Become an Epic Product Engineer

If you are merging beautiful AI PRs without being able to say why the change exists, this episode is for you. Kent talks with Erin Fox about treating every feature like a new product, asking why before you write code, and rebuilding the trust contract that agents quietly broke.

They cover circling back to metrics, using community Slack as a feedback loop, telling a stakeholder story that is not just a migration estimate, and going slower with agents so they do not rewrite your patterns.

(00:00) - Meet Erin Fox

(01:40) - A new feature is a new product

(05:03) - Finding the why before you build

(07:36) - AI PRs broke the trust contract

(10:57) - Metrics, research, and circling back

(14:25) - Community Slack as a feedback loop

(16:17) - Tell the story stakeholders can hear

(20:49) - Communications skills as an engineering edge

(24:12) - Ask your boss their goals

(27:22) - Go slower with your agents

(37:50) - Homework: ask why on every PR

Erin Fox is a full-stack engineer who has shipped a React Native MLS soccer app, creator-focused email tools, and plenty of features that felt like launching a product each time. In this conversation, she and Kent dig into what that framing changes: you do not just implement a ticket. You figure out the date, the why, and whether the real fix is a new feature or a two-hour margin change.

A major theme is trust. Erin used to assume a teammate's PR already had the why baked in. AI-generated PRs look great and pass tests, but the why is often missing. Her red flag is simple: if you cannot explain why this change is needed, do not treat passing tests as permission. That same question belongs in the PR template, in stakeholder conversations, and in how you brief an agent - because "fix this bug" will happily change a million things.

They also get practical about feedback loops. Look at the metrics you instrumented. Lurk in community Slack, including accessibility channels, until user pain is not abstract. Then tell the story in language stakeholders care about: not "this migration takes a quarter," but what it unlocks. Erin's communications master's degree shows up here. She asks her manager what their goals are this quarter and treats that as the job.

Homework is small on purpose: on every PR you open or review, write why this change matters.

Homework

On the next PR you open, add a Why section that a teammate could understand without the ticket.
On the next PR you review, ask why this change is needed - especially if it looks AI-generated.
If you cannot answer why, stop and find out before you merge.

Resources

Erin Fox on X
Erin on Bluesky
Erin on GitHub
Erin on LinkedIn
Kit

Guest: Erin Fox

GitHub: @erinfox
𝕏: @erinfoox

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com
𝕏: @kentcdodds
GitHub: @kentcdodds
YouTube: kentcdodds-plus
Podcast: epicproduct.engineer

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If shipping got cheap and you are still not sure you are building the right thing, this episode is for you. Kent talks with Peppe Silletti, independent product engineer and host of The Product Engineers Podcast, about why customer discovery still comes first when AI can write the code in a day.

They cover startup vs scale-up trade-offs, raising the MVP baseline without adding noise, how PostHog treats product engineers vs product managers, and the durable skills that stay valuable when agents take more of the implementation.

(00:00) - Meet Peppe Silletti

(01:13) - Startup exploration vs scale-up bottlenecks

(04:04) - Trade-offs before you paint yourself into a corner

(06:07) - AI raises the MVP baseline

(09:47) - Do not add so much that the data gets noisy

(11:13) - AI is a tool, not a silver bullet

(13:47) - Product engineers are not just managers

(16:06) - How you know you built too much

(18:49) - Prioritizing after product-market fit

(24:30) - PM as compass, engineer as slice owner

(27:08) - What Peppe learned hosting a podcast

(29:25) - Durable skills as agents take the code

(33:06) - Product engineering for backend engineers

(38:26) - Homework: ally with your PM

Peppe Silletti is an independent product engineer and host of The Product Engineers Podcast. In this conversation, he and Kent dig into what changes when you move from a startup hunting for product-market fit to a scale-up fixing bottlenecks - and what AI does and does not change about that work.

A major theme is that writing code got cheap, so the old lean-startup constraint loosened. You can ship more than a classic MVP, then sculpt features away like Instagram dropping everything but photos. The risk did not go away. It got worse. You can feel productive while running in the wrong direction, because AI will happily agree with you. Discovery, customer interviews, and a tight feedback loop still decide whether you are learning or just shipping.

They also unpack the product manager vs product engineer split. Peppe points to PostHog: product engineers owned decisions for years before a PM showed up to hold the bigger picture. His model is a PM as compass, a product engineer owning one outcome end to end. For listeners who still take tickets over the wall, the durable skills are framing the problem, interviewing without jumping to solutions, and treating UX as more than pixels - including APIs and neighboring layers of the system.

Peppe's homework is deliberately social: shadow customer interviews, watch session replays with your team, and get into discovery before the roadmap is locked.

Homework

Ask your PM if you can shadow customer interviews and listen for how people describe the pain.
Set a weekly half hour to watch session replays with your team and name the friction you see.
Once those two are happening, ask to join discovery earlier - when requirements and the roadmap are still being shaped.

Resources

Peppe Silletti
The Product Engineers Podcast
Peppe on LinkedIn
Peppe on GitHub
The Product Engineers Podcast on YouTube
Product management is broken. Engineers can fix it - PostHog
Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres
Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski

Guest: Peppe Silletti

Company: The Product Engineers Podcast
GitHub: @peppesilletti
𝕏: @peppesilletti

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com
𝕏: @kentcdodds
GitHub: @kentcdodds
YouTube: kentcdodds-plus
Podcast: epicproduct.engineer

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If you walk into cross-team asks with a prescription instead of curiosity, this episode is for you. Kent talks with Shaundai Person about privacy UX at Netflix, the micro-sales skills she brought from a decade in sales, and why AI should accelerate good engineering judgment instead of replacing it.
They cover putting yourself in the user's seat before you push back, selling the conversation instead of the ticket, what happens when agents fill a repo with band-aids, and homework that gets you out of your usual domain: try a CSS animation course without AI.

(00:00) - Meet Shaundai Person

(00:51) - Privacy and consent at Netflix

(04:30) - What privacy engineering actually involves

(08:38) - Push back with user scenarios

(11:10) - UX so intuitive a toddler can use it

(13:43) - Working through technical constraints

(18:45) - Micro-sales from a sales career

(22:32) - Curiosity is not manipulation

(25:47) - AI's impact on software engineering

(29:42) - Agent band-aids and architecture gaps

(35:40) - New criteria for senior engineers

(37:35) - AI accelerates bad practices too

(40:51) - AI as a supplement, not a replacement

(45:09) - Homework: try animations without AI

Shaundai Person is a senior software engineer at Netflix working full stack on privacy and consent for Netflix.com. In this conversation, she and Kent dig into what product engineering looks like when the work is mostly invisible when you do it right - and when your job is piping the right experience to the right person under different laws, profiles, and countries.
A major theme is how she communicates across teams. After more than a decade in sales before engineering, Shaundai treats collaboration as a series of micro-sales: get someone into the conversation, then into a small piece of work, then into teaching you how they solved it. She argues smart people do not want prescriptions. They want curiosity, a clear goal, a map of where they fit, and an invitation to dissent.
They also talk about AI's impact on software engineering. Shaundai sees AI elevating more engineers toward architecture and product thinking, while warning that unchecked agents create pattern-free codebases full of band-aids. Her take: humans stay in the loop because software is for humans, and AI is a supplement - not a replacement. Her homework is specific: try Josh Comeau's Whimsical Animations (or its CSS-based starter path) and do the first stretch without AI.
Homework
Start Josh Comeau's Whimsical Animations (or the free CSS-based starter path).
Do the first stretch without AI - refresh your own problem-solving muscle.
Notice how far you get on your own, then decide where a tool would actually help.
Resources
Shaundai Person
Shaundai on Bluesky
Shaundai on X
Shaundai on GitHub
Shaundai on LinkedIn
TypeScript for JavaScript Developers
Whimsical Animations by Josh Comeau
Netflix
Guest: Shaundai Person
Company: Netflix
GitHub: @shaundai
𝕏: @shaundai
Host: Kent C. Dodds
Website: kentcdodds.com
𝕏: @kentcdodds
GitHub: @kentcdodds
YouTube: kentcdodds-plus
Podcast: epicproduct.engineer
See on Epic Product Engineer

If you are building something people want but still cannot grow it, this episode is for you. Kent talks with Michael Grinich, founder of WorkOS, about cold-emailing product managers, closing the feedback loop with real users, and why live demos beat polished decks.
They cover the missing step after "make something people want," how durable problem spaces survive market shifts (including auth for agents), and why storytelling is part of the product.

(00:00) - Meet Michael Grinich

(02:00) - Choosing the enterprise-ready niche

(04:31) - Building for problems that are not yours

(06:34) - Cold-emailing PMs who already shipped enterprise

(10:44) - Questions that get past compliments

(12:52) - Patience and durable problem spaces

(15:57) - Beyond make something people want

(20:25) - Auth for agents and MCP

(23:57) - Talk to users, not just customers

(28:42) - Live demos as tech marketing

(31:39) - Test your story like Comedy Cellar material

(39:10) - Monkey see, monkey do and Julia Child

(43:03) - Homework: build GPT from scratch

(46:10) - Where to follow Michael

Michael Grinich founded WorkOS to help software companies become enterprise-ready - SSO, directory sync, permissions, audit logging, and the rest of the stack that unlocks bigger customers. In this conversation, he and Kent dig into how that idea came from lived pain at a previous startup, and how he validated the market by cold-emailing and meeting PMs at companies like Dropbox, Slack, Asana, and Airtable.
A major theme is that "make something people want" is incomplete. Michael argues you also need an economic engine: who pays, why they pay continuously, and how the business model stays in harmony with the product. He ties that to picking durable problem spaces - WorkOS started in classic B2B auth, and the same foundation now matters even more for agents, MCP, and agent registration via auth.md.
They also get practical about product discovery. Talk to users, not only customers and dollar signs. Use live demos as the pinnacle of tech marketing. Treat small meetups like a Comedy Cellar set where you test material before the big stage. And when you show people how something works, you put yourself on the same side of the table - the Julia Child model of teaching by doing.
Michael's homework is concrete: spend an afternoon with Andrej Karpathy's "Let's build GPT from scratch" video so you understand the underpinnings of the systems you are building on.
Homework
Watch Andrej Karpathy's "Let's build GPT from scratch" video (a few hours, one afternoon is enough).
Hack along enough to rebuild a simple ChatGPT-like interface on top of a transformer you understand.
Notice how that deeper mental model changes how you talk about agents, models, and product bets at work.
Resources
Michael Grinich on X
Michael on GitHub
Michael on LinkedIn
Michael on Bluesky
WorkOS
auth.md
auth.md on GitHub
WorkOS events on Luma
Let's build GPT from scratch (Andrej Karpathy)
The Mom Test
Guest: Michael Grinich
Company: WorkOS
GitHub: @grinich
𝕏: @grinich
Host: Kent C. Dodds
Website: kentcdodds.com
𝕏: @kentcdodds
GitHub: @kentcdodds
YouTube: kentcdodds-plus
Podcast: epicproduct.engineer
See on Epic Product Engineer

If you ship features before you can explain the process, this episode is for you. Kent talks with Ronan Berder about building consumer products at Nike, Hilton, and Burberry scale in China, why engineers need to leave the IDE, and why a process you have not written down is not a process.
They cover aligning teams on product vision, benchmarking competitors before you invent, design boundaries that unlock creativity, consulting failures from expectation gaps, and the homework that sounds too simple: write down what you are struggling with.

(00:00) - Meet Ronan Berder

(01:53) - Shipping at China consumer scale

(03:42) - Partner vs vendor: strategy before build

(09:02) - Aligning engineers on product vision

(15:56) - Benchmark competitors before you invent

(17:35) - Design systems, boundaries, and process

(22:42) - If it is not written down, you do not have a process

(28:40) - Process scale: five people vs 160

(33:21) - Horizontal skills beyond the IDE

(34:15) - Abstraction layers in the business

(39:44) - Talking with VPs and C-suite

(44:49) - Consulting failures and expectation gaps

(50:48) - When clients insist on bad bets

(53:39) - Large companies lack creativity

(58:23) - Homework: write down your struggles

Ronan Berder founded Wiredcraft in Shanghai, grew it past 160 people, and sold it after years of shipping localized consumer apps for brands like Nike, Hilton, Burberry, and Adidas - often to tens of millions of users on day one. In this conversation, he and Kent dig into what product engineering looks like when you are a partner to VPs and C-suite, not a ticket-taking vendor.
A major theme is process as a creative constraint. Ronan argues designers and engineers need boundaries, shared definitions, and written playbooks - not because bureaucracy is fun, but because you cannot improve what you never articulated. He is blunt about engineers who never benchmark competitors, teams that chase cool campaigns over boring work that moves sales, and consulting failures that come from expectation gaps more often than from bad code.
They also talk about AI making pure implementation more replaceable, why understanding one layer above and below your work still matters, and how large companies rarely invent the creative bets that startups do. Ronan's homework is simple: whatever you are struggling with right now, write it down and organize your thoughts.
Homework
Pick one thing you are struggling with in your work right now.
Write it down and organize your thoughts until the gaps are visible.
Share the written version with a teammate and use it to align on what 'done' means.
Resources
Ronan Berder
Ronan on X
Ronan on GitHub
Ronan on LinkedIn
Rotsu
Wiredcraft
Guest: Ronan Berder
Company: Rotsu
GitHub: @hunvreus
𝕏: @hunvreus
Host: Kent C. Dodds
Website: kentcdodds.com
𝕏: @kentcdodds
GitHub: @kentcdodds
YouTube: kentcdodds-plus
Podcast: epicproduct.engineer
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