The craft of Product Engineering

We told a generation of engineers to "go T-shaped." Deep in one area, shallow awareness of others.

It was good advice—for a world where coordination was cheap and execution was the bottleneck. That world is gone.

The product engineer doesn't have one spike. They have a comb: multiple areas of real depth, enough to make decisions without waiting for permission or translation.

Strategy. You understand where the business is going and why. You can connect a feature decision to revenue, positioning, or survival. You don't need a strategy deck to know what matters.

Product management. You can extract the real problem from a pile of feature requests. You know that most requirements are hypotheses, not facts. You push back before you build.

Systems thinking. You see second-order effects. You understand that optimizing one part often breaks another. You design for the whole, not just your corner.

Systems design. You can architect solutions that scale, evolve, and don't collapse under their own complexity. You know when to build, when to buy, and when to delete.

Domain and customer. You've talked to users. You understand their context, constraints, and language. You don't build for personas—you build for people you've actually listened to.

But skills alone don't make a product engineer. Mindset does.

Truth over harmony. You speak up when something is wrong, even when it's uncomfortable.

Courage. You own decisions. You'd rather be wrong and learn than stay silent and complicit.

Simplicity. You fight complexity relentlessly. Simple is hard—and it's the only thing that lasts.

Growth. You never stop learning. Ten percent of your time follows curiosity, not tickets.

The T-shape was a compromise. The comb is a commitment.

Software engineering isn't disappearing. It's absorbing product. It's the converged craft that will own the next decade.