In this long tech video (whilst Iโm walking), I explain where you need to focus and spend your time as an engineer, why just shipping is no longer part of it, and how thinking clearly as a product-oriented problem-solver is the skill that separates strong engineers from everyone else.
Look, this might sound controversial, but hear me out. The actual act of writing code? Thatโs becoming less and less of the differentiator. AI can handle everything now. What it canโt do (at least not yet) is understand the whybehind what youโre building.
The engineers who are genuinely valuable are definitely no longer the ones who can write the most maintainable lines of code in a day. Theyโre the ones who can look at a feature request and ask: โWait, does this actually solve the userโs problem? Is this the right approach? What are we missing here?โ
Product-oriented thinking means youโre not just executing tasks. Youโre questioning requirements. Youโre thinking about edge cases before you write a single function. Youโre considering the long-term maintenance burden of your decisions. Youโre thinking like someone who owns the outcome, not just the implementation.
And hereโs the thing: this requires clear thinking. Not clever thinking. Clear thinking. The ability to break down a complex problem into simple parts, spot what actually matters, and communicate your reasoning to others. Thatโs the skill that separates strong engineers from everyone else.
In this video (which is quite long because Iโm walking and thinking out loud), Iโll break down what this actually looks like in practice. How to shift from โjust tell me what to buildโ to โlet me understand the problem first.โ How to evaluate trade-offs. How to think through second and third-order effects of your decisions. And why this mindset matters more than any specific technology you know.
Iโve been building several projects on my GitHub over the years that might interest you. Feel free to check them out for inspiration or jump in with contributions!
There are so much more to come on my LinkedIn! Donโt forget to follow and stay tuned! ๐ฅ
