Are Engineers too Far From The Product?

We like to blame slow delivery on process, resourcing, or governance. But what if the real issue is simpler - our engineers don’t truly understand the product they’re building?

Too often, developers work in the dark. They know their codebase but not their customer; they execute sprint goals without grasping the pain points that gave rise to them. Many will never use the products they build. In large corporations, especially, software delivery teams are tucked away as backend functions, separated from the client by layers of business units and reporting. That distance makes customer needs feel abstract, even irrelevant.

The consequence is predictable: delivery drags. Teams work on thin slices of functionality, hand them off for someone else to stitch together, and move on. Momentum stalls because no one owns the full picture. The rare exceptions are teams that build entire digital platforms — they can see a feature end-to-end and experience its impact directly. They move faster because the product is real to them.

The Claude Code team shows what this looks like at scale. Their engineers ship with astonishing frequency, some five times a day. But they aren’t simply pushing code faster; they’re collapsing the gap between engineering and product thinking. Each engineer owns a full feature, prototypes several versions, uses judgment to settle on what feels right, and only then invites others in for review. They don’t wait for product managers to dictate every detail. They explore, discover, and shape solutions hands-on.

This is the direction modern engineering needs to move. Engineers cannot remain detached executors; they must become product-savvy. AI only sharpens this need. With automated tests, IDE-based static checks, security guardrails in the form of instruction files, and AI-first code reviews for lower-level quality checks, speed no longer has to mean sloppiness. AI takes care of the basics so engineers can focus on building features that matter.

The role of the engineer is evolving. They are no longer just coders - they are explorers, prototypers, and product thinkers. Companies that embrace this will deliver sharper products at greater pace. Those that don’t will fall behind, not because they lack talent, but because their engineers are too far from the product.