Product Engineer Checklist TLDR 📘 What is a Product Engineer? Definition: Product engineers are not just coders but builders who care deeply about the entire product, from design to customer satisfaction. Counter to Hyperspecialization: Unlike specialized roles (e.g., frontend, backend), product engineers have a holistic view, bridging gaps between different technical domains. AI: AI tools enhance the role by making specialized tasks more accessible, allowing engineers to focus on product strategy and user experience. Product Engineer Manifesto Core Values: Builders first, software engineers second. Emphasis on combining product thinking with technical execution. Principles: Asking why, continuous delivery, market & customer understanding, teamwork, dogfooding the product yourself, and strategic thinking. Checklist 1. Understand User: Identify who the user is, their needs, pains, and how to delight them. Customer: Distinguish between users and paying customers, understand what makes the product valuable to customers. Market: Analyze the market landscape, competition, and industry standards. Ask Why: Continuously question to uncover root causes and motivations. Leverage Existing Knowledge: Build on existing insights, avoid starting from scratch. 2. Craft Pride in Work: Maintain high standards, avoid technical debt, and ensure quality. Product Feel: Develop a taste for what makes a product great; focus on smooth, intuitive experiences. Efficiency: Deliver quickly and iteratively, prioritize visible progress. Teamwork: Effective communication and leveraging team strengths are crucial. 3. Growth Measure Success: Use analytics and feedback to evaluate the impact of your work. Maximize Impact: Focus on significant bottlenecks, align efforts with company goals, and seek feedback. Stay Ahead: Stay updated on trends, benchmark against competitors, and encourage innovation. 4. Product Vision North Star: Align with the broader product vision and strategy. Design Impact: Ensure new work fits well within the existing design, aiming for simplicity and consistency. Ambition Level: Define whether the goal is incremental improvement or revolutionary change, and prioritize accordingly. This checklist serves as a practical guide for software engineers who wish to level up their career to build great products and break the stereotypes of engineers being thought of as only narrow technologists.

Thank god it’s friday

As a kid before broadband internet, I remember theorizing about what it would be like if you didn’t have to wait for images to download on the web. The whole idea felt like sci-fi. Now I find myself daydreaming what it will be like when we don’t wait for AI to generate responses

thank god it’s friday

Ah yes Finlandaise Hänchen 😑👌 The traditional Finnish curry chicken sandwich @ Dusseldorf Airport

Maybe the real Mythos was the friends we made along the way

Lol. Opus 4.6 vs GPT 5.2

slow teams don't produce higher quality. they produce the same bugs, just slower.

The fastest way to simplify your architecture? Fire your platform team. When engineers have to maintain what they build, suddenly that "clever" microservice abstraction doesn't seem worth it. That custom deployment pipeline? Maybe just use the managed service. Complexity is easy when someone else pays for it.

Lol this happened a lot faster

I wrote a tool to fix `npm login` every day Ever since npm deprecated classic tokens, npm login sessions now expire after just 2 hours 🫠 $ npx keep-me-logged-in Essentially a simple CLI wrapper for `npm token create` to create granular access tokens with 90-day max expiry

AI:n ansiosta tietokoneet osaavat nyt tehdä kaiken, mitä ihminenkin. Paitsi ehkä ajatella kriittisesti, puhua totta, tai tuottaa mitään lukemisen arvoista. Onneksi myös useimmat ihmiset ovat luopuneet näistä taidoista jo aikoja sitten. Jokainen yritys maan päällä kehuu olevansa AI-edelläkävijä, eli käytännössä työntekijät ovat ylpeästi ulkoistaneet sähköpostinsa, kaikki tuotoksensa ja mielipiteet kielimalleille. Tämä on vapauttanut käsiä oikeasti tärkeisiin töihin, kuten Teams-palavereihin ja someviisasteluun. Tekoäly näyttää nyt vihdoin tuottaneen sen pitkään kaivatun tuottavuusloikan. Ei siksi että oikeasti saisimme enemmän aikaan, vaan siksi että voimme nyt tuottaa rajattomasti täysin merkityksetöntä sisältöä ennennäkemättömällä tehokkuudella. Kauan eläköön AI slop! Tuottakaamme vuonna 2026 ennätysmäärät generoitua ääntä lukemaan generoitua sisältöä generoitujen kuvien päällä. Sivistys on vihdoin automatisoitu. Ihmistä ei enää tarvita. Paitsi scrollaamaan.

Legend