowledge with a product-first mindset: they can sketch how a feature should work, use the product daily to surface bugs, and explain every component to any stakeholder. They actively engage with design and product managers, question vague bullet-point specs, and ensure decisions are debated rather than imposed.

The author backs the concept with concrete behaviors: owning the product's end-to-end understanding, reporting bugs aggressively, wearing the customer's shoes, and arguing until clarity emerges while deferring when the argument is sound. By embedding engineers in product decision-making, cross-functional alignment improves, decisions become more informed, and the team gains a shared sense of ownership that drives better outcomes.

Ultimately, the article suggests that giving builders a louder voice leads to stronger products. Companies that let engineers and designers share product-manager responsibilities see more thoughtful trade-offs, fewer misaligned implementations, and higher morale because the people who build the product also help decide its shape.