Become an Epic Product Engineer

Kent C. Dodds
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Become an Epic Product Engineer is Kent C. Dodds's interview podcast about skills that stay valuable as AI takes on more implementation: product engineering - blending technical depth with product judgment, user empathy, and problem clarity. Each episode is a long-form conversation with a guest who has shipped real software and cares about building the right thing before making it right. You get full audio, transcripts, structured show notes, homework (one concrete action to try), and links from the conversation. Canonical home for the show and every episode page: https://www.epicproduct.engineer/become-an-epic-product-engineer-podcast New episodes publish on Wednesdays (America/Denver). Video is added on Transistor for supported podcast apps when available. Complements Better with Kent - Kent's solo series on durable skills for people who ship software.

Episodes

  1. Primitives, agent UX, and Executor — product engineering with Rhys Sullivan

    1D AGO

    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 still be the right move even when agents make speed feel free. Rhys has an unusually current perspective on product engineering because he is working right at the edge of the agent tooling shift. The conversation starts with his recent work on Vercel Domains and then moves into Executor, where the challenge is no longer just implementing integrations, but choosing the abstractions that make a system composable, safe, and pleasant to use over time. What makes the episode strong is how often it comes back to product judgment instead of novelty. Rhys and Kent talk about finding the right primitives, observing how other products solve hard UX problems, resisting the urge to ship every request immediately, and building systems that help agents without letting them become dangerously "helpful." Homework Create a dedicated notes channel or system where you save examples of products doing something well.Use those notes as reusable product input: when you need to build a flow later, pull the examples back up instead of starting from scratch.Resources ExecutorRhys Sullivan - siteExecutor - GitHubOpenCodeGuest: Rhys Sullivan Company: ExecutorGitHub: @RhysSullivan𝕏: @RhysSullivanHost: Kent C. Dodds Website: kentcdodds.com𝕏: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsPodcast: epicproduct.engineerVideo Watch this episode

    41 min
  2. Customer research, desire, and Sales Safari - product engineering with Alex Hillman

    MAY 13

    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 and business priorities, and why AI makes human judgment, trust, and synthesis more important rather than less. Alex brings a product and marketing lens that fits this season perfectly: great products do not just solve technical problems, they help the right people recognize that you understand their world. The conversation starts with finding an audience and quickly turns into a practical way to build product sense inside a company: learn how customers describe themselves, observe where they gather, listen for the language they use, and speak from their priorities instead of your own taste. The second half gets into Sales Safari, Stacking the Bricks' observational research practice. Alex explains why surveys and interviews can miss important signal, what to look for in real conversations, and how notes on jargon, pain, worldview, and recommendations can turn scattered internet conversations into useful product understanding. The through-line is simple and demanding: reduce the distance between you and the people you serve so your software, messaging, and decisions feel anticipated rather than manipulative. Homework The next time coworkers or product teammates disagree about direction, step back and observe the conversation.Ask: who is this disagreement in service of? Is it serving the customer, the decision maker, the loudest person, or someone else?Practice this once a day or once a week, then use the patterns you notice to decide what you should contribute.Resources Stacking the Bricks30x500The Tiny MBAThe Mom TestAlex Hillman on XGuest: Alex Hillman Company: Stacking the BricksGitHub: @alexknowshtml𝕏: @alexhillmanHost: Kent C. Dodds Website: kentcdodds.com𝕏: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsPodcast: epicproduct.engineerVideo Watch this episode

    1h 12m
  3. Speed, prioritization, and maintainability — product engineering with Julius Marminge

    MAY 6

    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 keep agent-built software maintainable over time. Julius is building right in the middle of one of the fastest-moving product categories in software, and that gives this episode a useful tension: everything feels possible, but that does not mean everything belongs in the product. The conversation covers the shift from one-agent-at-a-time coding to orchestration, why T3 Code focuses so much on a fast app layer, and how Julius thinks about what should live in the core product versus forks, plugins, or future work. The deeper lesson is about judgment under speed. Julius and Kent keep returning to the same idea from different angles: when agents can generate a lot of implementation quickly, the real work is deciding what is worth building, what will age well, and what future decisions you might accidentally box yourself out of. Homework Take a step back and look at your product from the whole picture, not just the slice you currently touch.Before prioritizing a feature, ask whether it keeps the product maintainable long-term and whether it fits the job to be done for your users.Resources T3 CodeT3 ChatJulius Marminge — GitHubOpenCodeGuest: Julius Marminge GitHub: @juliusmarminge𝕏: @jullerinoHost: Kent C. Dodds Website: kentcdodds.com𝕏: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsPodcast: epicproduct.engineerVideo Watch this episode

    42 min
  4. Stakeholder empathy, UX, and durable product skills — product engineering with Jamon Holmgren

    APR 29

    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 keep learning as the job shifts up the stack. Jamon brings a useful mix to this conversation: founder of Infinite Red, longtime consultant, React Native specialist, and now indie game developer. That perspective makes the episode unusually practical. He has spent years watching where projects go wrong when product thinking is weak: bad requirements, unclear stakeholder alignment, UX details nobody owned, and engineers optimizing the wrong thing too early. The thread through the whole episode is durability. Product engineering is not just about shipping faster with agents or getting better at a specific tool. It is about understanding people, shaping better requirements, recognizing when the human side of the workflow matters more than the code, and making decisions that keep paying off as the technology changes around you. Homework Sit down with a non-technical person and watch them try to use a feature you built.Write down every hesitation, workaround, double-click, or confusing step you notice, then use that list to reprioritize what you fix next.Resources Infinite RedJamon Holmgren — siteNight Shift Agentic WorkflowGunship Origins on SteamGuest: Jamon Holmgren Company: Infinite RedGitHub: @jamonholmgren𝕏: @jamonholmgrenHost: Kent C. Dodds Website: kentcdodds.com𝕏: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsPodcast: epicproduct.engineerVideo Watch this episode

    56 min
  5. Watch users, fix systems, and design for humanity — product engineering with Don Norman

    APR 22

    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. They talk about timing and failed products, cross-functional product teams, what AI changes for software builders, and why Don now cares most about designing for humanity, not only usability. Don's career makes this episode unusually wide-ranging: early computing, human error, aviation safety, Unix, Apple product decisions, digital cameras, color TV, and the long arc from usable products to systems that shape society. The through-line is straightforward but demanding: if you want better products, watch what people actually do, notice the workarounds they no longer complain about, and treat clusters of small usability problems like real product debt. The second half brings that thinking into the present. Don and Kent talk about AI coding tools as force multipliers that still need direction, architecture, and supervision, then zoom out to Design for a Better World and the Don Norman Design Award. The result is a conversation about product sense that spans decades without feeling dated: the tools change, but the responsibility to understand people, systems, and consequences does not. Homework Spend time watching people do real work before you ask them for solutions; observation reveals the hidden setup, workarounds, and friction they now assume are just "how it works."After a release, step back and fix clusters of small usability issues as a system instead of waiting for one confusing bug to become catastrophic.Treat AI as a force multiplier you must instruct and supervise; stay responsible for the problem definition, architecture, and review.Resources Don Norman Design Award (DNDA)Design for a Better WorldThe Design of Everyday ThingsNielsen Norman Group — Don NormanUnited Nations Sustainable Development GoalsGuest: Don Norman Company: Don Norman Design Award (DNDA)Host: Kent C. Dodds Website: kentcdodds.com𝕏: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsPodcast: epicproduct.engineerVideo Watch this episode

    1h 16m
  6. Human factors, product debt, and industrial design — product engineering with Will King

    APR 15

    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 faster implementation. Will's path runs from designing bucket trucks to self-taught software engineering, education products, and database tooling, and that background gives this episode a distinctive lens: software is still a product people use with bodies, habits, emotions, and mental models. The conversation makes product sense concrete through examples like onboarding timing, course complexity, support workflows, and the small confidence signals that separate stable-feeling products from merely functional ones. You'll hear why watching users work keeps surfacing across this series, how to tell broken experiences from merely unpopular ones, why user feedback usually improves polish more than strategy, and how product engineers can stay valuable in an agent-heavy future by understanding both the user and the constraints of the software medium. Homework Use AI agents more for gathering than executing: explore multiple solution paths, adjacent domains, and missing context before you ship.Give agents richer context like user demographics, constraints, and likely mental models, then use your own judgment to evaluate what comes back.Slow down long enough to question assumptions before implementation; use AI as a creativity and critique tool, not just a code accelerator.Resources Will King - siteDeploy Empathy (Michele Hansen)The Mom Test (Rob Fitzpatrick)Interface Craft (Josh Puckett)Guest: Will King Company: Crunchy DataGitHub: @wking-io𝕏: @willkingHost: Kent C. Dodds Website: kentcdodds.com𝕏: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsPodcast: epicproduct.engineerVideo Watch this episode

    1h 2m
  7. Vertical slices, Solo, and empathy — product engineering with Aaron D. Francis

    APR 8

    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 instead of problems, and how empathy (and letting go of “technically correct”) changes what you ship. Aaron builds in public—Laravel roots, education, and now Solo, a terminal multiplexer–style desktop app for organizing agents and dev stacks. This episode is a practical tour of product sense for developers: watching people work, reading support email with empathy, cow paths vs. fences, and why the “right” architecture can still lose if humans go home furious. You’ll hear how Aaron reasons from problem → solution when users ask for worktrees, when to duplicate UI affordances even when the model is “one,” and how introverts can still do discovery by treating outreach like an optimization mission—plus niche opportunities outside the Cursor clone gold rush. Homework When someone asks for a solution (e.g. a feature), slow down and ask what problem they’re really trying to solve—users often lead with implementations.Practice user empathy: imagine someone stressed, trying to finish work; question “technically correct” UX that blames the user instead of protecting them (confirmations, back-button data loss, etc.).If talking to people is hard, reframe discovery as a systematic search (spreadsheet energy, trusted partners, or domain friends)—or pair with someone who loves conversations.Resources Aaron D. Francis — XJobs to Be Done (Clay Christensen)The Design of Everyday Things (Don Norman)Guest: Aaron D. Francis Company: Solo & Laravel educationGitHub: @aarondfrancis𝕏: @aarondfrancisHost: Kent C. Dodds Website: kentcdodds.com𝕏: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsPodcast: epicproduct.engineerVideo Watch this episode

    46 min
  8. Foundations, feedback, and agents — Dillon Mulroy on product at Cloudflare

    APR 1

    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, partnering with support, and why “make pain painful” aligns incentives for better software. Dillon’s path runs from internal insurance tools to Vercel Domains to Cloudflare’s agent and dashboard work—always with the same through-line: care about the user, get real feedback, and invest in primitives so delighters don’t collapse under bad foundations. This episode covers metrics and paging as a product habit, learning from customer escalations, scoping small when AI speeds up coding, and building cross-functional relationships (support, sales, finance) as part of engineering judgment. You’ll hear practical parallels with episodes on delighters and onboarding tension, plus why reviewing agent-written code still matters for system intuition when things break at 2 a.m. Homework Try hard and care a lot; more practically, focus on foundations and primitives.Put good feedback systems in place so you know what’s going on with your product and where it doesn’t feel good—alerting and metrics, customer journey signals, or customer interviews.If you have a customer support team, sit with them and watch them triage cases for your product; get to know support—they’re sitting on a gold mine of product signal—and empathize with them like you do with users.Kent’s shorthand for the mindset Dillon agreed with: make pain painful—if your users are hurting, you should feel it too.Resources Cloudflare — DevelopersCloudflare AgentsDillon Mulroy — siteDillon Mulroy — GitHubGuest: Dillon Mulroy Company: CloudflareGitHub: @dmmulroy𝕏: @dillon_mulroyHost: Kent C. Dodds Website: kentcdodds.com𝕏: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsPodcast: epicproduct.engineerVideo Watch this episode

    49 min
  9. The right thing before the thing right — product engineering with Wayne Allan

    APR 1

    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, the Kano model, *Crossing the Chasm*, and what changes when shipping gets faster than learning. Wayne blends delivery and product leadership—his stories range from a flagship-adjacent launch that nobody used to the everyday discipline of listening to customers without waiting two weeks for a meeting. This episode connects feedback-loop thinking (familiar from CI) to product discovery, yes-and conversations when someone is married to a feature idea, and the difference between hygiene features, performance features, and delighters when teams ship faster than users can absorb. You’ll also hear grounded takes on when “move fast” breaks trust, how AI may reshape search-and-listing UIs, and a concrete reading list: *The Mom Test* and *Crossing the Chasm*. Homework Talk to people, ask good questions, and listen—Wayne says that’s the biggest hack that’s worked in his career.Read *The Mom Test*: ask how people solved this problem in the past instead of whether they like your idea or would use it—you get far more useful insight (Wayne ties this to caring about the problem, not your solution). Resources *The Mom Test* (Rob Fitzpatrick)*Crossing the Chasm* (Geoffrey Moore)ThoughtworksWayne Allan — LinkedIn Guest: Wayne Allan Company: Thoughtworks𝕏: @xWayfinder Host: Kent C. Dodds Website: kentcdodds.com𝕏: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsPodcast: epicproduct.engineer Video Watch this episode

    51 min
  10. Product sense, restraint, and OpenCode with Dax Raad

    APR 1

    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 why slowing down can be the right move—even when competitors ship faster. Dax has spent years building tools developers actually use; on OpenCode he’s thinking hard about product process while the space moves at breakneck speed. This episode is a practical look at product deterioration (not just code rot), bottom-up adoption for dev tools, and how coding agents change who decides what gets built—without replacing the need for taste, restraint, and clarity about what problem you’re solving. You’ll hear concrete examples from OpenCode’s terminal UI and onboarding, parallels to Kent’s Epic Workshop app, and a grounded take on inference pricing, hype, and when “ship messy and fix later” does and doesn’t hold up. Homework Convince yourself that getting good at product really matters—Dax says there’s a lot in the culture that tries to tell you it doesn’t, and you need that commitment because the belief will be challenged.If you don’t already believe it, figure out how to make yourself believe it matters (Kent’s recap of the guest’s action).Resources OpenCodeOpenCode docsDax Raad (site)Kent C. Dodds — blogGuest: Dax Raad Company: OpenCodeGitHub: @thdxr𝕏: @thdxrHost: Kent C. Dodds Website: kentcdodds.com𝕏: @kentcdoddsGitHub: @kentcdoddsYouTube: Kent C. DoddsPodcast: epicproduct.engineerVideo Watch this episode

    54 min
  11. Introducing Become an Epic Product Engineer

    APR 1

    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 frames the show - learning out loud with people who blend technical depth and product judgment - and why developers need product thinking without becoming product managers. He walks through the archer metaphor (better arrows, same need to pick the target), how homework works at the end of every episode, and highlights conversations to start with. Also: Better with Kent, Kent's solo companion series on the same durable skills. Homework Subscribe to Become an Epic Product Engineer in your favorite podcast app.Pick one episode to listen to first - if it wins you over, come back for the rest. Resources Become an Epic Product Engineer podcastThe Last Software Engineer (essay) Guest: Kent C. Dodds Company: Epic Product EngineerGitHub: @kentcdodds𝕏: @kentcdodds Video Watch this episode

    11 min
  • 11 Episodes

About

Become an Epic Product Engineer is Kent C. Dodds's interview podcast about skills that stay valuable as AI takes on more implementation: product engineering - blending technical depth with product judgment, user empathy, and problem clarity. Each episode is a long-form conversation with a guest who has shipped real software and cares about building the right thing before making it right. You get full audio, transcripts, structured show notes, homework (one concrete action to try), and links from the conversation. Canonical home for the show and every episode page: https://www.epicproduct.engineer/become-an-epic-product-engineer-podcast New episodes publish on Wednesdays (America/Denver). Video is added on Transistor for supported podcast apps when available. Complements Better with Kent - Kent's solo series on durable skills for people who ship software.

Information

  • Creator
    Kent C. Dodds
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    11
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Kent C. Dodds Tech LLC. All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Become an Epic Product Engineer