Reframing the Engineer's Brain
Why Engineers Make Great PMs (and Why They Struggle)
Engineers solve problems. That's the job. But product management requires a different kind of problem solving — one where the problem itself is unclear, the constraints are human, and the "right answer" changes based on who you ask.
The Engineer's Superpower
You already have something most PMs don't:
- Systems thinking — you see how pieces connect
- Technical feasibility radar — you know what's possible (and what's expensive)
- Debugging mindset — you can trace a problem to its root cause
- Bias toward shipping — you'd rather build than talk about building
The Mindset Shift
Here's what changes:
| Engineer Mindset | PM Mindset |
|---|---|
| "What's the best solution?" | "What's the right problem?" |
| "How do we build this?" | "Should we build this?" |
| "This is technically elegant" | "Does this move the metric?" |
| "Users should read the docs" | "If users are confused, it's our fault" |
| "Let's build it right" | "Let's build the right thing" |
The 3 Lenses
Every product decision should pass through three lenses:
- Desirability — Do users actually want this?
- Feasibility — Can we build it with our resources?
- Viability — Does it make business sense?
As an engineer, you're strongest on lens #2. This course will sharpen lenses #1 and #3.
Exercise: The "Why" Ladder
Pick a feature you recently built. Now ask "why?" five times:
- Why did we build it? → "PM said so" (not good enough)
- Why did the PM want it? → "Users requested it"
- Why did users request it? → "They couldn't do X"
- Why couldn't they do X? → "The existing flow was confusing"
- Why was it confusing? → "We showed 12 options when they only needed 3"
That fifth answer? That's the real problem. And it might have a completely different solution than what was originally requested.
Key Insight: The first answer is almost never the real problem. Your job as a PM-minded engineer is to dig deeper.
What's Next
In the next module, we'll dive into Problem Discovery & User Thinking — how to find the right problems to solve before writing a single line of code.