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
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 curios
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 stil
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 faste
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 inst
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, t
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.
Software keeps changing, and AI is accelerating something that was already true: implementation is getting cheaper while knowing what to build matters more.
In this intro Kent
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