This month I want to highlight a blog post, The Product-Minded Software Engineer, by Gergely Orosz (see October 2019 for another article from Gergely). This post discusses how product-minded software engineers form the nucleus of successful products, and steps you can take to be more product-minded. I love this line of thinking, it speaks to several of Amazon’s Leadership Principals, such as Ownership, Insist on the Highest Standards, and Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit. When I helped launch Twitch Prime in 2016, the team was filled with product-minded software engineers. Twitch Prime reaped the benefits, seeing tremendous initial success and continued growth over the years, and I am encouraged to see this trend continue across Amazon.

https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/the-product-minded-engineer

“Once you have the product foundations, you need devs who engage with the ‘why’, actively. Engineers who have the thirst for using technologies to leapfrog human/user problems. Those with empathy to reach for magical experiences. That is what defined a product engineer in my books. Bad ones cut too many corners. Great product engineers know that minimum lovable products need the right depth to be considered during the build phase.”