Become an Epic Product Engineer
Become an Epic Product Engineer is an interview podcast hosted by Kent C. Dodds, focusing on product engineering skills that remain valuable as AI takes over more implementation tasks. Each episode features long-form conversations with guests who have shipped real software and emphasize building the right thing before making it right. The show provides full audio, transcripts, structured show notes, homework, and links from the conversation. New episodes are published on Wednesdays, with video available on supported podcast apps.
Episodes
Get five people talking about your product - iterative feedback with Ben Vinegar
If you ship features and never hear what users actually said, this episode is for you. Kent talks with Ben Vinegar - co-founder of Modem, formerly founding engineer and VPE at Sentry - about aggregating feedback, eliminating adoption barriers, and keeping human judgment in the loop as AI speeds up shipping.They cover FreshBooks-era product engineering, Modem's approach to capturing feedba
Start with curiosity and talk to a customer - continuous discovery with Teresa Torres
If your backlog is full of tickets and zero customer contact, this episode is for you. Kent talks with Teresa Torres - product discovery coach, author of Continuous Discovery Habits, and host of Just Now Possible - about why engineers belong in discovery, what "just now possible" really means, and how curiosity beats solution advocacy.They cover opportunity solution trees, confirmation bi
Lead with empathy and listen without defense - product sense with Mark Techson
If you still build for an audience of one and get defensive when users "use it wrong," this episode is for you. Kent talks with Mark Techson - staff developer relations engineer on Angular at Google - about empathy as a career differentiator, listening without defense, and why knowing what to build still beats vibe-coding forever.They cover internal tools as real products, a fitness-app f
Keep a friction log and read a sales book - product ownership with Joyce Er
If execution got cheap and you still wait for someone to tell you what to build, this episode is for you. Kent talks with Joyce Er about five years owning features on VS Code, the jump to product at Cerebras, and why trust is the metric that tells you the work is working.
They cover daily stand-ups that roast your feature in public, friction logs as taste practice, dogfooding when you can
Use the product yourself - empathy, architecture, and PM partnership with Rita Kozlov
If you ship a feature and never click through it yourself, this episode is for you. Kent talks with Rita Kozlov, VP of Product for Cloudflare's developer platform, about the line between product managers and product engineers, why ownership still matters when prototypes look real, and how far upstream an engineer should insert themselves.
They cover holding the pager vs throwing away a pr
Ask why in every PR - product engineering with Erin Fox
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
AI is a tool, not a silver bullet - product discovery with Peppe Silletti
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 P
Curiosity, micro-sales, and AI as a supplement with Shaundai Person
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 conversatio
Talk to users, ship live demos, and build durable products with Michael Grinich
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 au
Write it down: process, benchmarking, and product judgment with Ronan Berder
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 boundar
Developer customers, AI skills, and durable product judgment with Ben Ilegbodu
If you build internal tools, AI enablement, or platform work, this episode is for you. Kent talks with Ben Ilegbodu about treating developers as customers, measuring success without a checkout funnel, and the durable skills that still matter when agents write more of the code.They cover agentic workflows and skills at Netflix, closing the agent loop for TV UI development, verification and
Architecture, AI agents, and product empathy with Robert C. Martin
Kent talks with Robert C. Martin - Uncle Bob - about what AI agents change, what they do not change, and why software architecture, design sense, and customer empathy still matter.They cover why engineers may need to "walk away from the code" while still caring about structure, how agents can be guided with quality tools, why beginners still need to learn the material agents manipulate, a
Curiosity, UX, and durable engineering skills with Annie Sexton
Kent talks with Annie Sexton, developer educator at ngrok, about the durable skills engineers need as AI changes the shape of software work.They cover how to teach complex technical ideas without assuming too much, why curiosity keeps engineers from becoming button pushers, how pacing and storytelling make educational content work, and why UX and product judgment are becoming harder to ig
Taste, simplicity, and AI-era product judgment with Michael Shimeles
Kent talks with Michael Shimeles - Rasmic - about building products in the AI era without losing the engineering judgment that makes software useful.They cover AI consulting, why clients often ask for the wrong thing, how to push conversations back to the real problem, why simplicity is a product advantage, and why developers are more valuable when they combine technical skill with taste,
Know your customer better than your code - product engineering with Lucas Wargha
Kent talks with Lucas Wargha, engineering manager at FamilySearch, about turning software engineers into product engineers: understanding mission and business outcomes, talking to real users across cultures, and stopping the assembly line of JIRA handoffs.They cover customer personas at global scale, the Gmail password-loading story as product-engineering thinking, owning epics end-to-end
Demos, feedback loops, and AI-era product judgment with Ruben Casas
Kent talks with Ruben Casas about building products again in the AI-agent era: why experienced engineers can now stay close to customers and code, how demos turn vague ideas into something people can react to, and why product judgment matters more as implementation gets cheaper.They cover Postman, MCP, agent-driven UI, prototypes, early user feedback, feature product-market fit, and the e
The technical person in the room - product engineering with Sean Roberts
Kent talks with Sean Roberts, engineer at PhotoShelter, about product engineering shaped by agency work and small teams: being the technical person in sales conversations early, planning with product judgment, and knowing when to speak up (and when to listen).They discuss why implementation skill still matters in the AI era, how to avoid "vibes-only" product calls, budgeting and sequencin
Software architecture, human judgment, and AI's limits with Grady Booch
Kent talks with Grady Booch about what software engineering still means in the age of AI agents, why implementation is only one part of the work, and why human judgment remains central to building durable systems.
They discuss software architecture, the limits of large language models, computable minds, product engineering across different risk and complexity levels, and the kind of curio
User outcomes, workflow design, and biotech software - product engineering with Swizec Teller
Kent talks with Swizec Teller about product engineering for software that serves real businesses and non-developer users: how to learn a domain you did not grow up in, how to spot hidden friction by watching people work, and why the best product work focuses on outcomes, not engineering puzzles.
They talk through biotech, internal tooling, habits users build around buggy software, feature
User empathy, feedback loops, and what not to build - product engineering with Jack Ryan
Kent talks with Jack Ryan, Principal Engineer at Intercom, about product engineering at scale: why implementation is only part of the job, how to broaden what you measure as success beyond shipping tickets, and why customer feedback is an input, not a product roadmap.
They cover startup lessons from property tech, metrics vs. conversation, AI-era decision-making, performance trade-offs, P
Primitives, agent UX, and Executor - product engineering with Rhys Sullivan
Kent talks with Rhys Sullivan about building Executor and thinking like a product engineer in the AI-agent era: how to design the right primitives, why agent experience is becoming its own product surface, and how to keep quality high when shipping has never been easier.
They cover MCP, code mode, approvals, workspace scoping, docs and APIs as user experience, and why slowing down can sti
Customer research, desire, and Sales Safari - product engineering with Alex Hillman
Kent talks with Alex Hillman of Stacking the Bricks about customer research, product fit, and the kind of product engineering that starts before implementation: understanding who you are serving, what they already believe, and how to make people feel understood instead of sold to.
They cover audience selection, observational research, helping in public, aligning your work with customer an
Speed, prioritization, and maintainability — product engineering with Julius Marminge
Kent talks with Julius Marminge about building T3 Code in the agent-orchestrator wave: why speed still matters, why fast shipping does not mean shipping every possible feature, and how product judgment becomes more important as parallel AI workflows make implementation cheap.
They dig into dogfooding, core-product trade-offs, monetization pressure, customization vs defaults, and how to ke
Stakeholder empathy, UX, and durable product skills — product engineering with Jamon Holmgren
Kent talks with Jamon Holmgren about product engineering from a long-running consultancy lens: how working with clients, stakeholders, and non-technical users sharpens your product sense, and why those skills matter even more as implementation gets cheaper with AI.
They cover React Native, consulting, game design, stakeholder failures, feedback loops, and what software builders need to ke
Watch users, fix systems, and design for humanity — product engineering with Don Norman
Kent talks with Don Norman about why the core work of product engineering has not changed: watch people work, treat so-called user error as a design problem, and fix root causes instead of blaming symptoms.
Don walks through a remarkable arc from electrical engineering and cognitive psychology to Three Mile Island, Xerox PARC, Apple, and the first use of user experience in a job title. Th
Human factors, product debt, and industrial design — product engineering with Will King
Kent talks with Will King about bringing an industrial design mindset into software: human factors, observing real users, and why good product engineering starts with caring enough to notice what frustrates people.
They dig into product debt, support as a product superpower, pruning features without breaking trust, and how to use AI agents for exploration and critique instead of only fast
Vertical slices, Solo, and empathy — product engineering with Aaron D. Francis
Kent talks with Aaron D. Francis about product engineering: why ticket-taking implementation is losing ground to agents, what a vertical slice from UI to database really means, and how Aaron’s desktop app Solo came from a painful problem—not a feature spec.
They go deep on scratch-your-own-itch products, separating agents from dev stacks, Jobs to Be Done, why users bring you solutions ins
Foundations, feedback, and agents — Dillon Mulroy on product at Cloudflare
Kent talks with Dillon Mulroy, Principal Engineer at Cloudflare, about Agent Experience and dogfooding AI platform work: how Cloudflare closes the loop between builders and customers, why observability and support are product superpowers, and how to stay disciplined when agents tempt you to ship huge diffs overnight.
They go deep on watching users work, firehose social feedback, partnerin
The right thing before the thing right — product engineering with Wayne Allan
Kent talks with Wayne Allan (engineer, PM, and consultant) about product engineering in practice: why “building the thing right” only matters after you’re building the right thing, how to shorten feedback loops without six-month research theater, and why falling in love with the problem beats falling in love with your solution.
They cover scrappy validation, talking to sales and support,
Product sense, restraint, and OpenCode with Dax Raad
Kent talks with Dax Raad about building OpenCode in a crowded coding-agent market: why dev tools are still a consumer-style product, how fast shipping can make good products feel worse, and what “product skill” actually looks like when agents remove friction from implementation.
They dig into onboarding, progressive disclosure, listening across many user requests for the real pattern, and
Introducing Become an Epic Product Engineer
Kent opens Become an Epic Product Engineer: why product engineering is the durable skill as AI takes on more implementation, what to expect from guest conversations and homework, and where to start in the catalog.
(00:00) - Introducing Become an Epic Product Engineer
(00:38) - The archer metaphor
(00:52) - Knowing what to build
(01:05) - Learning out loud with guests
(01:18) - Product eng
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