Why Product Engineers Who Don't Use Their Product Are Setting Themselves Up to Fail
The missing skill that separates good product engineers from great ones
A few years ago, I had an engineer on my team who taught me an important lesson about product engineering.
He'd been building an integration for six months. The integration connected our product with another platform built by the same company – different teams, but same organization.
Our head of sales had been asking about the integration. He wanted to understand what we were building so he could stay ahead of the curve with prospects. Smart guy – he knew that understanding our technical capabilities would help him sell better.
I arranged a walkthrough with him so we could all learn about the integration. I figured my engineer, having worked on this for months, would walk us through how the host product worked and how our integration fit in.
What happened next was one of the most awkward demos I've ever sat through.
The head of sales started asking basic questions about the host product's core features. How do the main primitives interact? What are the canonical use cases? Think of it like asking someone building an Amazon marketplace integration to explain how sellers, listings, and carts work together.
My engineer couldn't answer. At all.
Here was someone I'd been managing for months on this project, and he understood less about the host product than our head of sales and I did. We came expecting expertise. Instead, we got surface-level explanations and uncomfortable silences.
The code worked fine. But this was a product engineering failure.
You Can't Be a Product Engineer Without Understanding the Product
Here's what most engineers miss: when you're hired as a product engineer, it's pure business.
Someone made a case for your headcount. A GM or business lead told finance: "We need this person to build these features that solve these customer problems." Your entire role exists because there are customer problems that need solving.
If you don't vibe with that reality, you're setting yourself up to fail.
You can fake caring about customers during interviews. You can nod along in product reviews. But when it comes to actual work, you either have empathy for user problems or you don't.
Product engineering isn't about writing elegant code in isolation. It's about solving customer problems through product features. If that doesn't interest you, there are other engineering paths. Infrastructure, platform, backend systems engineering. All valuable, all needed.
But product engineering? That's reserved for people who want to understand what users actually need.
My Own Product Blindness Nearly Tanked a Project
Early in my career, I learned this lesson the hard way.
I was consulting for a major internet service provider. We built an internal tool for their sales team – a deal builder where salespeople could configure enterprise internet packages. Different connection speeds, service levels, pricing tiers. Incredibly complex business logic.
My senior teammates told me it was a fascinating, complicated project. I nodded along, pretending I understood.
For four months, I contributed almost nothing meaningful. Not because I couldn't code. Because I had no clue what problem we were solving.
The domain was intricate. Abbreviations everywhere. Technical terms I'd never heard. I was building features without understanding why they mattered.
Eventually, my boss moved me to another project. He called it an "opportunity." I now realize he was protecting both the client relationship and my confidence.
The project succeeded without me. My teammates thrived because they took time to understand the business.
I failed because I never asked the product manager to spend three hours explaining what the sales team actually did.
How to Actually Learn Your Product
The solution is simpler than most engineers think: use the damn product.
Start with scenarios. Don't just click around randomly. Pick a persona and a problem, then solve it using your product.
Example: "I'm a finance controller at a big bank who needs a weekly expense report for airfare costs in the past seven days."
Now use your financial software to solve that problem. Follow the same path a real user would take. Read documentation. Watch tutorials. Click through the interface.
Take notes on friction points. Notice where you get confused. That's where your users struggle too.
Leverage Your Teammates
If you work with other functions, use them.
Talk to your product manager. Ask them: "What problems are we solving? Can you show me how users actually interact with this?"
Don't have a PM? Find a senior engineer. Ask the same questions.
Want a radical idea? Join a user call. Listen to how customers talk about your product. Get feedback directly from people who pay for it.
Talk to designers. They usually understand user problems deeply. They think about workflows and pain points constantly.
Talk to salespeople. They know exactly what the product does well and where it falls short. They've heard every user complaint and feature request.
Make Time to Learn
Spend 20% of your first few weeks learning the product you're building.
No reasonable manager will stop you from this. It's like expecting a mechanic to fix a car they've never seen before.
If you work somewhere that discourages product learning, you're in the wrong environment.
The Bottom Line
Product engineering success requires product understanding. You can't make good technical decisions without knowing what users need.
That integration my engineer built? It might work technically. But does it solve the right problem? Does it create the experience users actually want?
Without product knowledge, he can't answer those questions. And neither can you.
If you're serious about product engineering, get serious about your product. Use it. Understand it. Talk to people who depend on it.
Your career depends on it.
Want more practical advice on engineering leadership and career growth? I write about these topics every week, sharing battle-tested frameworks and real engineering war stories. Subscribe at stratechgist.com or connect with me on LinkedIn for more insights on building your technical career.