From Developer to Engineer: The Mindset Shift That Separates Good from Great with Dr. Milan Milanović

“Senior software engineers remove more code than they add.” When I read this quote from Dr. Milan Milanović a few months ago, I knew he had powerful ideas that product people needed to listen to.

When I first approached hi , I was surprised by how humble he is, despite having such a huge following (400K+ across platforms). He shared with me about his new book, Laws of Software Engineering, which I had the pleasure of reading to it. I couldn’t hold myself, but invite him for a Podcast.

This episode is highly valuable for product folks who want to better understand how to transform the collaboration with engineers. It’s also refreshing hearing from a CTO the differences between developers and engineers, and what makes someone really senior.

Listen to it, roughly 40 minutes that’ll give you insights on what’s happening with software engineering now, and how to leverage that.

Here are a 7 topics we covered.

1. Developers jump into code; engineers stop to ask why

“People who I consider to be primary developers, they are mostly focused on code... But software engineers don’t jump into code. They first stop and start to understand the why’s behind it. They ask questions first.”

2. AI makes low-quality code faster and more dangerous

“In the AI world, this is even more visible because it’s easy to produce code and it’s just easy to produce a large amount of code in short time, which is much, much more dangerous than it was before.”

3. Knowing the business is an engineering superpower

“Knowing the business, especially in today’s AI world and the domain very well, is a big big advantage to you. If you don’t know that, you will get into problems.”

4. High agency is the defining trait of great engineers

“They will figure it out because they know they’re part of business and this is their strength. Not only how to implement this, but also on the product side, working closely to product people and with the business people.”

5. Starting complex is a trap teams walk into repeatedly

“Always start simple. Start in the simplest way possible and then build up complexity from there if needed. Maybe it will never be needed, you know, and you will stay simple, which is a great thing.”

6. Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill the time you give it

“If you give people two-hour meetings they will fill this meeting up with discussions, but if you give them 45 minutes they will use those 45 minutes and maybe have the same or even better decisions.”

7. YAGNI: don’t build what no one asked for

“I saw many, many times things which were built without need. Not only without the need, but without anyone asking that. They were just there, they were just built much more complex because maybe one day we will need it and that day never came. So we just needed to maintain this complex thing.

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How do you move faster than everybody from idea to value?

I talk to dozens of product folks every week, from IC to CxO, and one thing stand out to me. Most of them operate with an outdated system, to a point that they continuously need to fight the status quo to drive value. It doesn’t have to be that way.

If you want to know how a modern operating system to drive value looks like, apply for our upcoming 100XPM, it will take place in August.

Here’s a recommendation from our last cohort.

What a great three weeks! David's insights definitely shed light on the true role of a PM, going far beyond business cards and deliverables. He empowered me to be a professional who aspires to more and has a holistic view of the problem. It also helped me improve personally. Without a doubt, these three weeks helped me become a better professional and a better person. His experience and industry connections are also very relevant for understanding where we are and where things are headed, especially in AI. - Domingo Echenique