Tech and the Bigger Picture: Learning to Think Like a Product Manager
Why Engineers Should Care About More Than Just Code
As engineers, it’s easy to slip into tunnel vision. We see the backlog, the tickets, the merge requests. We think about performance, clean abstractions, and how to shave milliseconds off a query. All important things. But here’s the catch: none of that matters if the thing we’re building doesn’t solve the right problem.
That’s where thinking like a product manager comes in.
What Product Managers Worry About (and Why You Should Too)
A product manager’s world is made of customer pain points, business goals, timelines, and trade-offs. They’re not asking whether your API should be split into three services; they’re asking whether anyone actually wants the feature that API powers.
If you’re an engineer who can step into that headspace—even for a moment—you start to see the bigger picture. Suddenly, you’re not just optimising for code elegance; you’re optimising for impact.
When Engineers Think Bigger, Magic Happens
I’ve seen it firsthand. An engineer questions whether a feature is actually solving the customer’s need, and after a quick chat with the PM, the team realises they can cut scope in half and deliver faster without losing value.
Or maybe you’re debugging a tricky edge case. Instead of spending days engineering the “perfect” fix, you ask: how critical is this bug to the customer experience? Sometimes, the pragmatic fix is not only good enough but exactly what the business needs.
The result: less wasted effort, happier customers, and a codebase that’s focused on delivering outcomes rather than gold-plated features.
How Thinking Like a PM Makes You a Better Engineer
You learn to prioritise ruthlessly. Not every performance tweak or refactor is urgent.
You communicate better because you can explain trade-offs in terms of customer or business value, not just technical debt.
You grow into a more trusted voice in your team. Product managers love engineers who can bridge the gap between technical and strategic thinking.
And let’s be honest: it’s also more fun. You stop being just the person who makes the thing, and you become part of shaping what the thing is.
It Doesn’t Mean Abandoning Engineering
Don’t worry, nobody’s asking you to start writing roadmaps or worrying about burn-up charts. Thinking like a product manager doesn’t mean abandoning your craft. It means adding a new lens to your toolkit—one that makes your technical skills even more valuable.
Because the truth is, great software isn’t just well-built. It’s well-aimed.