Be a product engineer

I continue to be amazed by the prospect of what you can do with AI the more I use it, and it's constantly evolving. New models like GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet are frequently released, new AI start-ups and products are coming out of both left and right field everyday, and it's hard to keep up with - but with the ones that have stuck out, it's been incredible to discover and envision the kind of world we're building towards.

Let me start with how I view AI impacting engineers from a career standpoint. Perhaps this might even be the only point I discuss first and I may save more thoughts for another post, because there's a lot I can talk about in regards to how AI affects literally everything that interests me as an engineer. I think what makes a great engineer today, and perhaps what you'd even call a 10x Engineer before, is not the same as what it was yesterday. At least in the world of start-ups. And perhaps that's actually been the case for the past 1-2 years, but I just haven't realized it until earlier this year and actually had the opportunity to talk about it sooner.

Many individual contributors (ICs) like myself are enamored by the idea of being the type of engineer that can deliver great value to their company, and has deep technical expertise and can solve any technical problem in front of them, with the highest quality and standards to top it off. It's what I've wanted myself since I began my career after graduating from university. Whether that's solving a tough (but easy for you) leetcode interview question in 10 mins, or consistently delivering major products to users that previously started as ambiguous product proposals that did not have clear requirements. You just knew what had to be done and you did it. Or maybe you didn’t, but you figured it out. And you delivered it fast.

Technical expertise at such a high level has and always will be very important to any team. This will never change, but now more than ever the success of companies and the scale at which they see it will be a function of engineering talent, especially with how many companies are started and competing with each other every day. But it’s not just the technical expertise that engineers can deliver value with now. Engineers today have an easier opportunity to build for and optimize for a new skill set that will deliver even more value to companies.

Be a product engineer.

It’s a bit cliche - product engineers aren’t a new thing. Companies like PostHog hire specifically for them. Engineers at companies like AngelList have moved up from IC roles into product leadership roles. But what’s different today are the suite of AI tools that are available for engineers to be closer to their product and help shape the vision that companies need to build for success.

I was inspired to share my thoughts because AI has helped me think about my work not just from an engineering perspective but also with a product lens. Prototyping tools like the Replit agent and Vercel’s v0 have made it easy to put a basic web prototype together for the purposes of gathering feedback from users, communicating business requirements and UI/UX ideas with designers, and ultimately learning what is possible with the product I’m trying to build. And this is really just the tip of the iceberg. Never have I felt more powerful and product-knowledgable as an engineer.

On top of solving engineering problems, AI helps engineers solve business problems.

With what AI products are being built nowadays, it feels like many more great companies can and will be built without dedicated product managers and designers. They will just need great engineers, and my theory is that the great engineers of today and tomorrow will be the ones who can effectively leverage AI to deliver business value. Understand the product, understand the industry, become close enough to your users to know their pain points, and then build - it’s easier than ever with AI.